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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 campaign.

12. Test, test and test are the three most important rules of direct mail; yet mailers regularly claim they can’t afford to test. In truth, you can’t afford not to test. Even the best mailing packages fatigue. There are a finite number of prospects who will respond to any mailing, and each time you mail your control, fewer and fewer people remain in this pool of names. To remain competitive, you must continue to test new lists, offers, formats and copy. Even the few direct mail letters that remain the control year after year are “tweaked” with subtle changes to maintain response. A successful direct marketer is always pushing for better results, and this can be achieved only with a disciplined testing program.
13. Test the big things. When you’re looking for breakthrough results, test the lists, offer, format and copy. Testing minor copy revisions on page 3 or changing the paper stock of the reply form or the color of the return envelope will make a difference only to large-volume mailers. To everyone else, it’s a waste of money.
14. Maintain control of the package design. Don’t surrender control of the package’s design to the graphic designer. Direct response isn’t about looking good or winning awards. It’s about getting results. Understand how people read direct mail and design your layouts accordingly. It may not look “award winning” and the designer may not agree with your choice of type, but readability is more important than pretty. (See How to Use Graphic Devices to Boost Direct Mail Response Rates.)
15. Focus on the letter. Brochures explain while letters sell. There are exceptions, but more often than not, including a brochure will depress results. And, if you don’t make the outer envelope interesting, no one will see your great letter copy. Focus on the letter, the response form and the outer envelope.
16. Ask for the sale. In direct response, your purpose is to convince the recipients to take a specific action. Whether it’s to buy a product, make a contribution or generate a lead, you need to tell the recipients exactly what you want them to do. Then remind them. And tell them once again. To make the sale, you have to ask for the order.
17. Test before you adapt. We can learn from the mistakes of others and we can learn from their success, but every organization is unique, so don’t assume that what works for your competitor will work for you. Test it first.
18. Put the needs of your donors or customers first. You’re not the only one writing to your customers, and more often than not, even your multiple buyers/donors won’t remember your name. In every communication, remind even your most frequent donors/buyers what your organization is, why it’s important to them and how they benefit.
19. Give the copywriter all the information he or she needs. Several clients have told me that they don’t want to prejudice my thinking by sharing package samples or past results. But are you paying the copywriter to be creative or to beat your control? We live in an “age of skepticism,” and the more information the copywriter has, the better the job he or she will do. Besides, an experienced copywriter can often discover new concepts buried in old package samples and research material.
20. Respect your test results. In direct response, we don’t need to decide what lists, offer or copy works best. With proper testing, the customer will tell us what works. Before adopting any major change to your mailing package, double-check the list work for the test, review package samples and confirm your postal receipts. But once everything checks out, don’t second-guess the test results.
21. Deal with the back end before you mail. When accepting orders via phone, everything comes down to one telephone call. And if the person answering the phone isn’t trained, professional and polite, you’ll not only lose the order, you’ll lose the customer. And if you’re directing respondents to a landing page, make certain that its contents and look match that of the mailing piece. Confirm your inventory and work through the entire ordering process to ensure that it gives the customer a good experience. And be certain that procedures are in place to credit telephone and online respondents to the mailing’s results.

Including these essential steps in your direct mail campaign doesn’t guarantee success, but these steps will greatly increase your probability of achieving a successful mailing.

You can download the complete list of “21 Steps to Direct Mail Success” as one document in my Direct Mail Resource Center.

Download as a pdf

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 incorporate in every direct mail campaign.

