ISSUE #61 - Tuesday, July 9, 2019
Posted by Denny Hatch
How to Create a
Breakthrough Direct Mail Package
PART I
CONFIDENTIAL
Under normal circumstances, everything
in this post would be highly confidential and shared only between a copywriter/designer
and the client who paid for the service.
Alas, after completing the assignment last January to everybody’s
satisfaction, the client turned out to be a deadbeat and stiffed me. Now all bets are off. I am free to
turn this painful experience into a teaching moment.
In this epoch of direct marketing the Holy Grail is email and the
Internet. In the minds of modern hotshot marketers, junk mail is complex, clunky,
s-l-o-w and expensive as hell. In their minds, direct mail should be deader than
Kelsey’s nuts.
Whatever you take away from these posts, please remember Direct mail
is the only safe medium for testing a new product or service. Use email, space
ads, crowdfunding, skywriting and your newborn will be kidnapped by the Chinese and sold all over the world before you even have the financing
in place.
What’s more, all the rules and techniques of old-fashioned direct mail learned over the past 800 years directly apply to e-commerce.
So here goes.
So here goes.
A Fascinating Assignment
Last year
I was contacted by Joe England, a brilliant, savvy direct mail consultant. He
was frequently spoken highly of by one of my best clients over the years, the late
Bob Doscher of Historical Times for whom I did a slew of (winning)
mailings.
England’s client, National Collector’s Mint, had a trove of shiny new
uncirculated 19th and early 20th century Morgan Silver
Dollars and wanted a new mailing.
Joe sent me a stack of direct response offers mailed to
coin collectors. The illustration at the top of this post is a sampling of what
was out there. I was sure I could do better.
We
agreed on a fee—$4,000 for copy, design and all revisions. I went to work.
The typical direct mail package
has six basic elements:
• Outside
Envelope (OSE)
The attention-getter. This is the
most fun piece to create, because it is designed to pop out from everything
else in the mail box. My great boss and mentor, Walter Weintz, said you always
start with the envelope. Others (myself included) disagree. The OSE should be
the last thing in the creative process—the WOW! factor that gives the prospect
a sudden big itch that needs serious scratching. It's the icing that sells the cake.
• Letter
According to Walter Weintz, there
are three kinds of copy: “YOU” copy, “I/ME” copy and “IT” copy. You copy
is the intimate me-to-you message that touts the benefits to you,
to your life, and to your career of this indispensable product or service.
“A
letter should look and feel like a letter,” wrote the legendary guru Dick Benson. For many years of
mechanically produced intimate communications, only one typeface was available--Courier
or typewriter type--the font you are reading now. I love it. It has warmth. It
has personality. When you receive a letter in Courier, it means somebody spent time lovingly hunting-and-pecking on an
old keyboard just for you.
• Circular
The circular is the “IT” copy. It is
about “IT”—the product or service being offered. It shows and describes the
features (as opposed to touting benefits), with headlines, subheds, call-outs, facts,
factoids, photos, charts, graphs and tables. It is an advertisement within the
package and appeals to the Left Brain, data-driven person. For this piece, use a standard
serif font.
In the early days of direct mail, the element with the Courier/typewriter font was easily identifyable as the letter.
In the early days of direct mail, the element with the Courier/typewriter font was easily identifyable as the letter.
• Order Form
This is
the “I/ME” copy. "YES! Send me the gadget, whitepaper, gizmo, membership or whatever.
I understand it comes with the following guarantee that I may
cancel and I can return it any time within the next 60 days, blah,
blah, blah."
The late freelancer Chris Stagg told me
the first element he created was the order card. This compresses the entire
mailing into a small space—the product, the price, the offer, the terms and
conditions, return procedures, etc. Once the order from is set, “everything is fixed in
my head and I can go onto create the sex appeal and romance,” Stagg said.
• BRE—Business
Reply Envelope
The pre-paid postage envelope
brings the order home.
• Any and All Bells and Whistles
The extra goodies you can
include—lift pieces, freemiums, Post-It notes, etc. The great direct marketing
guru Dick Benson wrote “Additional elements more than pay for themselves."
Where to Start with the Morgan Silver Dollar Mailing
The first
step: look at an NCM order form to see a typical offer to coin collectors from
these people.
Aha! The Mint seemed
to be happy to sell one coin. However, if collectors wanted more than one,
quantity discounts were available.
