Does it? Does it compel me? 4 ways to make your direct mail more compelling

That's a reference to the exorcism scene from the movie, "This is the End," which I probably shouldn't admit to watching. When I decided to write about how to develop a compelling direct mail postcard, those words immediately popped into my mind.

Just like Jay couldn't compel the devil to leave his inhabitant's body, postcards don't automatically compel people to read them. However, I can offer a few tips that are proven to make for more compelling direct mail.

1. Avoid the use of these awful canned postcard templates
When I see the generic postcard templates where businesses just insert their own photo and contact information on a shell, it's a huge turn-off. It tells me that they are lazy and have nothing unique to offer in terms of their brand. If you don't have more than 5 minutes to craft your message to me, I'm not compelled to read further. I often think this kind of card does more damage than good. I recently received one such template card from a realtor promoting their vast experience serving the Lake Norman area -- only problem was that the graphic image on the front was a lake with mountains in the background. That's not Lake Norman, so you've just completely lost your credibility with me. High resolution stock images are great to use when you don't have an arsenal of quality photography of your products or services, but make sure you are using them in the right way and that they are credible.

2. Understand what you are actually selling
I wrote an earlier blog on the wonderful quote from businessman Peter Nivio Zarlenga, "In our factory, we make lipstick. In our advertising, we sell hope." Many businesses make this mistake. Instead of focusing on the emotional benefits to the consumer, they focus on the product offerings or services. For example, a landscaper might include a bulleted list of all his services: lawn maintenance, pruning, weed control, fertilizing, landscape design, etc. If we think of this in terms of the lipstick vs. hope approach, the landscaper is really selling the promise of time. By hiring a landscaper, the consumer will have more time to relax and actually enjoy his home's outdoor space -- this is what a landscaper truly sells, not the mowing or fertilizing services. You can still list all the services you provide, just make sure you've included the ultimate benefit to the consumer. It can be as simple as using a picture of a man laying on his hammock actually having time to enjoy the beauty of his back yard.

 3. Motivate readers to turn the card over
The goal with any direct mail postcard is to inspire (compel) people to turn it over to read the backside further. How do you do this? Give them a reason upfront for turning over the card. Use a banner or callout that says things like:

• Read the back for 4 things you need to do now for a green lawn in the spring!
• Turn card over for money saving coupon!
• Save this card with your neighbor's names so you can help welcome them into your neighborhood!
• Read the reverse to find out how to efficiently program your thermostat to save money in the summer!

You get the point. Don't assume that people pick up your postcards and read every word. You have 3 seconds to make an impression and provide them with a compelling call to action, which will motivate them to read the back side. Promises of discounts, money saving tips, urgent calls of action and educational advice are all great motivators.

4. Write a compelling headline
If you've read this far, then such techniques like asking a question or using a number with tips or benefits for something both compelled you to read more! I recently used a headline on one of my own direct mail pieces that said, "Wait, don't call us just yet..." The intent was to say something contradictory to what the reader is likely thinking. My goal was for them to wonder why I don't want them calling my business just yet. The goal of the postcard was to position my company, Message in a Mailbox, as a resource. I want businesses to engage with me on Facebook and learn more about direct mail. My ultimate goal is to help businesses -- I'm not concerned that they call me and I win a sale today. I know that when you actually help people, you'll eventually earn their business for the long term.

If you've read this far, I really hope you'll be compelled to "like us" on Facebook and engage with us there!

Make your customers pay for your direct mail!

I originally titled this article "How to calculate your customer's value against the ROI of your direct mail," and reading that made me want to stick a fork in my eye out of boredom. Businesses sometimes grumble about the cost of direct mail, feeling as if it's stealing away at profit margins. Hopefully, this blog will serve to turn that thinking around a bit and help you understand that your customers are the ones actually paying for your direct mail! If they aren't, then that's a problem that we'll need to talk about....

