Some of the best training I’ve had for becoming a direct mail copywriter came when I sold magazines door to door as a teenager.

I quickly learned that not every homeowner welcomed me. Some would not even come to the door, some would close the door in my face and others would listen but not buy.

Soon, I learned to how to better my odds. Each time I approached a house, I gathered all the available information on the homeowner and developed a plan before knocking on the door.

My marketing “data” came from what I could see in the homeowner’s front yard. Were there toys in the yard, indicating children lived there? Was a newspaper delivered to the home? Were there indications that someone in the house played sports? Was there a fancy car in the driveway or a well-cared-for garden?

By gathering and analyzing this information, I could define my offer—in this case, which magazines I would present to the homeowner. I had news magazines, magazines for sports fans, children, expectant mothers, car fanatics, and gardeners—literally pages and pages of magazines to choose from—and by using my data to select which ones to show to the homeowner, I found that I could greatly increase my sales.

In effect, I was targeting my market.

When homeowners did come to the door, their eyes would give me a quick scan before they decided whether to give me even a minute of their time.

But as the door inched open a little wider, I would quickly give them just enough information for them to listen to what I said next.

Typically, I would start by briefly describing “magazines their neighbors had just ordered.” Then, I would focus the discussion on the magazines I thought—based on my collected data—would be of most interest to the homeowner.

My sales skyrocketed.

Then I learned not to talk about the magazines, but instead, to describe what the homeowner could get from the magazines—inside information on their favorite sports team, timely tips on how to increase their garden’s harvest, or how the homeowner’s discussions with friends and coworkers could improve with easy-to-read information about the latest news and developments.

There were also words I learned to avoid, such as “reading” and “learning,” because the homeowner could consider these as work. I found it was much better to talk about “seeing,” “discovering” and “having ideas come to your home.”

And I would never walk away without asking for the order.

After explaining that there was no risk to trying a new magazine because they could cancel the order at any time, I would ask, “For how many months do you want to try the magazines?” rather than “Do you want to place an order?”

Once I made the sale, I didn’t linger. I said “Thank you,” and went to the next house.

More times than I care to remember, I got the door shut in my face. But when this happened, I tried to learn from my mistakes, improved my approach and moved on to the next home.

Today, as direct marketers, we certainly have more sophisticated approaches to gather information, but in reality, our sales approach—whether we’re working online or with direct mail—is much the same as it was when I was a teenager selling magazines.

Regardless of the medium, we all:

• Share the same objective—making the sale.

• Must show prospects how they will benefit when accepting our offer. We don’t sell subscriptions; we offer information that makes the prospect’s life more interesting, enjoyable and profitable. We don’t sell insurance; we offer security, protection and peace of mind. We won’t even promote a cure for cancer, but we will give the prospect hope that their family can be free of its suffering.

• Use easy-to-understand language to capture the reader’s attention, create interest, show how the offer benefits the prospect, and instruct the prospect to take a desired action.

• Evaluate success by measuring our return on investment.

• And when things don’t go our way, we listen to our customers and adjust our offer so that it better meets their needs.

Selling via direct mail or online today doesn’t need to be any more complicated than when I sold magazines as a teenager. After all, the objective remains the same—cost-effectively persuading the prospect to take a desired action.

Walking door to door selling magazines proved to be great training for my direct-marketing career. I just didn’t know it at the time.

In his novel, Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy wrote, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

What Tolstoy was saying is that to be happy, a marriage must succeed on a number of levels including: financial, sexual, how to raise children, in-laws and religion. Every successful couple finds agreement in each of these areas. But an unsuccessful marriage can break apart when there’s disagreement in any one of these areas.

The reasons for happiness are same. The cause of unhappiness is unique.

Can’t we say the same about direct mail?

Every successful direct mail package is alike while an unsuccessful package can fail in its own way.

All successful mailings are the result of thoughtful list selection, a powerful offer, persuasive copy, an effective format and good timing.

Yet a mailing can fail when it lacks any one of these characteristics. We can have the most powerful offer and persuasive copy, for example, but when delivered to the wrong audience, it fails.

Successful direct mail isn’t rocket science.

We don’t need a new book with a clever title, a new buzzword or a 3-hour seminar to tell us what makes direct mail work. It’s the same today as it was 25  years ago. And it’s what will make direct mail successful 25 years from now.

Good list selection. An unbeatable offer. Persuasive copy. And an efficient format. All delivered to the right person at the right time.

Miss any one of these ingredients for success and your mailing fails. But each of them right and your mailing, like Tolstoy’s thoughts on a happy family, will enjoy far more success.

One thing we can do to improve the profitability of our direct mail is to learn the lessons of a famous jam study.

That’s right. Jam. The stuff we spread over our toast.

In a gourmet market, Professor Sheena Iyengar of Columbia University and her research assistants set up a booth offering samples of Wilkin & Sons jams.

Every few hours, the researchers switched from offering customers a selection of 24 jams to offering a group of only six jams.

Each participating customer – regardless of the number of selections offered – received a $1 savings coupon and tasted an average of two jams.

Here’s the interesting part.