1. State the campaign’s objective clearly. Get everyone focused on the same goal before launching the campaign. Generating a lead is quite different from closing a sale with a prospect or cross-selling to a customer. Each effort has its own expectations and everyone needs to understand how to measure success.
2. Start with a budget. Every direct response campaign is measured by its results. Know how much you can spend to meet these expectations, and before you mail, establish how much money you’ll have to follow up on your initial tests. It doesn’t do you any good to achieve breakthrough results unless you have the resources–time, money and personnel–to exploit your success.
3. Establish a mailing schedule. Knowing that even the best plans will change, I schedule mailings twelve months out. Holidays, annual events, anniversaries, etc., often inspire donor and customer mailings, and these dates can become the core of your schedule with other “To Be Announced” mailings planned around them. For acquisition mailings, schedule follow-up mailings 45-60 days after the test is in the mail–or the number of days it will take to receive, process and analyze the returns plus the time required to produce the follow-up mailing. Without a schedule, project dates quickly begin to slide and things just don’t get done. A schedule is one of your strongest planning tools.
4. Do the math first. There is no reason to spend money on a direct mail campaign if the results needed to turn a profit are unrealistic. We all enjoy a challenge, but, for example, a 20 percent break-even response on an acquisition mailing isn’t realistic. Do the math first and avoid any mailing that has little chance of success. (See How to Use a Pre-Event Routine for More Profitable Direct Mail Testing.)
5. Focus on the mailing lists. The creative portion of the mailing may be the most fun, but it’s not the most important. Turn your attention to selection of the mailing lists. Nothing will play a greater role in your success or failure than list selection. No matter how good the copy or offer, you’re not going to sell lawn mowers to Eskimos. Work with a list professional who has experience in your market and will take the time to learn about your company, its competitors, the mailing’s offer and your past mailing results.
6. Show the benefits. No one really cares what your gadget does or how worthy your organization is. What they care about is how they will benefit from responding. The benefit can be tangible or intangible, but fulfilling the prospect’s needs is far more important than anything you’re selling. Show how your offer meets the prospect’s needs and you’ll make the sale.
7. Don’t reject a promising test based on price alone. Just because a test cost 50 percent more than the control doesn’t necessarily mean you need to increase response by 50 percent or more. Rather than ask how much the test costs, ask, “What response does this test need to beat my control?” (See link provided above in #3.)
8. Test new offers. The offer is what you promise the recipient and what you ask in return. And your offer is second only to the mailing list in terms of its effect on the campaign’s success. If you’re looking for breakthrough results, test the offer. (For ideas on offer tests, see 17 Ways to Improve Your Direct Mail Offer.
9. Test enhancing your mailing package. You’re more likely to increase net profit by adding to the package than you are by eliminating a component. Test new package components that promote the premium, display testimonials, emphasize the guarantee, and add credibility to the organization or letter signer. “Bells and whistles” like address labels and peel-off stickers for the prospect to move to the response form still work and often give you a big bang for the buck. (The one component you probably don’t want to add is a brochure. If you use a brochure now, see what happens when you drop it. It’s likely a drag on results.)
10. Hire a professional direct response copywriter. You may have someone within the organization who, because of his or her intimate involvement with the group and the sincerity of his or her beliefs, can produce a letter that outperforms copy written by a professional direct mail copywriter. But these people are few and far between. Hire a professional direct response writer. It will be money well spent. And recognize that copywriting for general advertising and direct response copywriting are two different skill sets.
11. Now is the time to test. Don’t wait until your control stops working before testing new lists, offers, formats and copy. If you do, cash flow will come to a halt and you’ll feel like you’re standing in a hole trying to dig yourself out. It’s not a career-enhancing move.

In my next post, I’ll publish ten more easy steps to take to achieve direct mail success. (Subscribe to my blog–see sign-up in the navigation column to the left–and you’ll receive this next post automatically.) In the meantime, best wishes for your continued success.

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 you’re not being told the whole truth.

Recently, I received a mailing with the headline “Save $1,000.*”

Seeing the asterisk, I read this headline as “Save $1,000? Maybe.”

The headline makes a big claim but the asterisk warns me that I’m not getting the full story. Continuing with the letter, I encountered three more asterisks before I completed the first paragraph.

Where’s my trust level now?

I’ve never been impressed by fast-talking salespeople who oversell and promise something they can’t deliver. If there are restrictions or qualifications to become eligible for an offer, just say so in clear, straightforward language.

Full disclosure is not only a legal responsibility and a matter of conscience, it’s good salesmanship.

I expect that on more than one occasion you’ve walked away from a sale because you sensed the salesperson was more interested in making a sale than giving you all the information you needed to make a good buying decision.

Isn’t this the same message an asterisk delivers to our readers?

There will be times when using an asterisk to direct the reader to the disclosure is your best choice. But too often we use an asterisk because it’s easy. All we need to do is insert an asterisk and drop the legal department’s comments into an endnote and we’re done.

