BREAKTHROUGH SERIES: A Direct Hit

Direct marketing is a low cost way of reaching in with your message, piercing that gruff exterior customer shell and finding your way into their hearts, minds and wallets. It’s also a non-intrusive way to thank current customers for their business. Despite the continual rising costs of postage, direct marketing is also still a great value. It’s the lowest-cost type of marketing because of its precision and accuracy. With direct mail, you can send a message to a specific target audience without a lot of wasted expense. For example, you can mail just 100 letters to a list of your 100 best prospects to sell them new services, boost existing service sales or thank current customers for their business. And this only costs 37 cents in postage for each letter, plus the cost of 100 sheets of paper. With a surety of 95 percent or better, you can get a piece of paper with our own message and personal signature to land on the desk of almost anyone – now that’s direct.

TYPES OF DIRECT MARKETING. The types of direct marketing you use can be post cards, brochures, or letters – all with or without envelopes. Each has its place in the marketing mix.

Post Cards. Post cards have exceptionally high readership – by the time your recipient gets it in his or her hands, it’s already read. Other advantages: easy to address, cheaper to mail than letters and cheap to print. Post cards can be printed in four colors and purchased for about $400 for 5,000. Post cards can also look nice printed in just one or two colors with striking copy.

Post cards work best as lead generation devices, especially for services that people are already familiar with. Cons: You can’t tell a long story or offer a consultative selling proposition. Also, post cards are always impersonal and suffer from a reader’s short attention span – if you don’t capture the reader’s attention in the first three seconds, the card gets tossed. And in a commercial client’s big office, there is a danger that the card may be thrown away early by a mail screener.

Use a strong headline on your post card – grab attention fast. Flaunt your biggest benefit to immediately capture the interest of your audience. This is no place to be subtle. Since there is little room for long sales copy, write copy to generate a phone call from a qualified prospect instead of trying to actually sell your service directly from the card. Print your phone number in a large, bold typeface.

Self Mailers. These can take on any of thousands of forms, shapes and folds; from a simple tri-fold to a 5-color, box-cut, pre-scored, 12-fold brochure with a handy self-addressed, reply card already filled out with the customer’s name attached. Self-mailers allow you to show the most creativity and personality. Cons: Very short runs are impractical for complex pieces of 4-color. They usually aren’t personal.

Use striking graphics and set a unique tone. Ask yourself, "If my client receives this in the mail again in four months, will he or she remember receiving it before?" if you answer, "No," redesign the piece to make it more memorable. Make your piece hard-selling – remember if your prospects don’t call, your piece failed. The creative use of one or two colors can save you money on printing costs.

Letters. With a well-written and well-designed letter, you can generate a lead or make a person pick up the phone and call to order your service. You can build loyalty and convince a person that they are the most important customer in the world. Cons: If you can’t write a tight, memorable letter, your mailing can sink like a stone without a ripple.

Take your time when writing. It may take you a few weeks to write a great one-page letter, but that’s OK. It takes more than 30 minutes – put in a full eight hours to write a tight, one-page letter. Spend some time writing, refining and editing your letter. A good campaign is a series of letters, each sent about one month apart to a list of your best tightly-qualified prospects.

Letter and Brochure Combinations. An envelope containing a letter and a brochure is the workhorse of the direct mail industry. There is a reason: This format works well for a multitude of offers. The letter sells and the brochure tells. Design the letter to sell the benefits and generate the phone call. Design the brochure to add credibility to the letter. It’s one thing to say in a letter what you do, but it’s quite another to show it in a 12-inch by 18-inch photo pull-out. Cons: This format is overused, making it difficult to leave a unique impression.

SUCCESSFUL MAILINGS STEP-BY-STEP. First, design each piece to a specific objective. What are you actually trying to do with this piece? If the piece works perfectly as planned, what exactly will happen in the next step? Will you generate a sale, generate a lead, generate a phone call, make someone feel good about you and your firm, create an impression the recipient won’t forget? Whatever it is, write it down first, then draft each word, each piece of your mailing package to fulfill your objective. This gives you additional clarity when writing.

