#124 Freemiums

 #124 Blog Post - Wednesday, April 28, 2021

 http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2021/04/124-freemiums.html

Posted by Denny Hatch

Why Direct Mail Is Such Fun:
Lumpy Envelopes and Freemiums!

  When I was a kid in the 1940s, TIME magazine sent out renewal notices in a small envelope with a tiny lump at the bottom. This was a minuscule red pencil (black lead) embossed the magazine's logo.

The logic: a lumpy envelope stood out from the crowd and the dear little pencil was a convenience: no excuses for not checking the box:
          "YES! Please Renew for __1 year __2 years"

I remember being fascinated by the little pencils. How did they make them so small? How did the tiny lead get into the barrel of the pencil? What was the cost to TIME magazine? How were they inserted in the envelope—by hand? By machine?

I used to treasure the pencils; took 'em to school and showed my friends.

 Premiums/Freemiums

Many, many years later—when I drifted from being a traveling book salesman into managing book clubs, I had to learn all about direct mail and space advertising—the technology, the arithmetic (e.g. allowable Cost-per-Order, Offers, Pricing... all that fun stuff). 

When I ran the Meredith Book clubs, we tested:

Take the New Better Homes & Gardens Fondue Cookbook FREE! and you'll receive this sturdy steel Fondue pot FREE!—yours to keep whether or not you join the club! 

The arithmetic was pinned to the average number of paid books per member. Sans premiums (as I recall) the member became profitable after her fourth purchase. With the premium fondue pot she became profitable when she had paid for her sixth selection. The premium—the free goodie sent with the order—more than paid for itself when it raised response.

Same thing with the teeny TIME magazine pencil—the freemium was sent in the outgoing #9 envelope. Being lumpy, it separated itself from its stack of #10 cousins and obviously increased renewals because it was control for years.

       The ACLU's Splendid Pocket Freemium
Last week Peggy received a pitch from the American Civil Liberties Union in a lumpy #10 envelope. The lump: a pocket edition of the U.S. Constitution—a very relevant and imaginative gift carried by high-powered legal scholars, politicians and patriots.

Former ACLU president Susan Herman said the first time she recalled it being brandished in public was during the Senate Watergate Hearings in 1973. The brilliant Chairman, Democrat Sam Ervin of North Carolina pulled one out of his breast pocket and startled every in the room—and millions watching on TV—when he proclaimed in his southern drawl:
"There is nothing in the Constitution that authorizes or makes it the official duty of a president to have anything to do with criminal activities."

Great Americans Never Without Their Pocket Constitutions
Left to right: Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephan Breyer, the longest serving member of the Senate, Robert Byrd (D, WV) and gold star father, Khizr Kahn.

     The Lede from Anthony D. Romero's Letter.

When the Freemiums Became
The Whole Point of the Campaign

On September 5, 1980 Candice Lightner founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Her 13-year-old daughter, Cari, was killed by a drunk driver. Billions of return address labels blitzed the country over the years and were affixed to the top left-hand corners of tens of millions of envelopes.


The two messages: (1) For God's sake don't drink and drive; you'll kill people. (2) If you're going out drinking, have a sober designated driver. Candice Lighners's powerful, deeply personal tragedy caught the public's imagination and the business took off. How many lives were saved as a result? It's incalculable. Probably tens of thousands.

Joe and Jane Lunchbox seeing their names and addresses on a dozen or so return address labels showing through the MADD envelope window resonated deep in their psyches. They could actually do something about drunk driving and make the world a better place!

It was also a gorgeous business model for the mailers. The whole point of the exercise was to create mailings to raise money to create more mailings to raise money... and so ad infinitum.

One could only wish someone could take on the Gun Lobby with a campaign like this! The problem: we're a country full of bloody minded gun nuts.

                   Takeaways to Consider
• The great direct marketing consultant, Dick Benson, proclaimed if you use a premium, it does not need to have any relationship to the offer. It's the desirability of the product that counts.

• Tote bags are obvious premiums—magazine circulation people use them all the time. After all a tote bag with the magazine's name on it is an ad for the magazine.

• However, a while back I received a real strange mailing from DOCTORS WITHOUT BOARDERS—a very fat 6"x9" cardboard envelope containing a donation pitch along with a tote bag. The Premium was the Freemium.

• My take: savvy consumers (and potential donors) could be very pissed off at DWB wasting all that money on a tote bag mailing when it could go toward healing. I cannot believe it was profitable.

• (If you received this mailing I'd sure like to know about it. It means the test was successful, was rolled out and I'm dead wrong.)

• Whereas a premium need not relate to the product or service, a freemium should relate to the contents of the mailing package (e.g., a pocket Constitution from ACLU).

• In the world of digital marketing, there ain't no freemiums and lumpy, attention-getting mailings.

• In short, next to digital marketing (and Social Media marketing), direct mail is (1) a hoot and (2) absolutely accountable.

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Word Count:  929

 

#123 Blog Post - Snoop Marketing

#123 Blog Post - Tuesday, April 6, 2021

 http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2021/04/123-blog-post-snoop-marketing.html

 

Posted by Denny Hatch

 

ALL ABOUT SNOOP MARKETING

                                                                          Official Photo

The 122-word Warning to Direct Marketers from
The CEO of the World's Most Valuable Company

“Technology does not need vast troves of personal data stitched together across dozens of websites and apps in order to succeed. Advertising existed and thrived for decades without it. And we’re here today because the path of least resistance is rarely the path of wisdom.

 

“At a moment of rampant disinformation and conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms, we can no longer turn a blind eye to a theory of technology that says all engagement is good engagement, the longer the better. And all with the goal of collecting as much data as possible.

