Increasing Return on Marketing Dollars

A Newsletter Published by
Lee Marc Stein, LTD.
February 2006 Issue

Contents

• Direct Mail as the Supreme Fiction
• They Ought to Know Better – Two Emails That Miss the Mark
• Making the Right Media Decisions

Direct Mail as the Supreme Fiction

That great American poet and insurance executive Wallace Stevens got a lot of things right. One thing he didn't: he opened his marvelous poem "A High-Toned Old Christian Woman" with the line "Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame." He didn't understand (and a lot of marketing managers and writers don't either) that DIRECT MAIL IS THE SUPREME FICTION.

I say direct mail more than other forms of direct response because you have the room and time to emulate the characteristics of great fiction. I've believed DIRECT MAIL IS THE SUPREME FICTION from Day One (perhaps because I never got around to writing the Great American Novel). The truth raised its beautiful head recently in a phone conversation with a potential client.

"I've been through the samples on your web site," she said. "Your copy is very different from the copy in our packages."

"How so?" I asked.

"You write about the prospect and the prospect's problems and how they can be overcome. Our copy is about product."

"Guilty," I said.

When I was a Management Supervisor at Rosenfeld, Sirowitz, Humphrey & Strauss in the early '90s, legendary copywriter Ron Rosenfeld always had us say "we'll make the product the hero" in our pitches. That's just plain wrong, and it's particularly wrong in direct response efforts. If you want a response, if you want to build customers, you had better make the prospect or customer the hero.

Focusing on character (prospect, customer) is a hallmark of great fiction as it is of great direct mail copy. In both arts, story (plot line or product story) must flow from character. In both arts, character never exists in a vacuum: the writer must skillfully describe how the character interacts. In fiction that means interaction with other characters and the environment; in direct mail that means interaction with the product or at least the product category.

"Nice theory," you may be thinking, "but what about the dictum that 'direct mail is salesmanship in print.'"

Getting inside the head of your prospects/customers, understanding how they relate to the product/category, approaching them emotionally are all part of the sell, of course.

One of the few differences between writing fiction and writing direct mail is "author recognition." If I pick up a novel by Henry James or Thomas Pynchon, or my current favorite, Jose Saramago, and I don't look at the dust jacket or binding, after reading a paragraph or too, I can identify the author. That's good. Being able to identify copywriters by their style is not good.

Why do I say that? The style of a direct mail package should be a reflection primarily of audience and secondarily of the company that's behind the mail. Here's an example.

The writer has two assignments – both to drive prospects to register for a seminar. The first assignment involves a "make money in real estate" FREE seminar and the company involved has licensed the name of the biggest, most successful real estate dealer in history. The second assignment involves a $250 career management seminar aimed at college juniors and seniors and their parents. The company behind is relatively unknown.

If the copy comes out sounding the same for both, then the writer has not done his/her job. Copy in the first package must be more "in your face"; it must reek of the arrogance associated with the real estate wheeler dealer. Copy in the second package needs to resemble a chat with an extremely knowledgeable, warm "guidance counselor." Every word of bombast in this package will be detrimental to response.

Herschell Gordon Lewis has written about the importance of "Verisimilitude" in copy. Bill Jayme equated good copy with good theatre: they both result in the "willing suspension of disbelief."

You can't achieve plausibility or suspend disbelief if you don't get the characters (in this case, prospects and customers) absolutely right… if you don't talk in their language, look at the world from their point of view. Direct mail is the supreme fiction because you know what the response is.

They Ought to Know Better – Two Emails That Miss the Mark

The Real Good Customer Email

I'm not only a good customer of Tauck World Discovery, but an apostle. As such, I enjoy receiving their catalogs even when I'm not planning to travel to particular destinations. And I certainly don't mind monthly or even more frequent emails.

Until this one arrived (click to view). At first blush, it seems rather long for an email. But this is going to customers or at least those who requested to receive the email, so that's fine.

The subject line works and so does the head. The email is personalized with a correctly worded salutation. What's my beef then?

Just that I traveled to Canada with Tauck and they did not recognize that in any way in the email. I was treated as someone who had never been to Canada with them. Certainly they have the information and they should have used it.

Here's the dialogue that has ensued:

My original email:
"I am surprised. Surely in your database you have a record of the fact that we took your heli-hiking tour. Our experience should have been reflected in your email."

Their reply:
"We pull our email list two weeks in advance which is CANSPAM compliant and use each list for two mailings. In this case this list received our Kentucky Derby email as well as out Canada email so we wouldn't want to exclude those that took a Canada tour from receiving our Kentucky Derby email or visa-versa.

"Our records show that you traveled with us to the Cariboos in 2001. Many of our guests have taken our heli-hiking tours more than once, so we would not want to eliminate you because you had traveled to one of the destinations listed. We do not have the capability to free form a message to acknowledge that you have taken one of the tours mentioned in the eNewsletter."

Of course the first paragraph above makes no sense. And it is remarkable that they couldn't do a templated email to be able to acknowledge previous travel.

