What Makes Direct Mail Work

Christmas is almost here. So is New Year’s. And with them comes another reason why, in marketing, this is the most wonderful time of the year. I first learned about this magical season more than 30 years ago.

I was working on my first direct mail campaign. Well, actually, I was working on four separate direct mail campaigns. Four different products. Four different mailing packages. But with one thing in common. They absolutely, positively, without exception needed to be put in the mail on December 27th.

That’s when I learned that the best week of the year to have a direct mail campaign arrive in homes and businesses is always the first week of January. To guarantee your mail gets there that first week, it has to go out between Christmas and New Year’s Day. To miss an in-home arrival of the first week in January was a failure too enormous to consider.

By the time I left that company ten years later I was mailing close to 10 million pieces of mail two days after Christmas every year. Of course I also sent out direct mail campaigns all year long, but the biggest response rates were always from that magical January mail.

Because businesses can’t survive on one mailing a year, it was always necessary to test and re-test many variables all year long to boost results the other 51 weeks of the year. From my years of testing I have a tried-and-proven checklist of what it takes to make direct mail work. Here’s that checklist for you.

THE LIST IS KING. The most important time spent in preparing direct mail is in developing the mailing list. Success depends most on getting your package to the right people. There are four basic types of mailing lists. They are:

• Proprietary Lists.These are the customer names of specific businesses and organizations that are available to other businesses for a fee. For example, if you sell fitness and workout clothing you might want to mail to subscribers of Runner’s World magazine. That’s a proprietary list.
• Compiled Lists. These are names gathered by list companies from a variety of public records. They can be consumers or businesses. The records usually contain a variety of information you can select such as income, type or size of household, profession of head of household, and age of people in the household. Business records can contain information about number of years in business, number of employees, type of business by SIC code, and annual earnings.
• Profiled Lists. These are names that have been pre-clustered or segmented based on common characteristics of lifestyle, values, and interests. They are available only from the companies that do the profiling. The profiling data is pulled from many sources including public records such as census data, and transactional records such as credit purchases.
• Appended Lists. These are names you can take from any of the above sources, and then have matched with special interest data or financial information to further qualify and target the names. Appending more data to the list has the advantage of giving you higher quality names to mail, but the disadvantage of fewer names in your mailing universe.

MAKE THEM AN OFFER. The offer is the second most important ingredient in making direct mail work. Direct mail should ALWAYS have an offer. However, the type of offer can make a huge difference in the amount of response you’ll get. The wording of the offer will also make a difference in the amount of response. The best way to know what offer is best for you is to test different offers within the same mailing, in controlled test segments.

KEEP THE CREATIVE SIMPLE. You want to make it as easy as possible for the consumer to respond to your direct mail. The best way to do that is to keep your message simple and on point. This does not mean it has to be short. It means that you need to construct your direct mail piece with one result in mind, and then create your message and design to reinforce that result continuously within the piece.

I have seen excellent, simple direct mail pieces done in postcard formats, and equally excellent, simple direct mail pieces that arrive in 8-1/2 x 11″ envelopes with 7 or 8 pieces inserted inside. It is not about the size; it is about crafting the message in the best possible way with the best possible motivation for action.

UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCE in Going for a Sale vs. Getting an Inquiry. If the purpose of your direct mail is just to get someone to respond so you can “sell him or her later” then be sure you create the direct mail piece for only a response. Too often lead-generation direct mail results are killed because the mailing also includes purchasing information. Go for one or the other; not both.

GIVE INCENTIVES FOR A QUICK RESPONSE. Incentives work. Rewarding people for a quick decision will get you more responses. It is the same reason retail stores frequently offer free gifts to the first 50 or 100 people in their store for a major event. People will take action if it means they get an additional reward.

INTEGRATE PRINT WITH WEB. Your Website gives you the opportunity for instant gratification when integrated with direct mail. If the purpose of your mail is to get a lead, then have the leads go to your Website where they can respond online, you can send an instant acknowledgement, and set up your next step while they are at the peak of their interest.

If you are using direct mail to generate an immediate sale, do the sale transaction on your Website. If you are using direct mail to motivate people to a store for the purchase, send them to your Website first to download a coupon or certificate they can redeem at the store (this can be the incentive). This accomplishes two things. First, they are more likely to come into the store. Second, you will get their contact information for future marketing, even if they don’t make a purchase.

WRITE YOUR MESSAGE TO ONE PERSON. When you create direct mail, do it as if you were writing to someone you know. Direct mail has the immense advantage of being very personal. TV commercials, newspaper ads, and billboards do not. The more you can relate to someone on a personal level, the more effective your direct mail will be for you. Take advantage of personalization techniques and variable data options. When directing them to the Web, use personal urls.

TEST, TEST, TEST. Direct mail is a perfect testing medium. You can control exactly what message gets to which people, in what format, and have it all done at the same time. You can limit your variables so there is only one variable in each test. I was fortunate to get my start in direct mail with a company that not only understood the value and need of testing; they also allocated the funds to do it right.

Testing is the shortest, quickest way to launch marketing campaigns that get you the biggest results. What you learn from direct mail testing can be used in all other media. Yet most businesses using direct mail will send just one piece, to one list, one time.

Here are the three most significant results I’ve had from testing with direct mail:

1. We got more people to buy the product when we increased the price.
2. By changing the offer to a seasonal tie-in, we added a major new sales season in what used to be one of the worst months of the year for sales. [This campaign won me the National Folio Award for Excellence in Direct Marketing.]
3. By changing incentives frequently, we increased the number of repeat purchases from customers.

These three top my list of the benefits from testing. Who wouldn’t want to raise their prices and get more customers because of it? What company wouldn’t want to take a low-sales month and turn it into a major sales month? Why wouldn’t you want your customers to purchase from you more often? The value of testing far exceeds the cost. Yet most companies don’t do it.

I had the privilege, at a young age, to learn direct mail from one of the masters – Richard Benson. In his book Secrets of Successful Direct Mail he writes, “I know of no better way to make money and have fun than direct mail.” The book was written in 1987. Much has changed since then. But direct mail is still the only medium that reaches 99% of all consumers and businesses in the U.S. That alone is a reason to make it work for you.

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