Increasing Return on Marketing Dollars

A Newsletter Published by
Lee Marc Stein, Ltd.
September 2006 Issue

Contents

• 7 Ways to Overcome TDD and Boost Response Rates
• The Doobie Brothers Advice to Direct Marketers
• Copy Wisdom from an Unexpected Source
  

7 Ways to Overcome TDD and Boost Response Rates

We all know about ADD — Attention Deficit Disorder. (Now what was I saying?) The larger problem, in terms of getting response to our communications, is TDD — TIME Deficit Disorder.

Prospects, and often customers, don't have the time to read our mail or our emails. If they did, they don't have time to use the products or services we're trying to sell them.

It's going to get worse. America's kids are terribly over-scheduled from the time they're five. Corporations will continue to downsize, leaving those remaining on staff with more burdens and less time, and of course employees in small businesses always have time pressures.

What can we do, as direct marketers, to overcome TDD? Here are 7 recommendations (reading time 2.67 minutes):

1. Convince prospects/customers that it's worth their time to open the direct mail package or email. You can't begin to sell your product or service until you do this. You may have to resort to trickery — e.g., "official" envelopes — to accomplish your task. I used to think this trickery would soon backfire, but now I believe that CRS (Can't Remember Subterfuge) is helping our cause.

2. Layer the information in your package or email. Those with very little time should get the essence of your product's benefits and your offer from the Johnson box and not have to read further. An alternative is running 5-6 bullets down the right side of your letter. Those recipients who have more time (or are interested enough to make the time) will scan crossheads and drill deeper into the text. Buck slips are another great place to summarize benefits and offers for those who don't have time to read letters.

If you feel compelled to include a brochure, keep a rein on how much copy you cram into it. In most applications, less is more these days.

3. Make it easy for impulse responders. Combine frequent calls- to-action, multiple ways to respond, and strong guarantees. There are more prospects than you know thinking "I don't have time to read about this, but I'd like to try it."

4. Assure prospects that the process for responding or process is fast and easy. When it was launched, GEICO's "15 minutes to save 15% or more" was appealing. Few people have 15 minutes to respond or order any more. It needs to be faster. You have to assure people it is, and back up your promise.

5. Focus on saving time as a product/service benefit. Particularly in b2b applications, this can have much more appeal than saving money, or anything else. Of course, you had better be able to elaborate on this in your copy. Readers will want to know how much time is saved (in relation to cost), and specifically how the product or service saves time.

6. Explain why investing in time to use the product/service is worthwhile. Why do controlled circulation magazines get such low response rates when their publication is free? Because prospects don't want to invest the reading time. Circulations have to tell prospects how reading time on the particular publication increases productivity and/or profitability.

Similarly, if you're selling business software, you need to talk about how long it will take new users to get the system working and why that investment is worthwhile. Even for Upgrade mailings to the installed base, recipients must be convinced that it takes very little of their time to get the new version working, and that the time will be repaid very shortly.

7. Plan multiple efforts to important segments. Even prospects and customers with severe cases of TDD get a break in their schedules occasionally. There may be a time when they have enough time to read and respond. If you can get prospects to your web site and registered, you can develop a whole series of "Are you ready yet?" communications.

The Doobie Brothers Advice to Direct Marketers

"Listen to the music," they sang. And why should direct marketers listen to the music? Because the great composers are masters at creating tension to bring you along into the piece and then putting you at ease within specific movements. It is this dueling dialectic that creates great direct mail as well.

I hadn't thought much about tension as a key factor in driving response until I did a workshop for one of MooreWallace Response Marketing Services' clients with Allan Gross. Allan, long-time marketing strategist with the company, possesses an extraordinary knowledge of what works and what doesn't. He believes that if you don't create tension on the outer envelope, you won't get it opened.

There are a plethora of marketing strategies you can take in a package — invitation, assumptive, professional courtesy, savings, challenge, urgency, and, of course, official. Whichever you choose, just make sure the envelope creates the tension.

For example, let's say you're offering a free seminar for Trump Institute on "The Way to Wealth." An invitation strategy would be suitable. You certainly want Donald Trump's name on the corner card. If you mail in an ivory envelope, address in a handwriting font, and your only teaser copy is R.S.V.P., that creates tension. The recipient wants to know "Why is the Donald writing to me? What am I being invited to?" If, on the other hand, your teaser copy is "You're invited to a free seminar on building your wealth" there is much less tension. The recipient knows the deal.

Once you get someone inside the envelope, you play both the heavy, somber chords and the lilts. Your Johnson box might, for example, raise a problem or possible problem. This causes tension. You can ease that tension immediately with copy like:

Now you can solve your compliance problems quickly and easily with help from ABC software. Read how, and learn about a special offer that adds to your savings.

What you want to do in most of your copy is get people to relax about your product and what it can do for them, ease any fears of responding or ordering. The place for the requiem is when you talk about the consequences of not responding, and you can build this tension by throwing in response/deadline dates.

You can build tension on the front cover of a brochure with photos alone, or with photos and copy. The Lift Letter is a classic case of creating tension on the outside panel and then relieving it inside.

In the Trump example above, for instance, the outer panel of the Lift Letter might say,

Will you register for the Donald Trump Way to Wealth Seminar in the next 24 hours? If your answer is "No," Mr. Trump has an idea for you.

Almost like the opening notes of Beethoven's Fifth. You have to find out what comes after.

On the response form, you create tension with deadline dates, or other limits to the offer (a Fast 50 offer will do that nicely). Otherwise, the rest of the response form has to be an exercise in relaxation — a superb andante or maybe even adagio.

One of the ways to create tension is by getting readers angry about a particular situation — the cost of health insurance, for example. They can begin relieving the tension by responding.

Copy Wisdom from an Unexpected Source

Last month, Richard Morrison wrote an article for The Times of London about the 70^th anniversary of the publication of Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. It's interesting that no similar anniversary notification has appeared in the U.S. press.

More interesting are some of the quotes from the article, and how applicable some of Carnegie's concepts are to the successful creation of direct response advertising.

"If you know the right levels to pull in other people's psyches, he argues, you can make them respond in an entirely predictable way..."

"So how you know which levels to pull? First, says Carnegie, by working out what makes your clients or customers tick. 'Think always in terms of the other person's point of view,' he advises. Rather than talk about yourself, listen patiently to them talking about themselves. Butter them up by lavishing appreciation on their work. Ferret out every personal detail you can about them, then drop this knowledge casually into the conversation; it will show them you care."

This last sentence is the essence of database marketing — of growing one-time buyers into true customers. Careful following Carnegie's advice with suspects and prospects: displaying how much know about them could easily backfire. It's best to "dumb down" your copy in these situations.

Carnegie warns against being confrontational. "Instead, he advocates 'the Socratic yes-yes method,' whereby you advance your cause by making a series of small propositions that each seem irrefutable — but which imperceptibly lead the other person farther and farther away from his entrenched resistance to your argument. It's the old Machi-evallian trick: persuasion by stealth. If it works well, Carnegie claims, you may not even need to make your clinching argument. Your client will already will have leapt to the conclusion that you want."

Carnegie's "Yes-yes" method is strikingly similar to the techniques put forth by Sigfried Vogele in Handbook of Direct Mail.

"Finally, says Carnegie, take a leaf out of J. Pierpont Morgan's book. The mighty banker once cynically observed that people generally have two reasons for doing anything: the real reason, which is about self-gratification or self-advancement, and the reason that looks good in other people's eyes. A good salesman knows how to appeal simultaneously (and surreptitiously) to both the base and noble instincts."

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