But typically, there’s a more effective way.

• When making a statement that requires a comment, write, “You’ll find the full details and limitations below.” You’ll still have the endnote, but you’ll avoid the asterisk.
• In a four-page letter, try to work the mandatory copy into page two or three where it won’t disrupt the flow of the letter.
• Rather than try to hide the legalese, see if you can find a way to feature the disclosure copy. Be upfront and let the reader know, “Here are facts that you need to know.” People want to do business with people they trust—someone who doesn’t hide information concerning the sale.

Recently, I attached a Post-It note to the letter’s first page and wrote:

As you might expect, with an offer this good—and discounts this huge—there are certain conditions that apply. You’ll find complete details printed on the blue insert I’ve enclosed.

You may not like this particular idea and I can’t say how well it worked because we didn’t test it separately. But my point is that we can meet regulatory and legal requirements without littering our copy with asterisks.

Here are a few examples:

• Often we see an asterisk pointing to a disclosure that reads, “For new customers only.” Instead, try adding copy to the letter that says, “The savings and benefits offered are reserved exclusively for our new customers.” Now, the mandatory copy adds exclusivity to the offer.
• If the offer is only good for a limited time, don’t hide it in the disclosure. Turn the “limited time” into a deadline to respond and add urgency to the offer.
• Using diet products as an example, you often see “With diet and regular exercise” added to the disclosure. But rather than put this into the disclosure, include letter copy that says, “With regular exercise and proper diet, you can see amazing results with XYZ product.” You’re communicating the same message but the qualifying statement is now part of the benefit.
• When promoting Certificates of Deposit rates, financial institutions often add “New Money Only” to the disclosure. Instead, try putting this into your copy: “Because we’re looking to raise money to make new home loans, this special rate is limited to new money—money that’s not already deposited with the bank.” This not only gets rid of an asterisk, it also opens the offer to existing customers.

There will be times when directing the reader to the disclosure with an asterisk is still the best approach. Sometimes there’s just no better way to communicate mandatory information. But don’t make it the first thing you try because more often than not, you can make better use of the disclosure information in the letter copy.

Including required information in your letter copy can increase the believability of your offer and build trust. But using an asterisk to point to a disclosure in eight-point type can only hurt the mailing’s creditability.

________________________________________

*To kill the perfect offer, use an asterisk in the headline and letter copy.

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 graph than you can with just words.

For example, if you want to demonstrate the inner workings of a gadget, exhibit the beauty of a collector’s item or show the photo quality of a travel magazine, a brochure can help you sell your offer.

You use a brochure to document the claims made in your letter.

With a brochure, you can show pictures of customers using your product, include more testimonials, provide a chart comparing your service with that of your competitors, include graphs to validate improved product performance, and deliver product information your prospects can keep or pass along as a reminder of your offer.

Selecting the Right Format

You define your brochure’s format by the job you need it to do. For many offers, a simple flyer is enough, while a tri-fold brochure may work better for others. High-ticket offers may even require a multiple-page booklet.

Whatever the format, the brochure is always part of the total direct mail package and its design must share the image of the mailing’s other components. For example, a glossy, four-color, multiple-page booklet doesn’t fit with most fundraising offers. A tri-fold brochure may be out of place with an offer for gold coins, but it can be the perfect fit for a security alarm company.

When designing your brochure, you also want to consider the following:

• Unlike the letter, design the brochure to be scanned, not read.
• Include a strong headline that tells the “what and why” of your offer. The headline identifies the reader’s problem and suggests that there is a fix.
• Make your first paragraph count. Engage the reader and briefly describe how they will benefit from your product or service.
• Include a strong guarantee. Nothing will overcome the reader’s hesitation more quickly than a strong “No-Risk, Money-Back Guarantee.”
• Issue a clear call to action and tell the reader how to respond—by mail, telephone or via your website. Include a response device at the bottom outside corner of the page, where it’s easy to cut out. Show perforation lines around the response device to suggest what the reader needs to do. Also, include your toll-free number and the URL for the offer’s landing page. The brochure is a stand-alone device and needs to provide all the information necessary for the reader to respond.
• A brochure is a great place for Questions & Answers—written as if the reader is asking and you are answering.
• Increase your credibility with testimonials.
• Use graphs and product reviews to compare your product with those of your competitors. People will scan, not read, your brochure and graphs and charts can often tell your story better—and quicker—than text.

