by Deborah S. Roberts

After finishing my little tribute, I read the notes and thought, “Hey, I’m going to mail that to the people who worked on the show.” So I tore the little spiral pages out of my notebook, shoved them—rough edges and all—into an envelope, and addressed it to “Anyone connected to MASH,” in care of CBS. I found the CBS address in TV Guide, stuck a stamp on the envelope, and sent it on its way, thinking some mail clerk might be happy about working for a network that produced such a terrific show.

Several weeks later, I received a personal letter from Bert Metcalfe, the executive producer of the series during its final years.

Wouldn’t it be nice if it were always so easy to get our letters into the right hands? But that was the fluke of all flukes. (And Bert Metcalfe is a gracious man.) If you’re hoping to make a difference by writing a letter to plead your case, you’ll have to do some planning to make sure it gets into the right hands. Here are some suggestions:

• Target your audience in advance. Forget my M*A*S*H story. You want to avoid writing your letter to just “anyone.” Instead, you want to target your recipient before writing the letter so you can make your comments more personal. The best way to target your audience is to think about what you hope to achieve. Do you want to advocate for or against a particular piece of legislation? Then you need to write to a senator or member of Congress because they’re the people who have the power to cast legislative votes. Do you want to draw attention to a cause? Then you should consider writing to an influential columnist, blogger, or journalist who has a forum and a large audience to publicize your issue. Decide what you want to happen, then decide who’s the best person to make it happen.

• Remember the six degrees of separation. I’m not sure where it started, but there’s a theory that only six people separate us from everyone else on the planet. And for the purposes of this exercise, the idea is that you find people who know people who can get your letter delivered directly into the hands of the people you want to read it. The post Write letters, change your world I discusses how my colleagues and I were able to use our employer’s lobbying contacts to hand-deliver our faxed letters directly to our U.S. senator. We called friends in our legislative office. One of them knew someone in another legislative office who knew someone who worked with the senator’s daughter in yet another office. She hand-delivered the letters to her father.

Do you know a relative, friend, coworker, or colleague of the person you’re trying to reach? If not, here’s another suggestion: Instead of trying to contact the person directly, try to contact a member of your target’s staff, say, an aide or personal assistant. These individuals are usually easier to reach by telephone, and if you can establish a rapport with them, you may be able to send your letter to their care, to be hand-delivered to the addressee.

• Go to the trouble of getting the correct address. If it’s important, then it’s important enough to go to make sure you get the correct address. Once you’ve looked up the address in the telephone book, the Encyclopedia of Associations, online, or in whatever reference you’ve chosen, send an e-mail or make a phone call to confirm that you have the correct and most current information. Though it’s faster and easier to update online information than to update printed info, that doesn’t mean all Web sites are regularly updated. If a postal code or the number to an office suite is incorrect, your letter may never find its way to its intended reader.

• Yes, send it the old-fashioned way. So no one sends snail-mail anymore? That’s exactly why you should. It’s too easy for people to fire off an e-mail without giving it much thought, making it too easy for recipients to ignore them. Political and business leaders are more likely to pay attention to someone who’s taken the time to commit a thoughtful letter to paper, put it in an envelope, and paid for a stamp to send it the old-fashioned way. If it gets your issue the attention it deserves, the few cents you spend on postage will be well worth it.

Need help writing letters that influence? Check out: “Write letters, change the world I.”