Self-mailer secrets and bingo card bombs – your direct mail questions answered
Here are responses to some questions about creating effective direct mail and direct response advertising.
Q: We’ve tested self-mailers, but they never seem to work. What are we doing wrong?
A: As for what you’re doing wrong, I can’t possibly answer that question without seeing your self-mailers.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the format. I have created successful self-mailers for many clients, mostly for lead generation but also for direct sales. One of my clients uses self-mailers exclusively to sell books and videos to a business market.
A self-mailer works best when your audience is familiar with your company or your product category. The more you have to explain or the more credibility you have to build, the more likely a direct mail package will get a better response.
Boost your direct mail response with a lift letter
One of the beauties of direct mail is that it comes with a long history of real-world testing and proven techniques.
This includes the “lift letter,” also called the lift note or publisher’s note.
The latter name hints at the origins of this technique. Back in the heyday of magazine subscription promotions, publishers often included a little extra letter in their direct mail solicitations.
They called it the publisher’s note because the message often came from the publisher.
Today, it’s usually referred to as the lift letter or lift note, since it has been adapted to work in a wide variety of direct mail packages for the purpose of lifting response.
In my Direct Marketing Glossary, I define a lift note like this: “Second, shorter letter in a direct mail package with a highly focused message. Generally signed by a different person.”
The mathematical formula for crazy direct mail ideas
If you’re like a lot of people I’ve talked to recently, your marketing is in a slump. And you’re fresh out of ideas.
This is especially true for direct mail. The down economy has frightened people out of testing anything new over the last couple of years.
In fact, some of the people calling me have said they all but stopped mailing. Now that things appear to be getting better, they’re scrambling for testing ideas.
I’ll give you the same advice I’ve been giving them:
1. Resurrect your control. Take your best mail piece and get it back in the mail. See if it still works. As I’ve argued in my Getting Response in a Down Economy white paper, none of the fundamentals have changed. So there’s at least a 50/50 chance that what worked before will work again.
2. Look at your results. If your control does well, test it once more just to make sure. Then ramp up your quantity. If your control dies, perform a direct mail autopsy.
These are your first logical steps. And you should do them before you do anything else.
Okay, but what if you’ve already done this and you’re looking for a way to break the mold and get a little crazy? What if you’re ready to start thinking outside the box?
Official-looking direct mail works better than you think
“There are no pictures.”
“The copy is too short.”
“It violates our brand guidelines.”
“It’s so damned ugly!”
These are just a few of the objections you’ll hear if you ever suggest testing an “official” direct mail piece like the one shown here.
However, to those who know better, official-looking mailers can be pure gold.
I received this piece recently and had one of those “Oh, you got me” moments.
Since I specialize in direct mail, I’ve seen every trick in the book. And 99.44% of the time I can spot a marketing piece a mile away no matter how well-crafted.
But it was the end of the day. I was tired. And the direct mail part of my brain had shut down. So when I saw it in the mail pile, I responded like an ordinary human and opened it.
Inspiring direct mail envelope samples from my great big stack of stuff
The down economy has killed a lot of the fun and creativity of direct mail in the last few years.
But if my phone is any indication (the plastic is melting from all the calls), the economy is getting ready to roar back to life.
So I thought I’d dive into my big stack of stuff and pull out some envelope samples to give you a little inspiration and maybe help you summon the courage to test something beyond yet another postcard or cheap self-mailer.
These are in no particular order. I just rifled through my sample file and pulled out anything that struck my fancy today. I’ve made each envelope sample as big as I could, so the proportions are not accurate here.
Here’s a classic direct mail envelope for a recipe book. Lots of color and excitement with a token showing through a window to encourage involvement.
9 direct mail “devices” to quickly boost response
One of the primary advantages of using direct mail is your ability to “divide and conquer.”
Your letter delivers a personal message and makes an offer. Your brochure demonstrates features and dramatizes benefits. Your order form calls for action and eases response.