Focus the Reader’s Attention

The brochure is a “show me” component; you want to use its graphics to focus the reader’s attention so they quickly get the information that will motivate them to respond.

Use photos freely because before any word of text is even noted, the reader’s eyes will be pulled to photographs and illustrations.

• Select a readable typeface (serif); use short paragraphs and sub-headlines.
• Include pictures of people using your product or service. Readers will look at pictures with people before they see pictures of products.
• On two-page spreads—the inside of a folded brochure, for example—put your strongest picture as far to the left as possible. In most cases, eye flow begins at the upper right of a two-page spread and continues in a sideways “U” like this . Placing a strong picture to the left pulls the reader’s eyes back across the page and “exposes” more of your message.
• People read captions. Place captions as close to your pictures as possible—below or to the right of the illustration.
• Your reader’s eyes will typically follow the eyes of the people in your photos. You can take advantage of this by, for example, having the models in your photo look to the left when you want to call attention to copy that’s to the left of the picture.
• Place color pictures to the left and black-and-white pictures to the right. Warmer colors draw the reader’s eye to the left and they will see more of your message.
• Readers will see action illustrations before still pictures. Portraits gain attention before full pictures of people and, most often, a larger group of people will gain attention before a smaller group does.

Does It Help or Hurt?

Your brochure can be a great asset, but you do need to test its effect on your mailing. It’s a mistake to assume that the brochure’s four-color beauty, high-quality photos and fancy charts will increase response.

Test and retest your mailing’s brochure. And remember, the brochure’s purpose isn’t to educate, entertain or impress. In a direct response mailing, the brochure has only one purpose: to increase the mailing’s net income.

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 the:

1. Address piece (label, window, personalization)
2. Teaser
3. Return address
4. Postage type
5. Color and stock of paper, and the graphics

According to Professor Siegfried Vogels’ Eye Flow Studies Provide Clues for Improving Your Direct Mail, here’s how people look at an outer envelope.

First, their eye goes to the mailing address (1) and then to the left of the address (2). From there, the eye moves to the return address (3) and then to the postage (4). The package’s color and paper stock are typically the last things noticed.

Here’s how you can make each of these four elements work for you.

1. The mailing address is the first place people look. They like to see their name, so get it right!
2. When you use a teaser, Vogel’s study says it belongs to the left of the mailing address. But if you don’t have a good teaser, don’t force one. Not having a teaser can actually tease. If you have a FREE offer, go ahead and shout it, but don’t feel that a teaser is required.

Use your choice of typestyles to make the teaser more effective. Sometimes big, bold type is best. Other times, a “handwritten” font works better. But recognize that you have choices, and make your choice based upon the look and feel of the entire mailing package.

3. Vogel’s study shows that a return address on the outer envelope is an important factor when people are deciding whether to open your mailing. You can use a “handwritten” or Courier type for a personal look. Or you can print the return address in a formal type along with the company logo. It all depends on the look and feel of your entire package. For acquisition mailings—especially when you’re repeatedly re-mailing the same people—you may want to test using the return address without the company’s name. But when mailing to repeat customers, showing the company name will typically add credibility to the mailing. (If it doesn’t, you have a bigger problem.)
4. Your choice of postage is not a decision left to chance. When using First-Class postage, multiple stamps typically beat a commemorative stamp. A commemorative stamp will beat a regular stamp. And a stamp will beat postage-meter indicia, which will regularly beat preprinted indicia.

Even if you have to overpay postage by a penny or two—when the denomination of available stamps doesn’t exactly meet the actual postage cost—live stamps typically more than pay for themselves.

However, like your teaser and return address, make sure your choice of postage type fits the image of the entire package. For example, live stamps are the most personal—especially multiple stamps#&8212while preprinted indicia are the most impersonal. Yet, if you have official-looking outer envelopes, preprinted indicia fit the image far better than do stamps. You have choices, so use them to your advantage.