Owning Message in a Mailbox, a company focused on direct mail -- and more specifically, direct mail flyers and postcards, you'd expect me to pronounce that direct mail is critical for every business.

However, I'm not going to say that, because it would dilute my credibility. I am all about helping small businesses, and I will be the first person to tell a business when their money would be better spent in other areas. However, I will say that most businesses find direct mail both beneficial and essential when it comes to growing their customer base. So, how does one determine if direct mail is right for them?

Businesses need to have a good sense of their own numbers, before looking at any form of advertising. What is the lifetime value of a customer to your business? This is not how much a customer spends on a sale, but rather how much profit that customer brings to you. Not only is it the profit from their transactions over a lifetime, but it also includes the value you receive from them in terms of referral business and the increasingly important social engagement (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) If you are a realtor, you are looking at a commission of between $8,000-15,000 for an average Lake Norman home, and upwards of $30,000 on one sale if you're selling some of the exclusive lakefront properties. If you gain the trust of your clients and handle more than one real estate transaction for them during their lifetime, that customer could have quite a large value to you.

Let's say as a realtor, you want to send out 10,000 postcards per month all year long. That would be 120,000 pieces of direct mail in a year. For simplicity sake, we'll stick with flyer box delivery and calculate the total cost of your direct mail piece at .20 per household. This would come to $24,000 per year spent on direct mail (printing and delivery). Direct mail averages around a 2.5% response rate. Now, I'm not going to calculate the response rate based on the total number of pieces mailed. I'm going to assume you are repeating your mailing to the same 10,000 people each month (repetition is the key), and use the reach (number of households) and not the number of pieces mailed (each of the 10,000 homes will receive 12 postcards/year). If the target group that you're mailing to is 10,000, and we conservatively factor a 2% response rate, this would be 200 responses over the course of the year from this campaign. The conversion rate of a response to an actual sale is estimated at half the response rate. Now we have 100 sales that came from your mailing to the same group of 10,000 people each month over a given year. If your average commission is even $10,000, then you've spent just $24,000 and received over $1 million in new commissions. Keep in mind, that realtors need to subtract overhead and other expenses so that $1 million would not be pure profit, but they've more than covered the cost of that direct mail campaign several times over. This is why realtors dominate when it comes to direct mail -- they know it pays off big for them.

Let's walk through another example and take an owner of a heating and air company. They might have two groups of customers -- those who have only used them for routine or minor repairs, and those that have actually used them to replace a major unit in their home. Their goal is to maintain customers over a long span of time, so that the majority will require a large purchase at some point in time. Conservatively speaking, let's say their average customer has a value of just $1,000 to their business over a lifespan. This would be someone who uses them for maintenance and repairs for a span of 5-10 years or a customer who just had his AC and furnace replaced. Clearly, calculating the "value" of the average customer is a little trickier in this line of business. For this example, their target reach might be less. We'll look at mailing just 3,000 postcards a month for 12 months. This equates to 36,000 pieces of direct mail at a cost of less than $7,200 for the year. Using the 2% response rate on the 3,000 homes they've targeted each month, they will get new sales from half of the 60 that responded over the course of a year. If their average customer is worth $1,000 (in profit) to their business over a lifetime, they've spent $7,200 but received over $30,000 in profit.

You can see why direct mail continues to lead among preferred advertising channels for many types of businesses. The more "value" a customer brings to your business over a lifetime, the better rate of return you will see. Above I mentioned that direct mail is not for every type of business. It's hugely successful for businesses like realtors who can realize a $10,000 commission off of just one sale. It's also successful for businesses who have repeat and steady business from their customers over the course of a lifetime (financial planers, doctors, dentists, cleaning services, landscapers, hair salons, etc.) What kinds of businesses aren't served well with direct mail? Those where the sale is neither a one time big revenue generator (realtor, builder, home remodeler) or a steady stream of repeat business over a lifetime. Let's say I wrote a book and wanted people to buy it. I target 5,000 people each month and send out 60,000 pieces of direct mail at a cost of  $12,000 for the year. Out of those 5,000 people, 2% respond and 1% actually purchase my book. I've sold 50 books. I'd be lucky to receive a $5 profit on that book, so I've now paid $12,000 for $250 profit. Oops...not a great return on investment at all! For any businesses that might be selling a single product or a service that's under $500 and would only be purchased once in that customer's lifetime, I would not recommend direct mail marketing.