 

"If a business is built on misleading users, on data exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, then it does not deserve our praise. It deserves reform."
    —Tim Cook, CEO, Apple
     January 28, 2021, Data Privacy Day Speech

 

In 1984 Peggy and I launched WHO'S MAILING WHAT! a cranky little newsletter and archive service for professionals who marketed by direct mail. Mail was Top Dog—larger than TV, radio, print advertising, telemarketing, billboards and skywriting COMBINED!

 

Every now and again I would get a phone call from a reader asking how often a customer should be contacted.

 

When we sold the business to Target Marketing magazine where I became editor and publisher, I had roughly 20 times the number of readers. Whereupon I got a lot more calls asking how often a customer should be contacted.

 

My answer from the beginning:

"Contact your customer when you have something important to say that would be of interest to generate revenue—a great benefit, an exciting new product or service, news of a 'Buy-one-Get-One FREE!'" offer.

 

"What about software that keeps track of how often a customer is contacted? What is the best product? And does it work?"

 

My answer:
Put yourself in the customer's shoes. Would you want to hear from a vendor who was calling or writing with nothing to say just to see if you are still alive? 

 

A (Very) Short History of Data Collection

Anybody out there remember when lists were kept on Addressograph plates? Imagine tens of thousands of these metal things—each with one customer's address. Imagine tens of thousands of these metal things and the monstrous clattering machines that stored them, sorted them, inked them and addressed envelopes with them.

Enter primitive computers in the late 1940s and 1950s when the data collection industry graduated from tin plates to these paper punch cards.

In the 1960s—when I took over the Better Homes & Gardens book clubs, the heart of our business was the vast computer room that looked like this with dozens of magnetic tape reels and addressing machines that could spit out many thousands of envelopes, invoices and personalized rejection slips in an hour.

 

Remembering Ed Mayer (1907-1975)

   From 1939 to 1945 Mayer was a senior consultant to the State Department advising on propaganda. He set up a wartime system of dropping leaflets behind enemy lines from planes and balloons. After the War he went on to a distinguished career in the practice and teaching of direct marketing and authoring "How to Make Money in Direct Mail." Mayer's Rule—absolutely true today:

 "Success in direct marketing is 40% lists,
40% offer and 20% everything else."

 

Translated into Today's Lingo:

40% lists = Finding the right people to contact.

40% offer = Whaddya got to sell and what's the deal? 

20% everything else = Copy, design, website, guarantee, etc.

 

After 60 Years in the Business I Believe
All Emphasis Is on 40% Lists (Snooping)

For some reason today the lion's share of direct marketers have become besotted by the giddy world of creating high-tech electronic dossiers and scraping up every scintilla of gossip and professional information on every person in the English-speaking world. These creeps comb news, social media, personal correspondence by and about every human being from birth to death—and including it in the dossier. Whereupon they use it to "market" via A.I. (Asshole Intelligence.)

 

A personal aside: the 40% lists and list research always bored the hell out of me. My fascination was (and is) what you say to prospects and customers and how you say it so they will part with their money.

 

My Rude Awakening, May 16, 2018

That day I mentioned in a blog post I had lower back pain. A long time caring reader named Stan sent me a comment suggesting I look into a nationwide consortium of physical therapists. Precisely at 11:00 a.m. I replied via my Yahoo email:

     Aaah, Stan...

     Thank you.
     I'd rather spend my money and time on Grey Goose vodka and Viking cruises.

At 11:15—a quarter hour later—I received a message in my Yahoo in-box touting Grey Goose vodka! Here's the link to the blog post and the story:

http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2018/08/20-all-your-emails-are-being-stolen-and.html

 

Think of that! Yahoo had sold the private contents of my personal email to Bacardi/Grey Goose who immediately sent me a Grey Goose ad. The message was stupid as hell for two reasons:

 

• The jerks at Yahoo alerted me the contents of everything I write is being is being sold to outsiders all over the world.

 

• I was (and am) a Grey Goose customer who did not need an ad for Grey Goose. I was doubly pissed off—at both Yahoo and Grey Goose for their seedy duplicity.

 

Circling Back to Tim Cook's Lede to This Post

"Technology does not need vast troves of personal data stitched together across dozens of websites and apps in order to succeed. Advertising existed and thrived for decades without it. And we're here today because the path of least resistance is rarely the path of wisdom.

 

"At a moment of rampant disinformation and conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms, we can no longer turn a blind eye to a theory of technology that says all engagement is good engagement, the longer the better. And all with the goal of collecting as much data as possible."

 

Takeaways to Consider

•  What makes direct marketing elegant—the aristocrat of the advertising profession is that—when done right—results are precisely measurable.

  

• When I got into direct marketing the basic information needed before spending on prospecting or marketing to customers.

   —Name and address.

   —Can they afford to do business with you?

   —Do they pay their bills?

   —What are their interests, hobbies, professions and behavior patterns?

   —Do they respond to offers made from a distance?

 

• Whereupon you tailor and test powerful offers of specific interest to them.

 

• Snoop Marketing is emphatically NOT elegant. The seedy, venal low-life that steals your emails, history of searches, downloads, purchases, trysts, travels, travails,  browsing habits, every scintilla of dust, data and dirt by and about you, your family, your children, friends, business associates, enemies, even your pets—and put it up for sale all over the world. 

 

• "I have always believed that writing advertisements is the second most profitable form of writing. The first, of course, is ransom notes."

—Phillip Dusenberry, Chairman, BBDO Worldwide 

 

• If you're gonna practice Snoop Marketing, for Pete's sake have a delay system in place—say a couple of weeks at least—so your disgusting thievery isn't instantly thrown up in my face.  

 

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Word count: 2005