Wednesday, April 28, 2021

#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
 

4 comments:

  1. I did receive that DWB mailing and am currently looking at that very tote bag hanging on a door handle in my office. As far as fun DM goes. Years ago I worked for a direct mail insurance company as a newbie analytics guy. My boss got the great idea that we could increase response rate by activating the fear and uncertainty that people feel about doctors and hospitals through clever and inventive packaging. To wit, he got some chemical firm to develop a "hospital smelling" blob of goop( think disinfectant etc) that would activate upon opening the envelope, thereby eliciting thoughts and feelings of the impending doom that awaited you should you fail to purchase our insurance products. As I recall he was in the middle of getting USPS approval (they were concerned that the blob would be activated via regular mail handling and cause all kinds of mayhem in the mail stream. Luckily for all of us, our CEO intervened and killed the idea with some very NSFW verbiage. Such wonderful memories.

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  2. Richard,
    Many thanks for heads-up on your receiving Drs Without Boarders tote bag mailing. Am always delighted to be corrected. Am astonished the mailing worked! A learning experience for me!
    Your “blob of goop” story is Trumpian (injecting disinfectants to ward off Covid-19). Lotsa people in this world are nuts. Do keep in touch. Cheers.

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  3. Good afternoon, Denny!

    I also received the DWB tote bag – three times, in fact! I made a donation too. I couldn't bear the guilt of three bags and no donation from me.

    Nowadays, of course, it is more than ever vital that "lumpy" mailings be cleared with the postal authorities. An organization I belong to created cloissonne pins for its members, commemorating their years of membership.

    Though this was not a DM project, the first time these went out, they ran afoul of postal inspectors because they posed a danger to their expensive automatic sorting equipment. Forever after, they had to be mailed in special padded envelopes at a huge increase in postage.

    Always get your package inspected and approved!

    Once, the agency I worked for sent out thousands of self-inking rubber stamps that looked like lipstick tubes. These were used by QC inspectors to mark items coming off assembly lines. The client wanted its self-inking stamps to replace older ones that had to be used with a stamp pad.

    Not one single response to the mailing! Not one! My boss couldn't figure out why, and was idly playing with one of the stamps. He stamped his desk pad, and guess what? No image! All the stamps we had sent out were defective.

    Ruined the client's reputation – and cost a fortune.

    Best regards!

    Tim Orr

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    Replies
    1. Tim,

      Thank you for your long, thoughtful response.

      You are the third reader who received the DOCTORS WITHOUT BOARDERS freemium/premium tote bag mailing. It just shows (1) how dead wrong I was and (2) I’ve got to temper my strong opinions with “… or maybe not.”

      Thank you for your priceless advice to mailers: “Always get your package inspected and approved!”

      Regarding the defective stamp, one can’t be too careful about testing everything—from offers, copy, prices and products (and freemiums) before shipping them out.

      Mal Decker’s dictum is always in play: “In direct marketing there are two rules and two rules only. “Rule #1: Test everything. Rule #2: See Rule #1.”

      Do keep in touch.

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