By using these principles your direct mail advertising will stand the best possible chance of success.
The right objective
Advertising which has only a general reason for being ("We gotta do some advertising - everyone does!") is likely to fail ... if only because, without any specific objective, you've no yardstick with which to measure its success, or failure.
Never advertise for the sake of advertising. In direct mail you must be sure of your objective. Specifically, what precise response do you want from the recipient of your mail?
Do you want him to buy something by returning an order card? (Mail Order)
Do you want him to rush into your store? (Traffic Builder)
Do you want him to return a card requesting a salesman's visit? (Qualified Sales Lead)
Do you want him to tell you important/ useful/confidential information? (Market Research)
Do you want him to make a donation? (Fund Raising)
When your objective is clear, every element in your direct mail package should be designed to lead the recipient towards the very action you want him to take.
The right list
In the success of any campaign, the MOST IMPORTANT INGREDIENT is the Mailing List. By way of example the most effective direct mail campaign for baby wear is quite unlikely to succeed if directed at unmarried women.
It is essential for you not to select people who you suspect to be in your market, but those you know to be in your market and who are therefore genuine prospects for your product or service.
To achieve this you must know the current PROFILE of your existing customers. For it is a fair assumption that your new customers will match this existing profile. Here are some of the demographics you should know about your existing customer profile:
Age, Sex, Marital Status, Language, Type of dwelling (house or flat), Where he or she lives (Suburb/Town/Province), Occupation, Income Group.
And you should add any psychographic information you can get hold of: for example, interests and activities. (A subscriber to "Photography and Travel" is obviously a prime target for camera equipment, and offers on travel.) With industrial "people" as your target i.e. companies, the same rules apply except you. Need to know things like type of industry, size of company, location, seasonal habits, volume of purchase etc. etc.
Once you know who your prospects are, you should try to obtain or rent mailing lists as close as possible to your customer profile. The closer you succeed in doing this, the more successful you'll be with your mailings.
The right offer
This is the next most important ingredient to your mailing package. What is the BIG BENEFIT the prospect will gain from using or owning your product? What promise will he gain by taking the action you request of him? (Better health? save money? more prosperity?…increased status?…greater sexual power? etc.)
The right offer is IMPORTANT because it will get you more results. It can often mean the difference between success and failure. It can make a successful promotion dramatically more successful.
For example, we've seen a free trial offer work 77% better on a R9,95 item previously offered only on a cash with order basis. A 50c gift improved response by 49% for a travel organisation selling R25 membership! Sweepstakes, which consistently boosted catalogue results 30% to 50%.
The more attractive you make your offer - to the right audience, the better your response will be. So your objective must be to come up with the most attractive offer you can afford.
Not all good offers are expensive. Consider this: in direct mail, you have both fixed and variable costs. Fixed costs are items like postage, list rental, print and production. variable costs depend on the number of replies you receive. (i.e. costs of fulfilment, or a
sales call etc.)
You can often improve your offer without increasing your fixed costs. And your variable, costs will depend on how many more replies you get because of the gift.
For example, if a R1 free gift increases your replies from 10 to 20, you must give away R20 in gifts. So the extra 10 replies cost you R20. Is it worth it? Usually the answer is an overwhelming YES! …but you must do you. tests and arithmetic very carefully.
The right copy
One of the biggest pitfalls you can make in direct mail is to underestimate the importance of copy. For (nearly) everyone believes he can write a direct mail letter: "After all", he says, "I write (business) letters every day of my life." And so he does. So does everyone else. But they're not sales letters in the context of a direct mail campaign.
Successful direct mail copywriters usually serve an apprenticeship of many years before they write successful sales letters. These are the letters, which gain the reader's attention from the very first glance. They involve him and arouse his interest. They develop that interest into a strong desire for ownership of the product. They melt away his (natural) inborn inertia. They get the desired action.
The ground rules for good copy are these:
always write from your reader's point of view, and in "you" terms ("We are pleased to announce …" is nowhere near as effective as "You will be pleased to know.."
keep your sentences short
use as many one syllable words as yon can ("we furnish installation diagrams…" is not as easily grasped as "You get full plans"
use active words ("this car is designed to give good acceleration" is not as good as "this car accelerates…fast! ")
write as long - or as short - a letter as will do the job. Short letters are not invariably better. In many cases they are worse because they do not do a complete job in the Attention…Interest…Desire…Action chain. If the reader is in your target market, and the letter copy is brisk, relevant and interesting 3 or 4 pages will often work better than single page letters. Tests have proved this over and over again. "The more you tell, the more you sell," says Ogilvy. He's right. Try it, and see the difference.
The right graphics
This covers the visual treatment you must give to each individual item in your mailing package. How you "dress it up"...your choice of graphics, of colour, of style. How will it look? How will it feel? What mood will it create?
Empathy and self-identification must be your watchwords. How does your prospect expect your direct mail correspondence to look? If you're a bank, then a sober, conservative image is probably right. But if you're a discount store, then a bright, breezy, colourful, snappy appearance will be more in keeping with the nature of your business. If you're selling cosmetics then a "high class", prestigious appearance will do you more good than a wishy-washy print job on cheap paper stock.
Your mailing package - every part of it must look right and feel right to the reader. This is the essence of McLuhan's axiom "the medium is the message". For in McLuhan's terms, your mailing package will communicate a message even before the addressee begins to read the contents.