I hope these examples help as you analyze what kind of rate of return you can expect through direct mail. Stay tuned, as we'll soon be discussing "how much" and "how far" your direct mail efforts should be for your business goals.

Are you selling lipstick when you should be selling hope?

In our factory, we make lipstick. In our advertising, we sell hope." Peter Nivio Zarlenga

Once you understand this fundamental concept in marketing, it will help you to better position your product. So many times businesses focus too much on what they are selling, and not the benefit to the consumer. A lipstick manufacturer's marketing department might fall into the trap of wanting to promote other benefits of their particular brand -- how many colors they make, the innovative tube or packaging, the longevity of the lipstick stain, the glossy finish, or the moisturizing nutrients added to the product. While each of these are benefits, to focus on any of those without realizing that you're selling the promise of hope to women would be a miss.

How can this message translate into your own marketing? If you're a realtor, are you focused on the square footage, the lot size, or the fact that the home boasts a huge island and stainless steel appliances in the kitchen, instead of what that means for a potential buyer's future lifestyle?

If you're a landscaper, are you more focused on the laundry list of services you provide (mowing, trimming, pruning, fertilizing, etc., rather than the emotional appeal your services provide to your customers in terms of having more time to relax and enjoy their outdoor spaces?

Think about the power emotion plays in your next advertisement or direct mail piece. Product benefits and statistics to back up your product add value, but they should be the supporting elements of a campaign and not the feature.

"iPod. 1,000 songs in your pocket." How we can write better headlines from this example

On October 23, 2001, Apple Computer launched a new product. At the Apple Music Event in Cupertino, CA, Steve Jobs uttered this simple phrase: "iPod. 1,000 songs in your pocket." This phrase was so concise and so meaningful, that Jobs could have just stopped his address there and called for questions.

In the fall of 2001, I was still carrying around my clunky Discman. For the 20-year-olds reading this, the Discman was considered cutting-edge. It allowed you to carry around a single cd and play music. If you wanted to switch to another cd, you'd have to carry those in a separate pouch. Yes, lame. If you've ever seen those horrible "NOW That's What I Call Music" compilation cds and wondered who on earth would buy these, I did. If you didn't want to listen to a single cd with one artist, it was the only way to get a mix of songs on the Discman. Getting Ricky Martin's Livin la Vida Loca on a cd, along with a handful of somewhat decent songs, was just the price one paid in 2001. Until the iPod.

When Steve Jobs went to announce the iPod, he didn't focus on the product itself. He didn't focus on the technology advancements that made it possible to store so many songs. He didn't even focus on how much smaller his product was over other portable music devices on the market. He focused on the consumer. A single benefit: "1,000 songs in your pocket."

Most of you are probably thinking that nailing down a headline like that for the iPod was easy. It was an extraordinary product that would sell itself. Most pr and marketing practitioners aren't that lucky. We're not only tasked to pitch the ordinary; we're tasked to make it sound extraordinary.

I've written about the "so what factor" in public relations before. We need to ask ourselves this question on a daily (if not hourly basis). I spent a number of years working in high-tech environments writing news announcements for advances to things like mainframes and semiconductors. In both of these industries, the "so what" often took awhile to ferret out from my product groups. Sometimes, admittedly, I never found it.

Often, a pr or marketing practitioner's first line of contact when writing a headline is with the product engineers. While engineers are immediately impressed by things like faster processing speeds or larger storage capacities, those don't make good headlines. A good headline is simple. A good headline addresses an immediate, tangible benefit to its reader.