The old Ed Mayer rule: Success in direct mail is 40% lists, 40% offer and 20%
everything else.
In this case, list research—that first 40%—was not a factor. These were all coin
collectors.
That meant the offer represented 80% of the success. If I could come up with a
spectacular offer—one that had never been tested to coin collectors—we might
have breakthrough.
Obviously a $1000 dollar order was preferable to a $103 order.
Here is the envelope I sent Joe England, asking him to send it to the Mint to
see if I were out of my mind.
When I food shop at the Acme in Philly, I
am a sucker for their “Buy One Get One FREE” offers. Two questions for NCM:
• Would the Mint go along with “Buy 10, Get One Free?”
• How about a shiny embossed silver foil Morgan Dollar on the envelope?
Awaiting Joe’s reply, I started doing serious research on these coins:
• George T. Morgan, the sculptor
• Philadelphia elementary school teacher Anna Willness Williams who posed as the Godess of Liberty—a real home-grown American beauty (as opposed to a classical visage from a Greek statue).
• The design, production and the distribution of the Morgan Dollar over the years.
• Stories and inside gossip about the coin and its history.
Absolutely not! Too expensive!
That was
Joe’s and the Mint’s reaction to an embossed silver foil coin on the envelope.
Meanwhile, the bean counters at National Collector’s Mint were looking into the affordability of “Buy 10, Get One FREE!” concept.
Meanwhile, the bean counters at National Collector’s Mint were looking into the affordability of “Buy 10, Get One FREE!” concept.
The envelope copy with the offer was also verboten.
Nine Basic Direct Mail Rules
(etched into my DNA)
“There
are two rules and two rules only in Direct Marketing,” said entrepreneur/freelancer
Malcolm Decker:
#1. Test everything.
#2. See Rule #1.
#3. “Don’t
test whispers.” (E.g., Don’t test blue paper vs pink paper. Don’t test $49.95
vs. $49.99. Test $49.99 vs. $99.99. Testing is expensive. Go for
breakthroughs.) —Ed Mayer
#4. “The envelope has two purposes
only,” said the great copywriter, author, Herschell
Gordon Lewis. “To get itself opened…
#5. “…and to keep the contents from
spilling onto the street.”
#6. “Never put your offer on the outer
envelope.” —Axel Andersson
Three Rules for
Breaking the Rules, by Bob Hacker
#7. “Play by the rules until you have solid controls; you have a higher
chance of success and less risk.”
#8. “Break the rules after you have solid controls, because in breaking
rules, the risk—and sometimes the cost—is much higher.”
#9. “There are two ways to find a breakthrough: Play the rules
better than anybody else. Break the rules better than anybody else!”
My rationale for breaking the rules by
putting the offer on the envelope was this:
The target audience is coin collectors.
They buy in quantity. They have never seen a “Buy-ten-get-one-FREE!” offer. I
felt this offer jumping out at them in their stack of daily mail would be so
intriguing they would open the envelope out of curiosity to see the details.
The Good News
The Mint folks sharpened their pencils and decided the “Buy-Ten-Get-One-Free
idea was worth testing.
Just not on the outside envelope, please.
That said, below is the revised envelope
I sent to Joe England:
Denny Hatch’s Revised
OSE
Final National Collector’s
Mint Outside Envelope
Imagine if the coins were bright gleaming silver embossed foil! Wow!
Please Continue to Part II
###
Word count:1388
CONTACT
You Are Invited to Join the Discussion!
At age 15, Denny Hatch—as a lowly
apprentice—wrote his first news release for a Connecticut summer theater. To
his astonishment it ran verbatim in The Middletown Press. He was
instantly hooked on writing. After a two-year stint in the U.S. Army (1958-60),
Denny had nine jobs in his first 12 years in business. He was fired from five
of them and went on to save two businesses and start three others. One of his
businesses—WHO’S MAILING WHAT! newsletter and archive service
founded in 1984—revolutionized the science of how to measure the success of
competitors’ direct mail. In the past 55 years he has been a book club
director, magazine publisher, advertising copywriter/designer, editor,
journalist and marketing consultant. He is the author of four published novels
and seven books on business and marketing.
CONTACT
dennyhatch@yahoo.com
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No one brings direct mail alive better than Denny Hatch. One question though: What would gleaming silver foil look like after it passes through the U.S. Postal Service?