A final note on postage: First-Class postage adds perceived value to the correspondence. When using live stamps, pick stamps with colors that contrast with the envelope. And anytime you are mailing First Class, make sure the recipient knows you’re investing extra money to deliver your message. Don’t keep it a secret. In big, bold letters imprint:

FIRST-CLASS POSTAGE

Don’t let there be any doubt. You consider your recipients special and you’re investing extra money to deliver your message to them.

5. Stock and Color may be two of the most over-tested components of a direct mail package but they do help convey the overall image of your package. For example, for “official” packages, I like to use a brown kraft stock. When I’m using a teaser to promote a free offer, I like yellow or white stock because of its contrast with the type. Overall, I try to stay away from cool colors when selecting paper stock.
6. Don’t forget about the back of the envelope. Of the seven seconds the prospect might spend examining your envelope, more than half of that time will be looking at the backside as they open the envelope.
7. Regularly test new outer envelope deigns. New envelope designs are the easiest and most cost-effective way to keep a control fresh.
8. And perhaps most important, the outer envelope is only one part of the total package—not an independent component. You wouldn’t use an official-looking envelope with a handwritten letter inside. Likewise, you wouldn’t use a live stamp with most official letters. All the envelope’s components must work together, and the envelope must work with the entire package.

Follow these guidelines and you’ll have a better chance of getting the envelope opened and your message read. The envelope is your first contact with the prospect and, when designed properly, it will make a positive first impression and lead you to greater success.

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.

How direct marketers can use a pre-event routine

As direct marketers, we know the importance of testing. But what do we test? Dick Benson, in his book Secrets of Successful Direct Mail said, “Any idea you honestly believe can economically increase response is worth testing.”

But how do we know whether a test idea has a reasonable chance of economically increasing results?

First, let’s acknowledge that to increase our mailing’s profitability, we need to do more than increase the response rate or generate a higher average order. For our test to succeed, we must generate more net income than the control. And while we can’t always predict which test will succeed, we can insure that we don’t waste money by testing things that have little hope of increasing profitability.

Here’s a real-life example that proves the point.

Several years ago, I worked with a client whose previous agency produced a test package that everyone predicted would increase response. And it did.

The test package was creative, the graphics were incredible and the format was certain to stand out in a crowded mailbox. In fact, it was so impressive that the agency predicted that people who received the package would display the mailing on their office bookshelf. And perhaps they did.

But unfortunately, the client lost a bundle of money—and the agency lost the account—because no one bothered to price the test package’s rollout costs and determine out how much additional response would be needed to justify its higher cost.

If they had, they would have realized that this elaborate package needed—this is a true story—a 476% increase in response to break even with the control.

Now, I’m not saying that you can’t outperform the control by nearly five to one. But is it a reasonable expectation? Even if the test package doubles or triples the response rate, it’s a big loser. And this is where a pre-event routine helps.

Doing the math first

Before we invest our own money—or the client’s money—we need to do a little math and determine what results a test package must generate to justify its cost. And with this information, we can make an informed decision on whether the test can give us a reasonable expectation of economically increasing response.

My routine is simple and works like this: If the test cost $100/M more than the control and you currently average $25 per order, then the test will need to generate four additional responses per thousand pieces mailed. Therefore, if your control is pulling a 1% response rate, your test needs a 1.4% response to break even.

Here’s a simple worksheet I use before committing to a test.

You may find this approach to be too simplistic for your needs but, regardless of our methods, we all need a pre-event routine that causes us to ask, “Is it realistic to expect this test to increase results by 40%? Is this test a good investment?”

With a pre-event routine, these questions are answered before we spend a dime on the mailing. And whatever approach your pre-event routine takes, the process is essential to getting the greatest return from your direct mail test dollars. Like professional athletes, we’ll achieve a higher level of performance with good preparation.

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 of our direct mail campaign.

Because few, if any, of us mail to save money.

For most of us, the mailing’s objective is to make money.

This is a huge distinction. Saving money and making money isn’t the same thing. And, more often than not, we can increase the mailing’s profitability by adding to the package rather than by subtracting from it.