When writing a letter, first create a striking opening sentence. The objective of this first line is to arouse interest. Use the 100-to-1 rule – write 100 first sentences, then go back and pick out your best one.

Still stuck? Throw your biggest few benefits into the headline. Try this formula: "New service offers benefit, benefit, benefit!" Example: "New irrigation installation service provides a system that waters your lawn more thoroughly yet saves water, reaches a larger area and turns itself off when finished!"

Another formula for creating a great headline is to offer something for free, preferably free information. For example: "Free booklet lists lawn care tips, including how to repair your weed-ridden turf, stop weeds from germinating and produce a lush, envy-of-the-neighborhood lawn." Design tip: Whenever you use the word FREE in a letter or brochure, make sure it’s in all capital letters.

Don’t wait until the sixth page to show the free service or lawn checkup that comes with every signed contract – your readers will be long gone by page two. One overly long sales letter gets thrown out, but three short letters saying the same thing all get read.

Let readers express early interest by calling you and asking for your booklet. When the phone rings, first strike up a dialog and qualify them as a prospect. Then, ask for their name and address to send the booklet. When the phone rings, the letter or mailer worked. When designing your letter, create a bullet list of benefits and place that list in the middle of your page. Bullet lists have high readership and act to break up the copy and make the letter visually attractive and easy to read.

Ask for a phone call several times in a letter. And place your phone number in the last paragraph in the body copy, even though it’s in the letterhead. It’s a subtle suggestion to call again.

Make sure you sign your letter legibly. Your signature becomes a graphic hook – make sure they can read it.

Finally, restate your most powerful argument for calling in the "P.S." and list your phone number one more time, even though you have it in other places.

When designing your brochure, you need to think differently than in your letter. Brochures need to be designed to be stand-alone pieces, so they can be mailed, left at a prospect’s office or handed out. Never stick a brochure in an envelope and call it a direct mail campaign. Always include a letter. For the additional cent and a half for the sheet of paper that your letter costs to include, it can double, triple or quadruple the response you receive.

When designing your envelope, design everything in my mailing package for one fold (5½ inches by 8½ inches), which can be mailed in a 6-inch-by-9-inch envelope. More traditionally letters and brochures are designed to be folded in thirds to fit into more standard number 10 envelopes (9 inches by 4 inches).

Include a teaser on the envelope, such as "Gift Certificate Enclosed." Another trick is to type your name and business address (no business name) in the upper left hand envelope corner, then hand write the prospect’s name and address directly on the envelope (no labels). This way, people will think it’s a personal letter from you, so you’ll enjoy higher than normal opening rates.

COVERING COSTS. First, find out what percent of people need to purchase your service to cover the cost of the mailing. For example, let’s say your mailing costs 50 cents per package. If you mail it to 1,000 people, you’ll need to cover $500 in mailing expenses, then your cost of fulfillment (product cost plus shipping), plus some profit left over. If you need more than a 1½- to 2-percent response to cover your costs – and profit – to produce a successful mailing, you better rethink your mailing. If your service sells for $25 and your profit is $10 per customer, you need to sell 50 people to cover the cost of postage and break even. That’s a 5-percent response rate, which is unrealistically high.

Most direct response rates for direct sales are less than 2 percent. But by giving away something free, your response can be as high as 25 percent. But your hard selling secondary package to this more qualified list must be able to draw enough response to cover all costs. Looking at these figures you can see why services that sell for less than about $50 don’t work in solo direct mailings. Even at $50, with a profit of $25 per sale, you need to sell 20 services per thousand to break even – a 2 percent order rate.

These numbers show you why your list selection is so important. If you can find a highly focused group of people or market segment that all want your service and are most likely and are wiling to order your service from your direct mailer, you will find success.

The author is a marketing specialist, Danielle Adams Publishing Co., Merion, Pa.