obats

Getting noticed, or...

How I learned to stop counting and love factoids

AH! JUNK MAIL. Despoiler of forests. Clutterer of mailboxes. We love to hate it. But, as one sage in this business remarked: "It's only junk mail if it doesn't offer you something you want."

That, really, is the essence of effective direct mail: "Give them something they want."

Notice how similar that is to the retail maxim, "The customer is always right." No matter how elegant, different, charming, or chock full of rewards and benefits your mailing is, it's junk mail if the person receiving it says so. Don't bother arguing with them. Remove them from your mailing list. Most people will say nothing, however. They just won't notice and therefore won't read your message before consigning it to the recycling bin. So, how do you get them to notice you?

Getting noticed involves a lot of psycho-technical research (mumbojumbo) mixed with a little trial and error (guessing). This business is full of what some call factoids -- things that sound as though they could or should be true, so we accept them as fact. Like: 74.63% of people will believe any statistic expressed to two decimal places.

Factoid: Call me anything, just call me often

Example: Send the identical mailing to the identical list one week later and you'll boost your overall responses by up to 50%.

There's good reasoning behind that: Not everyone who would respond to your mailing will respond the first time because of temporary distractions or preoccupations -- they've caught cold, had a fight with a child or spouse, celebrated a birthday, gotten a promotion, or had to call in an emergency plumber. A week later they're in a more receptive mood. Sending the same thing twice clearly helps you get noticed. But to say it will boost responses by up to 50%... where's the proof? It's a factoid, because almost anything you do that gets even one additional response falls under the broad qualification of "up to 50%."

In a general, though, mailing often, like advertising often, helps get you noticed.

Factoid: Colour me read

I'm told that black on yellow is the most readable environment for type... that bold, warm colours command attention... that neon colours are irresistible... etc. I'm sure research exists to support some of those claims, but I've never actually seen any, and don't know anyone who has. I did talk to one mailer, who sends out millions of pieces a year, who told me their testing showed that a 10% magenta screen over their order card always pulled better than any other colour, any other combination of colours, or no colour at all. But since they couldn't (or wouldn't) give me any actual numbers, their evidence is anecdotal -- a factoid.

Still, we can say that using colour will help get you noticed, opened and read, and that will boost responses. But what colour? How much will it boost responses? No one can say for sure.

Factoid: Is that a big letter in your mailbag, or are you just glad to see me?

Addressed mail usually comes in an envelope. Most of those envelopes are either #9 or #10. Putting your message in a slightly larger envelope helps get it opened -- it's a little like shaving cards in a trick deck to make key cards easier to find. Combine the bigger envelope with a little colour, and watch responses grow.

Another way to get bigger is to stuff your envelope with something other than your letter, brochure and reply card. The fatter the better, they say, just as long as you don't exceed your postage budget. As for what best to fatten your envelope with: the prevailing factoid calls for something cylindrical, like a pen. Any chance the advertising specialty suppliers are behind that one? I did use a pen as a premium once... the results were spectacular.

Big and bulky makes your envelope stick out from the others? Then, as Captain Picard of Starship Enterprise says: "Make it so."

Factoid: He ain't ugly, he's my brother. Or, ugly sells!

That is my favourite factoid, probably because I'm not a graphic designer. It's a license for layout mayhem, faulty proof reading and substandard printing. Some direct mailers even seed their letters and brochures with typos, misspellings and other erors to gives the work a human touch, instead of an error-free, machine look).

The Hacker Group, a Seattle d/m firm, once ran a split run test on a process colour brochure in which half the pieces were deliberately printed out of register. The fuzzy, out-of-register pieces actually pulled 25% better than perfect ones.

Hmmm! Was that really a test, or a quick-witted recovery from a printing disaster? And 25% seems too perfect a number to be true. But Hacker swears by the results, and he ought to know because he was the client. I like the factoid because nobody is perfect and I like having an out for the odd mistake.

Besides, I really do believe that, in direct mail: What you say is more important than how you say it.

Which comes back to the essence of effective direct mail: Give them something they want. Tell them something they want to hear. Make them a really good offer!

DR by the numbers

Direct response is all about numbers. And that's reflected in how often direct marketers write about:

• The four prime motivators (fear, greed, guilt and exclusivity)
• The five basics (list, offer, copy, graphics, timing)
• Seven surfaces you should never ignore (front and back of envelope;
  top and bottom of letter, front and back panels of your brochure,
  address side of your reply card)
• The 28 primary offers (too many to list here!)

And here are my own:

Seven strategies for getting more from your response marketing:

1. Always have a clear and expressible goal for your response marketing. You need some way to measure your results (total responses, net revenues, per cent response, etc.).
   
   
2. Never mail or roll out a program unless you have a reasonable expectation of at least breaking even. Don't spend $20,000 for $10,000 in results unless there's an excellent reason for doing so (i.e., you make a fortune on repeat business).
   
   
3. When mailing, test a random sample of your list before rolling out a major campaign. Test mailing as few as 1,000 test pieces can give you a reliable estimate of how the whole mailing will go.
   
   
4. Continually test against your control package or ad (your best performer). The package or ad that beats it should become your new control.
   
   
5. Don't be dull. You're fighting for attention in a noisy, overcrowded world. If you want responses, you have to be noticed.
   
   
6. Always analyze your returns to look for non-obvious results. That unhappy one per cent of total responses may represent a part of the list -- a niche -- which, if targetted separately, would respond at 10%.
   
   
7. Don't be half-hearted. Commit enough time and resources (money and people) to your response marketing to give it a fair test. You can always learn something, even from a mailing that flops, so your money is never completely wasted.