Of those shoppers seeing the larger display, 60 percent stopped to sample the jams. Yet when researchers switched to the smaller display, only 40 percent of shoppers stopped for a taste.

But of those sampling from the smaller display, 30 percent decided to buy jam while only 3 percent of those confronted with larger display purchased a jar.

The display with more choices drew the largest crowd but customers presented with fewer choices bought more.

Researchers then repeated the study using a wide variety of products – everything from chocolate to speed dating. And each time, regardless of the product tested, offering fewer choices to the prospective customer resulted in more sales.

Professor Iyengar concluded, “In reality, people might find more and more choices to actually be debilitating.” And while it may be too simple to conclude that offering lots of choices is bad, we shouldn’t assume that providing more choice is always better.

What does this have to do with our direct mail?

Look through your mailing samples – particularly at the response device. We’ve all seen response devices from nonprofits that suggest five, six and even seven asking amounts. And the offers we get to bundle cable, phone and Internet service can be paralyzing.

Offering too many choices can immobilize the reader’s decision-making process and cost us a sale.

Taking the lessons from Professor Iyengar’s study, let’s make it simple for our reader to respond. For nonprofits, three suggested contribution amounts plus an “Other” option is more than enough. But whether asking for a contribution or a lead or a sale, keeping it simple makes it easier for the prospect to respond and feel good about it.

Littering surveys with too many questions is no different. Surveys are a great way to involve the reader with our mailing but we need to keep it simple.

You’ve probably have received a telephone call asking for your participation in a survey. You’re interested in the subject so you say “yes” and 20 minutes later, you can’t wait for the call to end.

Let’s not make the same mistake with our mail.

Remember, when we include a survey in a mailing, its purpose isn’t to gather information, it’s to encourage a response!

Limit yourself to five or seven questions and allow the reader to move quickly to the order form.

And finally, don’t accept the argument that the reader needs more choices to understand the offer’s full value. Instead, accept this as a challenge to do better list selection. Better segmentation of your mailing list will reduce the need to overwhelm the reader with too many choices.

We can all learn from the jam research. Keep it simple, make it easy for the reader to respond and the result will be better than your morning toast.

As professional direct mail copywriters, we often take a lot of grief about our work. We’re told our English isn’t proper – maybe even deplorable. We’re too emotional, we keep repeating ourselves and the copy is way too long.

It’s easy to forget what good direct mail copywriting is all about so let me sum it up. Good direct mail copy is copy that works. It achieves its objective.

At its best, good direct mail copywriting is one letter written by one person to one other person. Whether you’re mailing a few hundred letters or millions, direct mail is a personal communication.

Some of the best training I’ve had for becoming a direct mail copywriter came when I sold magazines door-to-door as a teenager.

Each time I approached a house, I developed a plan before knocking on the door. Then, if I could entice the homeowner into opening the door, I quickly gave them just enough information that they wanted to listen to what I said next.

Not every homeowner was a prospect. You took your clues from what you would observe about the homeowner. Was there evidence of children at home . . . indications that someone in the house played sports . . . a newspaper or fancy car in the driveway. You took advantage of all the information you had on the prospect and with this “data,” developed your offer – or which magazines you would talk about.

Then, after showing the homeowner how they would benefit from having these magazines – I never mentioned “reading” the magazines because that might be considered work – it was time to ask for the order.

Never, never, ever did I walk away without asking for the order. And once I got it, I didn’t linger. I said “thank you” and went to the next house.

What we do as direct response copywriters isn’t that much different.

We’re not artists, authors and certainly not general advertisers. Pure and simple, we’re salespeople and we sell benefits.

We don’t sell insurance. But we do sell security, protection and peace of mind. And a good direct response writer doesn’t sell subscriptions. Instead, we offer information that makes the prospect’s life more interesting, enjoyable and profitable. We won’t even sell you a cure for cancer. But we will give you the hope that you and your family can be free of its suffering.

Awards, pretty packages and beautiful designs don’t measure our success. Net profit does.

We don’t always write in complete sentences but we do communicate in language that the reader understands. And for some of our fundraising packages, our graphics can be so “elementary” that our artist wants to hide our direct response work when his advertising clients visit the studio.

Yet, better than anyone else, we motivate people to take a desired action.

We can prove it too because we measure our results. When we segment our mailing lists differently, revise the offer, rewrite the letter, change the graphics or test a new format, we know exactly how it affects the mailing’s profitability.

A pretty package with moving parts or a creative award won’t save us. Because we document, analyze and record the results of every mailing, our successes and failures are on display for everyone to see.

And when our ideas don’t work, we learn from them. And when they do, we capitalize on them. This is what makes us professional direct response marketers.

Is there a moral or lesson here?

You can decide. But I do hope there’s a reaffirmation of why we can be proud of what we do.

Let me know what you think. I welcome your thoughts.

Hugh

P.S.  If you have a question or comment about this post or direct mail in general, please e-mail me. I’m happy to help anyway I can. Thanks.

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http://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_sixthsense_technology.html

The topic is “Six Sense Technology.” I don’t know how long the URL will be active so check it out today and let me know what you think.