This is the second of a two-part series.
Getting the basics right goes a long way toward achieving direct mail success. In my last post, we discussed 11 strategies that you’ll want to include when planning your next campaign.
You can see these here.
To complete 21 Steps to Direct Mail Success, here are ten more often overlooked strategies that you’ll want to include in your next (more…)
This is the first of a two-part series.
The key to success is to avoid making mistakes. And with direct mail, getting the basics right accounts for 95% of all successes.
21 Steps to Direct Mail Success
You can find many articles about effective direct mail testing, copy and design in my other posts, but here I focus on key–but often overlooked–elements of a successful direct mail campaign.
Below are 11 essential elements of a successful direct response campaign. In my next post, I’ll follow up with an additional ten steps that you’ll want to (more…)
Direct mail is a sales medium. We use it to sell ideas, products and services. And like any other form of sales, its success is based on trust.
Regardless of how much the prospect may value your offer, if he or she doesn’t trust the person attempting to make the sale, it’s not going to happen.
In direct mail, our salesperson is the letter signer. And to establish trust we use testimonials, money-back guarantees and clear, straightforward language.
By definition, an asterisk “indicates omission…”
An asterisk signifies that the claim being made isn’t complete. There are qualifications and/or limitations to what you’re being told. In blunt terms, an asterisk says that (more…)
With direct mail, it’s often said, “The letter sells while the brochure explains.” With this in mind, it’s important not to let your explanation get in the way of making the sale.
I do a lot of “Beat the Control” work, and whenever I’m up against a package that includes a brochure, my first instinct is to test eliminating the brochure. More times than not, dropping the brochure will increase the mailing’s response.
Why? Because when people are reading your brochure, they aren’t responding. Too often, the brochure becomes a distraction and diverts the reader’s attention from the letter’s call to action.
Yet, there are times when it makes sense to test a brochure.
With some products and services, you can better communicate their benefits with a picture, illustration or (more…)
Whether you call it an order form, a response form or a response device, it’s one of the most crucial components of any direct response mailing.
The response form is the tool the prospect uses to complete the sale. Yet when creating a new direct mail package, we don’t always give the order form the time, attention and respect it deserves.
Too often, we write copy that excites readers and motivates them to accept our offer only to lose the sale (or contribution) with simple, easy-to-correct design flaws in the order form.
Here are 18 tested and proven ideas you can use to make your response form more profitable. (more…)
When receiving direct mail, the outer envelope is the first thing we see. Yet too often, its design is an afterthought.
But without a convincing envelope, even the strongest offer and best-written copy will take a quick, one-way trip to the trash.
When creating a new direct mail package, I try to think like a door-to-door salesperson. The outer envelope is my knock on the door and how effectively I use it, will determine the mailing’s success.
ELEMENTS OF THE ENVELOPE
Eye-study research reveals that recipients will spend no more than 7 seconds deciding whether to open the outer envelope. Fortunately, we have five tools we can use to convince the recipient to look inside. These are (more…)
If you watch sports, you’ve seen a “pre-event routine” in action.
In baseball, major-league batters will go through their pre-event routines before every pitch. Watch them and you’ll see some batters come to the plate, take two swings and then tap the edge of the plate with their bat before each pitch. The routines vary with each batter, but practically every major leaguer has an established routine.
You’ll see the same thing in basketball. The next time you see a player taking a foul shot, watch what they do. The player may bounce the ball twice, hold the ball and then bounce it again before taking the shot. Whatever their routine, they will go through the same sequence of events each time they take a foul shot.
Athletes use pre-event routines to prepare for success. It gives them focus and purpose, and helps them achieve a higher level of performance. Now we need to develop our own pre-event routine to make our direct mail more profitable. (more…)
When times get tough, everyone wants to cut direct mail costs. After all, if we can bring in the same amount of money and spend less, our profits increase.
And there are ways to cut costs without necessarily hurting the effectiveness of your mailing.
Cut Costs or Make Money?
You can, for example, trim your package format by ¼ inch or so to make it run better on your printer’s press, use a cheaper paper, test smaller formats, omit package inserts or eliminate the premium.
But don’t act too quickly.
Before getting caught up in the rush to cut expenses, we need to remember the objective (more…)
I still remember my first direct mail letter. I reworked it to perfection. Every word was just as I wanted it to be. The benefits to the reader were clear, the offer was strong and the call to action was unmistakable.
Then we mailed the letter, and I waited. And I waited some more. But nothing happened. Not even a single response. No one even bothered to complain about the letter.
Finding the right person to mail
Finally, after waiting a few more days, I went to see the agency’s owner and confessed my failure. I explained the letter’s objectives, my approach, the offer…how I had checked and rechecked every word but failed to get even one response.
Without even looking up, my boss said, “Check the lists.”
And I was ready for this. I’d already prepared a report on the mailing lists we were testing and started to go through the long list. But he said, “No, that’s not what I mean. (more…)
When I started my direct marketing career, I wanted to be a copywriter. Copywriters were the agency “hotshots”; it seemed like they were the star attraction.
Yet my mentor told me that the people of most value to the agency were direct mail “generalists.” Taking his advice, I spent the next six years learning how to initiate, develop and manage successful direct mail campaigns.
I studied list selection, graphic layouts, the letter’s structure, print production and lettershop capabilities. And I gave special attention to what and how to test.
Yet today, most of my income comes from direct mail copywriting.
Over the years, I’ve tested (more…)