Each piece performs a specific function and, because each is dedicated to that function, does a better job than a mailer attempting to do everything simultaneously.
With that in mind, consider what else you might want to accomplish in your direct mail package. Then consider testing an appropriate insert or involvement device that can boost response enough to offset the additional cost.
Here are just a handful of ideas:
Ugly direct mail works and here’s why
Everyone likes pretty things. In nearly every situation, people prefer pretty over ugly.
Pretty people tend to earn more. Pretty houses are worth more. Pretty almost always beats ugly, except when it comes to direct mail.
In the world of direct mail marketing, ugly has a big advantage.
To the right is an example of what most people would call an “ugly” direct mail piece. It’s a simple solicitation about refinancing my house. And I’ve received it three or more times now.
The envelope is a standard white Monarch with a canceled stamp and what appears to be a handwritten address.
The letter inside is a short handwritten note with a business card stapled to the top. The letter is personalized with my name.
Is it time for a BIG direct mail piece?
Ah, the good old days.
Just a few years ago, I could count on receiving a mailbox-full of direct mail nearly every day, including the crown jewel of direct marketing, the BIG direct mail piece.
Thick #10′s, fat 6×9′s, and beefy 9×12′s once stood atop the mountain of attention-grabbing communication.
But then came hard days for the publishing industry, higher postal and printing costs, the rise of electronic media, and a faltering economy that dried up the stream of direct mail.
Today, the mail delivers anemic postcards, cheap fliers, and the occasional #10 envelope with a short letter inside. And it’s made many wonder if direct mail has gone the way of the dinosaur.
Industry pundits have been sounding the death knell for direct mail. Though, those pundits have generally been young and directly involved with social media, email, and other electronic media. They’ve had no love for, or experience with, traditional media and shed no tears for its assumed extinction.
But as I’ve been saying for some time, the reports of direct mail’s demise are greatly exaggerated.
Perform a direct mail autopsy in 6 easy steps
Direct mail is a powerful and effective medium. But it’s a cruel world out there. And sometimes, your mail dies a gruesome death.
Maybe you don’t get the response you want. Perhaps the piece doesn’t get delivered correctly. Or fickle fate steps in and, for no apparent reason, murders a mailer you’ve successfully used a dozen times.
It’s enough to make you sick to your stomach. But rather than just shrug and accept it, there are steps you can take to discover the cause of death.
Here’s how to perform a “direct mail autopsy” in 6 simple steps:
1. Analyze the results. You can’t fix a problem until you know what the problem is. So take a stiff drink and sit down with the numbers for a while.
Is the response rate low or non-existent? If it’s a two-step, is the problem on the front end or the back end? How about your return or cancellation rate? What about net profit? Crunch your numbers every which way to see if you can hone in on the problem.
Is it smart to use direct mail for online sales?
I won’t keep you in suspense. The answer is “Yes!” It is indeed smart to use direct mail for online sales.
There was a time not that many years ago when the “World Wide Web” was a mysterious and magical place. Gurus proclaimed that everything would soon change.
Other media, including direct mail and nearly anything in print, would die a rapid death. We were destined to live in a “paperless” world. “Brick and mortar” stores would transform into “virtual” businesses.
Well, like most idealistic visions, this scenario hasn’t played out as expected. The Web has not killed real-world stores. We shuffle more paper than ever before. And direct mail, while certainly affected by the rise of online media, isn’t even close to death. In many ways, it’s stronger and more effective than ever.
People are so annoyed and suspicious of unsolicited email, they now consider direct mail to be a relatively trustworthy medium. And while SEO, social marketing, pay-per-click, and other online strategies are powerful tools, they tend to reach only those actively searching for a product like yours.
This is why smart online entrepreneurs understand that the medium is not the business. The bigger you want your business to be, the more media you must use to expand your reach. And there is no other medium that gives you more reach than good old fashioned direct mail.
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