The right graphics communicate the right feeling; they encourage readership and involvement.
The right test
No one can tell you exactly how successful your direct mail package is going to be.
The only sure way to success is to test. Only when you have carefully tested your mailing package can you predict, with reasonable certainty, the probable results when your total mailing list is sent out.
And remember only the direct mail medium permits you to test a small percentage of your market. Moreover you can test for a modest cost. You need not spend several thousand Rands on space advertising before you can judge whether your promotion is successful or not. When you use direct mail you can mail to 10% of a representative cross section of your mailing list to find out how well your campaign is likely to work.
Unless you have a large budget and a large market, do not test the effect of small differences. Test completely different packages. Remember big differences will yield big differences in response; small difference will yield small and sometimes insignificant differences in response.
The most sensible practice is to test continuously. If you have a package, which is successful - call this Package A. Now to develop another, Package B, which hopefully will outpull Package A. When you, find it does, Package B now becomes your control. And now you must develop a new package - or a significant improvement to try and beat Package B. If it does, then Package C becomes your control. And so on.
The right analysis
The unique benefit of direct mail advertising is that you can (quite easily) measure its effectiveness. In virtually no other advertising medium can you say that for an expenditure of X Rand you got back Y amount of business.
Be careful to analyse the right things. For example, nearly everyone asks, "What is a normal percentage response?" And the answer is: there is no such thing. We have clients who get 0,5% response . . . and others who get 50% or more. All are happy and continue to use direct mail BECAUSE IT'S NOT THE PERCENTAGE OF RESPONSE, WHICH MATTERS. What matters is only…"How much did you profit from the mailing?"
For example, say you're selling Jumbo aircraft at R35 million a piece …and you mail 1 000 airline executives around the world - the cost is obviously low. If you get only one reply (a 0.001% response!) and you sell one aircraft to that enquirer …would you say that your mailing was profitable? The answer can only be a thundering YES!
So do your arithmetic right through to the end. By all means count the percentage of replies. But follow through and record how many of those replies were converted into sales. And even more important - what net profit was generated.
(For a retail store using direct mail to build store traffic, the calculation should be: how many people came into the shop as a result of the promotion? … how much did they spend? … and what was the net profit on the promotion?
Even more important than making a sale is making a customer. One thing you must be aware of is the importance and value of a customer. What is a new customer worth to you? For example, let's say your cost-per-new-customer (achieved by direct mail) is R15 each. What is the annual worth of a customer? In gross profit? In net profit? And how long does the average new customer stay with you?
The right frequency
Most users of direct mail make a big mistake: they mail to their prospects only once. They reason that if the prospect doesn't reply, he is not interested. Presumably this means now and in the future.
These users couldn't be more wrong!
Because you can often squeeze extra profits out of a continuous programme of mailings.
Why is this? Well, out of every hundred prospects you mail, let's say 3 say "Yes" to your offer, and 3 definitely say "no" (in their minds, that is). That leaves 94 who are uncommitted. Now, out of that 94 there are plenty who almost said "yes" but for one reason or another, didn't do anything. Perhaps your direct mail was put to one side for further study, and then forgotten about.
Or perhaps your original package didn't contain the right "trigger" for that particular person.
A further mailing, with different treatment, different emphasis, may contain that "trigger" and now motivate him to action.
Again, people's circumstances change. Last month when you wrote inviting your prospect to test drive a new car, he did nothing. But since then he has been promoted in his company, or received a rise in salary, and is more conscious of the dilapidated appearance of his present car. Result? When your invitation arrives this month he may well respond, and become a customer.
And finally, as in No. 7, KNOW HOW MUCH A NEW CUSTOMER IS WORTH to you. If every new customer will give you a substantial net profit for the year ahead, let's say R200 - and your direct mail package costs 20c each, it makes sense to send several mailings to your prospect to gain his custom.
The right priority
It is a truism in direct mail, as it is in commerce, that optimisation of sales must start with existing customers.
After all, your existing customers need your product/service. They already have a working relationship with you. They trust you. It makes the best of good sense to concentrate your promotional efforts to your existing customers as reflected by your current accounts. You can only use the direct mail medium to do this.
For example, a Bank should campaign among existing current account holders to promote the full range of bank services.
A Departmental Store should mail its current charge account customers to promote special sales, other departments, and so on.
Past customers come next in the list of priorities. Direct mail campaigns should be designed to re-activate them as current customers.
And finally you must continue to seek new customers. As recommended under No. 2 "THE RIGHT LIST", when you can identify the profile of your existing customers, you must use the right lists of potential customers who share the same basic characteristics. The nearer you approach this profile the more successful your mailings will be.
The right mailing package
Most successful mailings have at least these 4 elements:
Outer envelope:
It is often beneficial to print something on the envelope that will increase the chances of getting your reader sufficiently involved for him to open and read the contents.
Letter:
This contains the offer, the selling copy. It tells the recipient why you have written to him; what you are offering him; how he will benefit; and what action he should take to get the benefits of the product or service advertised.
Illustrated enclosure:
This is the visual reinforcement of your message. It shows the product in detail and expands on the benefits of use and ownership. It illustrates the service and its value to the reader.
reply element:
This makes it easy for your recipient to take the action you urge. Often a Business Reply Card is used. But where privacy is important, or where something else - like money - must be enclosed, then use a Business Reply Envelope.
By Winnifred Knight with great thanks to Jock Falkson from Effective Letters