My response:
"I would certainly agree that you shouldn't have eliminated me from the emailing. The fact you said "Many of our guests have taken our heli-hiking tours more than once" indicates that you should have a separate version of the email going to previous Canadian travelers.

"Overall, of course, Tauck's marketing is superb. As a professional, I just would like to see your communications appear as caring and individualized as the way we are treated by your Tour Directors."

At the end of the email is the exhortation to "Book now by contacting your XYZ TOURS travel agent today…" Interesting how they can weave the name of the travel agent in but not recognize that I was on the Canadian trip. The putting in the name of the agent may backfire if I am no longer using that agent.

The Ersatz Good Customer Email

About three months ago, I began a direct mail package for VistaPrint to attract new prospects through a magnet promotion (ouch).

Since the company's business is web-based, I spent a lot of time on the site. I was impressed and placed a minimum order for business cards. They did everything right – acknowledged the order, executed professional upsell attempts and, most important, delivered my order days before I expected it. The quality of the work was top-notch.

Now I begin receiving their email promotions 3-5 days a week. Of course, it costs VistaPrint next to nothing to get them out, and they have no idea I'm beginning to get annoyed. If I didn't have a professional interest, I would have unsubscribed after the second week of the barrage.

Then I get this:

Subject: FREE Premium Business Cards and More! – 48 Hours Left

Dear VistaPrint Customer,
Since you are one of our most valued customers you have been invited to try our best offers of the year!

Today through Sunday February 5th only, you can try any of the 3 products below for FREE! We urge you to take advantage of this incredible offer while it lasts, as the deadline will not be extended.

Good subject line – if I hadn't ordered business cards two months ago. Not many people go through 500 cards in that period of time. Again, why not use the information they have to customize the offer?

I'm able to live with that. What I couldn't live with is the first sentence after the salutation. Here's what I wrote to VistaPrint:

"I'm a direct marketing consultant/copywriter. I wrote the direct mail package produced by Horah Direct at the end of December, and have been watching your emails with interest.

"Most of what you've done is solid, smart marketing... But you are stretching the limits of believability now and that is dangerous. Your first line below is a prime example of that "Since you are one of our most valued customers..."

"I bought once and spent under $30 on my purchase. It is laughable for me to believe that I'm one of your most valued customers."

Unlike Tauck, they have not responded to me in any way… but the emails keep coming. And every time they say "48 Hours Left," it becomes less and less believable.

Making the Right Media Decisions

Media strategies cannot be formulated in a vacuum. They must be consistent with and support direct response advertising objectives.

One critical factor is the size and configuration of the target audience.

At one extreme is the product/service with millions of prospects. As an example, let's look at a company that offers PET INSURANCE.

Perhaps you should test direct mail because there are both compiled and response lists of pet owners. And you have the room to tell the whole story.

However, because of the costs of putting a package into the mail, getting a response rate of .5% may not leave enough profit margin. Your media strategy must include testing of very broad media here – magazines, FSIs (both truly free-standing and the coop shopper FSIs), insert media and probably television. Online, you would be considered paid search engine optimization and ads on related pet sites.

If you were to test magazine advertising, you would take a skim strategy in something like Smithsonian. It has a huge audience that responds extremely well to dr ads. However, only a small percentage of the total audience will be pet owners who care enough to spend the money for pet insurance. You might want to test a 2" ad to start.

On the other hand, with Dog Fancy magazine, you're not only getting 100% pet owners, but those who care enough to subscribe to and read the magazine. Here you want to employ a penetration strategy - probably a full-page ad, maybe even a full-page insert.

If your target audience is rather limited and easily individualized, that would suggest highly targeted media like direct mail or, where permissible, telephone or e-mail.

An example of this is a service whose prospects are Chief Technology Officers and heads of IT at billion dollar companies. The audience is under 3,000. Certainly, you could reach your target with television, radio, ads in The Wall Street Journal and CIO Magazine. With an unlimited budget, you may indeed want to do that, but in today's ROI-is-everything world, you could hardly justify that. The prime medium here is direct mail, with support from telephone, and perhaps e-mail if the prospect allows it.

There are other factors to look at -

1. Branding. How much brand building do you want to/can you afford to do? Direct mail and insert media aren't particularly good for brand building (hence, no one ever says "As seen in direct mail."). Print is probably best.


2. Tangibility. How much tangibility do you need? Direct mail, insert media and print are tangible; broadcast media are not; online media fall in between.


3. Time to read the test. How fast do you need answers to your tests? Direct mail is a minimum of three weeks to launch. Even if you mail first class, you won't know whether you have a hit or miss for at least a week. You can get into daily newspapers within 48 hours and know where you stand in another 48. You may be able to slide into remnant space in a magazine quickly, but reading results and rolling out is another story.


4. What's important to you. Is quality of leads more important than quantity? Television, particularly infomercials, can open the floodgates. If you're marketing a high-priced product or service, however, lead conversion can be extremely disappointing. You may be better off paying a lot more for a lead through direct mail or print advertising and then converting at much higher rates.

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