The best headlines are going to offer an immediate benefit.

In writing headlines, the two questions you need to ask include:

1) Who will benefit from this product?
2) What is the tangible benefit to those people?

If you can, push aside all the facts, figures and fancy charts from your product groups and engineers and just find that raw benefit. Sometimes the headline will write itself:

iPod. 1,000 songs in your pocket.

The Power of Words in Advertising

No words are needed...just watch:

 

No, your phone won't start ringing after sending out one piece of direct mail

Marketing's (Somewhat Sacred) Rule of Seven

Probably the biggest challenge with taking on any new client is when they haven't done much marketing and they're ready to add marketing to the mix to grow their company. They're revved up, thinking that if they spend some money on marketing, their phones will be ringing off the hook in the next few weeks.

Marketing professionals walk a fine line, needing to be enthusiastic for our clients while still establishing realistic expectations. I remember when I took on a landscaper as a client. He wanted to start with an over-sized postcard mailer. He committed to doing one mailing to start with. As much as I tried to convince him that he needed more than one mailing, or that November wasn't the ideal month to expect people to call for landscape designs, it was what he wanted to do. One mailing...in November. Sigh.

I learned from that experience that the client isn't always right and that for the sake of my own reputation, I could no longer take on clients that were too timid to commit to more than one random mailing.

With any new clients, my first step is to educate them on Marketing's Rule of Seven. Most professionals have already heard of this rough adage, but maybe don't share it with clients. It's really important that clients understand "the process" and how marketing works, so that they aren't setting themselves up for disappointment.

What is the rule of seven? The rule of seven is simple. It takes (roughly) seven exposures before someone notices your message. The seven exposures don't need to be in the same format -- for the landscaper, this could include his fleet of trucks people see with their large logo, his work crews with his employees all wearing the same t-shirts with his distinct logo, flyers, newspaper ads or articles, facebook posts, tweets, etc. People need to exposure to something (roughly) seven times before it's on their radar.

Now, does that mean the phone will start ringing once a client hits the magic number of seven? No. There are still other factors that go into a person's decision-making. Most often, it's timing. Does the person need this particular thing or service at this time?

For the landscaper, he wanted his direct mail to focus on elaborate waterfall features they could design and install. Again, one mailing in the month of December. One direct mail impression was not enough. The timing was completely wrong. While I tried to suggest that people aren't looking to have their yards dug up and deal with contractors between Thanksgiving and Christmas (he was a single guy who didn't grasp that people had too much on their plates this time of year to be thinking about designing water features), this was the time he wanted to do it. Timing wise, sending a mailing towards the end of winter when people are thinking ahead to spring would have been more effective.

Realtors are another group that depend on marketing to further their businesses. Realtors were easier customers in that they seemed to understand that not everyone who received a postcard mailer would be calling them. They know that not everyone is in the market to buy or sell a house. From personal experience, I probably received thousands of flyers and postcards from realtors in my mailbox for the six years I lived in my home. Many realtors didn't just send me seven direct mail pieces and call it a day; they sent me pieces at least once a month year after year. When the timing was right and I was looking to sell, I immediately had an impression of 3-4 realtors that I felt were the most established and professional in our area. Why? I was exposed to their constant stream of direct mail over several years, and it had gradually resonated with me. These were the realtors I called in for listing presentations when we were ready to sell.

The rule of seven combined with repetition and persistence will pay off in the long run. Clients need to know that their customers may not be ready for their services today, tomorrow or even a year from now. However, when they are ready, who will they call? They will call the companies that come to mind through all those repeated exposures to marketing messages.

Encourage your clients to stop thinking about whether or not the phone is ringing next week and have them focus on a long-term plan to increase consumer awareness and build a solid reputation over time. And, do not be surprised if you need to tell them this at least seven times before it starts to resonate! ;-)