To increase your mailing’s profit, even as you increase its cost, you can:

• Add an involvement technique—a survey, membership card, petition, name stickers, a certificate—anything that gets the reader involved with the package. But it’s not enough just to toss the piece into the package. You must weave it into the copy and give it a reason for being there.
• Offer a premium and promote it with a separate insert—I’m a strong believer in premiums and need a reason not to offer them. The premium doesn’t need to be expensive and can be as simple as a white paper, a decal or a bookmark. But it does need to have a perceptible value.Many groups hate premiums believing that they cheapen the organization. But most donors and customers respond to them and, in my experience, when used properly, a premium will increase the mailing’s net profit.
• Test a larger format. A larger format is going to increase your production cost and perhaps even your postage cost. Yet they grab attention and generate response. Today, fewer oversize formats are being mailed so they command even more attention in the mailbox and can be especially useful for acquisition campaigns. In tests, when nothing other than the format size was changed; I’ve seen response increase by 100% when using a large format.
• Add an insert that emphasizes your guarantee. (If you’re not using a guarantee, you need one.) The mailing’s recipient has plenty of reasons—real or perceived—not to respond to your offer and the guarantee helps remove any hesitation that might otherwise jeopardize the sale. And by featuring your guarantee with a separate insert, you’re calling attention to your promise of a good customer experience.
• Include a lift note. The lift note, signed by someone other than the letter signer and printed on a different paper stock—the perception is that it’s coming from source other than the main letter—has many uses. You can use it to add credibility, present a testimonial or endorsement, emphasize your risk-free offer, expand upon the offer, tell a story, customize the offer to particular list segments and provide an added “push” to get the reader to respond.
• Spend money on list segmentation. Every good list includes bad names and every bad list includes good names. And since the mailing list is the most important component of your mailing, there’s no better place to spend money than to refine your list segmentation. List modeling/profiling isn’t cheap but with better segmentation you can increase your response and even reduce your total costs by mailing fewer, but better targeted, mailing pieces.

All this isn’t to suggest that you should drop your efforts to reduce costs. But cost cutting alone will not produce sustainable success. And I’m not suggesting that you change your control mailing without testing.

I am, however, suggesting that before investing in a new test mailing, you do the math to determine how much of an increase in response or average order is needed to justify the mailing’s added expenseand decide whether, with the changes being tested, this is a reasonable expectation.

It’s certain that we will continue to come under increased pressure to reduce costs but as direct marketers, we must change the conversation from how to cut costs to how we can make our mailings more profitable.

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. Go see what actually mailed.”

After a short visit to our IT and production groups, I learned that the wrong lists were mailed for the job. In fact, we couldn’t have mailed names more unsuitable for this appeal if we had tried.

This taught me a couple of things.

First, don’t expect things to go right just because you issue the right instructions. Mistakes happen.

Second, it made me think that all those people who argue whether or not
the mailing list is twice as important or 300% more important or even 600% more important than the offer, copy or format are just wasting good air.

In truth, the mailing list is infinitely more important than any other component of the mailing.

It’s really simple. If you mail the world’s all-time greatest package to the wrong people, you’re going to fail. You’re not going to sell lawnmowers to Eskimos regardless of how good your copy or offer is.

For a direct mail copywriter, good list selection—and knowing the thinking behind the list selection—is essential to success.

Writing copy to mail to people who we know nothing about is like being at a party where everyone is a stranger and trying to convince the first person you meet there to buy your product. You may be able to close the sale but, more often than not, the conversation will be clumsy, wordy and far less effective than if you knew the person’s background and interests.

This leaves us two options. We can either let the list broker do his or her thing and hope for the best, or we can get involved in the process.

The most successful copywriters know which mailing lists have worked and which haven’t. They’ll also take the time to learn all available demographic and behavioral data, ask to be included in the broker’s new list announcements and read the appropriate trade journals to discover new mailing lists.

But unfortunately—especially when we’re writing as a freelancer—we don’t get the opportunity to offer our input. We’re hired to write copy and nothing else.

Yet we can ask questions. And with the answers, we can gain a better understanding of the people to whom we’re writing. For example, a few of the questions I ask new clients are:

• What can you tell me about your average customer? What is their age, sex, and income. What do you know about their interests and behavior?
• What are your top five mailing lists?
• Historically, which types of lists have not worked well?
• Have the names we’ll be mailing received your offer before? If so, when was the last time you mailed them?
• What information on our readers do you have on file—age, sex, income, past purchases/contributions, items purchased and dates of purchase or contribution?

