Creative That Gets Results!

Written for AutoSuccess Magazine
December 2001

By Scott Joseph

The clock is ticking. Ms. Carbuyer pulls the mail out of her mailbox and walks in her door. The kids are hungry, soccer practice is in one hour, dinner hasn’t even been considered yet, and she has to finish a proposal for work this evening. Absentmindedly, she flips through the mail. Electric bill. Junk mail. Letter from Great Aunt Matilda. Favorite magazine. Don’t know what that is- I’ll open it later. Another bill. Junk mail. Half of the mail goes into the garbage without ever being opened.

This is the stressful life of a direct mail piece. If you are lucky, you get three seconds to convince the person not to toss you in the trash.

Although all of my direct mail goes into my “A” pile (hey- that’s research!), most Americans open their mail over the trash can, usually while carrying on a conversation, listening to their answering machine, and feeding the cat at the same time. The point is this- your message is worthless if nobody reads it, and you have a very small window of opportunity to convince the reader to spend time on your piece.

Your first and most important goal in direct mail is to get people to open the piece and read your offer. This is also the toughest part of direct mail. The average family is now exposed to more than 1500 ads a day. This has trained us to tune out a lot of messages. So, how do we get people to listen to our message? Well, copy may sell the product, but it is the creative that sells the copy. The first impression that we make (and the one that determines if the piece ends up in the trash) is made by our creative.

Thankfully, we humans are a predictable lot. We ask ourselves three questions: “Is this envelope for me?” “What is it all about?” and “Who is it from?,” and then look at the mail piece in an attempt to answer these questions. There are five places on any mail piece that will be examined by the recipient- and they are almost always examined in the same order. By paying attention to these five hot spots first, we should be able to get our offer read.

The first thing people look at when opening mail is their own name. Is it spelled correctly? Is the address right? Personalization will always pull better results than “occupant” or “resident” addressing, and the actual address will always pull better than mailing to an entire mail route.

The second hot spot is any teaser copy on the front of the envelope. This is a very tricky area. If you put an offer on the outside of the envelope, it had better be intriguing enough to convince the reader to open the piece and read the entire offer. If it doesn’t, then it has clearly labeled the piece “junk mail” in the reader’s eyes. This is one area that you should be very careful with. Teaser copy puts all your eggs in one basket. If you aren’t extremely confident in your writing abilities, hire a professional copywriter, or avoid it altogether.

Another alternative is to use “official” teaser copy. Use terms such as “immediate response required” or “time sensitive document,” which evoke a professional, official tone. The final option is to avoid copy on the outside of the mailer altogether.

The third place people look is the return address. Here they are looking for more information. They want to see if they recognize the sender, or the sender’s address. If they do, it will give them a better idea of how to classify that mail piece. Although the address itself will need to follow postal guidelines the sender’s name can be “disbursement office,” “administrative office,” or some other title, or it can be completely omitted, with only the address listed. Sometimes no information is better than providing information that immediately tells the recipient that you are advertising to them.

The next hot spot is the postage. People will look to see if the piece is stamped, metered, pre-sorted, or sent bulk. This adds to the recipient’s perception of the piece as a whole. Weigh carefully the pros and cons of saving money by sending the mail at a cheaper rate or paying full price to have a stamp affixed.

Finally, people will flip over the mailer and look at the back before opening. This is your last opportunity to use copy, design, illustrations, or any other creative to sell the piece.

Once the piece gets opened, creative helps direct people to read the mailer. People will only read what interests them, and it is up to the design to make it look interesting. To begin with, embrace the obvious. Americans read left to right, top to bottom. If you have a headline on the side of the text running bottom to top, you have decreased readability and comprehension. So the first rule of letter design is this- if the person opens a piece of mail that looks like a letter, make it read like a letter.

Reversed-out text decreases comprehension, as does a mixture of fonts, colors, and sizes of type. If your letter looks like a carnival, with your eye jumping from point to point, instead of following one train of thought, you might want to tone it down. Don’t exhaust or confuse your reader with the design.

Clearly lay out your letter with headlines, subheads, and an obvious offer in the first and last paragraph. Make it easy for your reader to figure out what you need to tell them. Consider using a P.S. statement that repeats your offer. After the headline, that is usually the first thing read on a letter. Reduce or eliminate color altogether. Black and white is still the easiest type to read and remember.

My grandmother use to say, “You can’t save souls in an empty church.” And you can’t sell a car to someone who doesn’t open your mailings. Creative is what gets your mailer opened and read. Only by knowing all the rules (and occasionally breaking them) can you turn a dollar investment into a $30,000 sale!

Next month: Secrets to Improve Your Sales and Profit With Direct Mail!

Read another AutoSuccess article:

April 2001:
Seven Advantages of Direct Mail for the Automotive Industry

June 2001:

Testing and Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Advertising to Improve Your Profit

July 2001:

Killer List Strategies For Your Direct Mail Promotion

September 2001:
How to Make Them an Offer They Can't Refuse!

October 2001:
The Secret of Out-Performing All Your Other Advertising!

November 2001:
The Number One Strategy to Out-Market Your Competition

January 2002:
Secrets to Improve Your Sales and Profit With Direct Mail

February 2002:
How to Sell One to Two More Deals for Each 100 Pieces of Mail You Send!

March 2002:
The Seven Biggest Marketing Mistakes Everbody is Making, and How to Avoid Them!

April 2002:
Business Rules to Grow By!

May 2002:
The Only Three Ways to Grow Your Business

June 2002:
Your Customers are Speaking To You. Do You Hear Them?

July 2002
How to Attract Quality Traffic

August 2002
Make Money on Your Sales Event Before it Even Begins!

September 2002
Marketing Lists That Work!