ReplyDeleteAmex envelopes with gold foil stamping come through fine, though the card icons are tiny. I suspect the foil-stamped coins would look terrific if well printed, even better with foil raised-embossing.
DeleteDoug and Jerry,
ReplyDeleteThank you for taking the time to comment.
And for the info.
The answer, of course, is Mal Decker’s “Test Everything” Rule.
Alas, we’ll never know.
Cheers.
I can't wait to read the next installment. Thank you Mr. Hatch!
ReplyDeleteJack, Thanks for writing. This has been a fascinating experience. Do keep in touch! Cheers.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Denny for this fascinating behind-the-scenes look.
ReplyDeleteCan't wait for Part II.
I miss writing for this market (for U.S. Historical Society, back in the day), and getting paid to read -- and write -- history.
David, Thanks for taking the time to comment.
DeleteAs I say to people, in this epoch of $1 trillion college indebtedness, how fortunate we are to be able to learn all sorts of interesting new stuff and be paid for it!
Do keep in touch. Cheers.
Thanks for this Denny - another fascinating and informative article packed with profitable nuggets. Interesting cultural difference is that here in the U.K. envelope copy tends to work much less well than a plain envelope and the Gary Halbert hand-addressed live stamp approach (which makes Hipsters throw up their hands in horror) tends to work even better. Keep up the good work! Nick from (Merry Old) England
ReplyDeleteAaahhh... Gary Halbert. His stuff was wonderful!
DeleteDo keep in touch.
Cheers.
I continue learning from Denny Hatch.
ReplyDeleteThanks for writing. I'll do my damnedest not to bore you.
DeleteDo keep in touch.
Cheers.
Dear Mr. Hatch:
ReplyDeleteThough you are a proponent of direct mail, it seems you could not put a stamp on an envelope and send your invoice to us. Nor did you pick up the phone and call our office, rather than just tell Joe. We never saw your invoice until today. However, despite your bad manners and misinformation, Joe was representing us and, since you did not get paid in a timely way, your check will go out to you this week. The outer envelope you posted saying that is the one we used is totally incorrect and even misspelled. The use of foil did seem like a good idea. So much so that we've tested same several times as early as 30 years ago and found that it did not increase orders or revenue and, in fact, had decreased same in some tests. The test package based on your submissions failed miserably against our control, though we loved some of your ideas so much, we recently tested a brochure with your historical material added to the control versus the control. At present, that version's results are on a par with the control. While I could go on and on, nothing is usually settled by engaging in a pissing contest. Sorry for the mix up on our end.
Sincerely,
Avram Freedberg, President, National Collector's Mint, Inc.
Dear Mr. Freedberg,
DeleteThank you for taking the time to write. You saw Joe England’s email to me (with cc to you and somebody named Mary Beth):
“TOTALLY MY FAULT. As I said on the phone, your not getting paid was totally my fault. I don't know how it happened, but I failed to forward your invoice to NCM at any time. They are totally innocent victims in this. I have apologized to you.
Apologized to Avram and Mary Beth. Is there any way in a future communication you can say you were not "stiffed" but you were a victim of my failure to communicate. I am very sorry. I am truly embarrassed to have caused problems for three good people, all of whom I consider very good friends.”
Joe hired me. I worked with Joe through the whole process. He was the advisor, mentor, editor and my conduit to National Collector’s Mint. Joe told me to send him an invoice on February 25th, which I did. Over the following 4 months I sent him a series of cordial emails asking politely when I would get paid and he sent me cordial replies saying he did not understand why no check was forthcoming and he would get right on it. I have copies of the exchanges. That was over a four-month period. You and I have never met. I went to http://www.avramcfreedberg.com and you come across as a very busy, important person with racehorses and myriad charities as well as you’re your coin business. It did not occur to me—me a total stranger—trying to call your or your company and telling perfect strangers that NCM owed me $4000. I am a simple copywriter. My business model is akin to Jay Leno’s six-word business model: “Write joke. Tell joke. Get check.” I am sorry for all the unpleasantness. Cheers.
Would've worked better with the offer on the outside envelope, in my opinion. (Subject, of course, to Mal Decker's rule about testing everything.)
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for this information. I have to let you know I concur on several of the points you make here and others may require some further review, but I can see your viewpoint. yahoo mail login in sign in
ReplyDelete