In addition, I’ll ask for samples of the three most recent acquisition controls—and the packages that tested against them—to see how successful appeals have spoken to the targeted audience, and how the tone might have changed over the progression of winning packages.

Asking these questions is like talking to a stranger at that party where we don’t know anyone. When we take time to ask the person a few questions, we can do a much better job of explaining why he or she needs our product.

Much has changed since I wrote my first direct mail package but one thing is as true now as it was then. Of all the components of a direct mail package, nothing is more important than good list selection.

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 against other copywriters who wrote fancier words, enjoyed reputations that are more widespread and commanded larger fees.

And I freely admit that others write copy that’s richer, less choppy and often, they select particular words that I wish I had thought to use.

Yet when testing head-to-head against these higher-profile writers, my packages regularly generate higher profits.

It isn’t because of the words I choose. It’s because of the lessons I learned long ago.

An Unbeatable Advantage

Before putting a word on paper, I invest time to learn about the mailing lists that will be used, review current and past mailing packages, study test results, and ask
about the printer’s and lettershop’s capabilities. And once the copy is accepted, I work with the graphic designer to review the layout, the graphics, and the selected font, plus do little things like make sure paragraphs are indented and pages break in mid-sentence.

Giving attention to the details is a nearly unbeatable advantage.

Yet too many agencies, clients and managers fail to give their copywriters these practical advantages.

Today, many agencies have consolidated into mega-agencies. And as they grow larger, they tend to become more stratified.

A team leader—usually an account executive—is assigned to every account. Other team members work on the campaign strategy, select the lists, and handle design, production or back-end analysis.

Too often, the copywriter isn’t brought into the picture until after other team members have developed and released the creative brief. Essentially, the copywriter becomes an order-taker.

It’s More Than the Words

But to do our best work for the team, the client and the organization, copywriters need to be direct mail people first and wordsmiths second. For example:

• List Selection. The best copywriters understand that good list selection is more important than the words they put on paper. You can rehash common statements like “The list is 300% more important than copy,” but in fact, the list is infinitely more important. Even if you have the all-time world’s greatest package, if you mail it to the wrong people, you’ll fail. It’s that simple.To be successful, the copywriter needs to know which lists work and which don’t, and have access to all available demographic and behavioral data. A copywriter should also get to know the list brokers, study the “data cards” and ask to be included in new list announcements.
• Graphic Design. You want your copywriter to understand how graphic design affects readership and, thus, how it affects response. He or she should work closely with your design team and understand that it’s in the designer’s DNA to make things pretty and want to win awards. It’s the copywriter’s job to fight for a layout that encourages readership and directs the recipient to take a specific action. Pretty isn’t important. Results are. Let the designer do his or her thing with your collateral pieces, but for anything being measured by its response, the direct mail people—including the copywriter—should have the final word.
• Production. Encourage your copywriter to meet with your printer and lettershop, and include him or her in meetings with new vendors. Copywriters don’t need to be production experts, but they do need to know the full capabilities of the printer and lettershop. Otherwise, they can’t take advantage of the technology and unique capabilities that they can use to drive results.
• Back-end Analysis. Direct mail isn’t “fire and forget.” Share results of past mailings with the copywriter so he or she can take advantage of your new findings and avoid repeating past mistakes.

If you need an outside copywriter to sign a nondisclosure agreement, do it. If you don’t want to share specific results, assign an index to the numbers. If you can’t trust the copywriter with this, why are you using him or her anyway?

And for the record, once a piece mails to thousands, if not millions, of people, it’s no longer confidential, so give a sample to your copywriter. (A pet peeve.)

Whatever your cause or whatever you’re selling, you can achieve greater results by making the copywriter a full participating member of the account team. Bring him or her into the job early in the campaign’s planning stages and you’ll get better results.

Life doesn’t have to be complicated. Empower your copywriter and enable him or her to deliver greater profits. After all, higher profits keep the client and/or the board of directors happy, pay the bills and will give you a good night’s sleep.