Great Teasers

How to get them to read your copy

Direct mail’s copywriting guru, Herschell Gordon Lewis, maintains there are four prime motivators that come into play every time we try to persuade someone to respond to our offer:

fear

greed

guilt

exclusivity

With those in mind, I read the following envelope teaser copy:

How is it possible that many ­people with less intelligence, ­ability and ambition consistently achieve more than you?

That is a rare piece of copy, indeed, for it actually uses all four of Lewis’s prime motivators, in the following order of emphasis:

1. Guilt — Who hasn’t felt at sometime that they weren’t doing all they could to achieve the kind of success they want in life? Can anyone say they have fully tapped their potential?

2. Exclusivity — You’re being told you’re smarter than those others who are making it, others who are less intelligent, able ambitious than you.

3. Greed — If only you could achieve according to your potential, you could have all the things success brings — all the things those other, less capable people have.

4. Fear — You’re losing out. If you don’t do something soon, you’ll never have the success you want. You’ll be a failure!

Now, it’s a golden rule in direct marketing that if you pose a problem, you must also show that you have the answer to it. In this case, a second block of teaser copy states:

Inside: surprising results from a Harvard experiment shows you how to perform better... with less effort — and, achieve your goals... faster!

Well, I admit I’m hooked. I may not order what’s on offer inside the envelope, but I’ve simply got to find out what’s in there. And that’s the whole purpose of the carefully crafted teaser: Get the envelope opened.

All the foregoing was pretty much the result of my first reading of the envelope, which otherwise was a drab #10 manila window, with my name and address showing through.

I’ve looked at the envelope several times since, with a more critical eye. That resulted in one quibble: perhaps the language is too difficult: too many abstract nouns (intelligence, ability, ambition) and some awkward punctuation. But then I considered the target: people who feel they are above average.

Whether or not the copywriter set out deliberately to stroke their egos, he or she nonetheless achieves that subtly by casually throwing in just a few tough words.

They may not seem tough words to you, but with a functional illiteracy rate of 1-in-5, and an average reading comprehension level of grade 6 to 8, they are tough to a majority of North Americans.

The offer was a hassle-free 30 day trial of a set of six cassette tapes. The whole package consisted of an 8-page letter an unusual reply form, a reply envelope and a unique, photocopied testimonial.

PS — How do you feel about your untapped potential?

Too bad, Canadian Tire

The Power of Database Marketing

There's no question that database marketing is a powerful tool. But many marketing people don't have a clear idea of what database marketing is, or what it can do.

If you think that mass mailing to your customers or to a rented list is database marketing, think again.

There is (or should be) far more to a marketing database than a simple collection of names and addresses. But collecting information for a database and not putting it to use is like keeping your savings in a safe deposit box -- the money is there, but it's not working for you.

Let me give you a real life example: Several winters ago, during one of Vancouver's rare snowstorms, I drove into a Canadian Tire store to buy a set of snow tires and have them installed. They took my name, address, phone number, type of car and a couple of other pertinent facts and dutifully recorded the information. Then they pushed a couple of keys and printed out a work order.

A short while later, job done, I took my work order to the cashier, received an invoice, paid it and left with my receipt and my new snow tires.

That was in November. Around about the following May, I began to get tired of the noise my snow tires made on dry pavement. I noticed there was a sale on at a nearby tire store, so I drove in and 30 minutes and a couple of hundred bucks later, I had a nice new set of summer radials on my car.

What's my point. My point is that the store where I bought my tires wasn't Canadian Tire. But it could have been.

If they had used the information they'd collected about me properly, they probably would have had the sale. All they had to do was send me a postcard in March inviting me in for a free coffee while they took off my snow tires and put my summer ones back on.

They could even have offered me a deal on new tires in case I needed them (which I did). At the very least, I'd have been back in their store for half an hour, browsing and likely buying something. They'd also have had their chance at selling me new tires, and they'd have made a start at building a relationship with me.

Canadian Tire should have done something because they had the means to do it -- my name and other information in their database. And they had good reason to do something because I was a proven consumer of their products.

Why they didn't use their database, I don't know. Perhaps they simply see it as too complicated and expensive to extract timely information from the millions of transactions they must record every year. Perhaps they have embarked on a database marketing program, but haven't rolled it out yet. And perhaps they simply don't know or appreciate the value of their database.

Real database marketers know that direct marketing isn't database marketing unless the information you gather about your clients and prospects works towards your final goal: the sale!

More Direct Response by Numbers

Direct marketing is all about numbers

That's reflected in how often direct marketers write about or mention such things as:

· Herschell Gordon Lewis's five prime motivators (fear, greed, guilt, exclusivity and approval);

· The five direct marketing basics (target audience, offer, copy, graphics, timing);

· The eight surfaces you should never ignore (front and back of your envelope; top and bottom of the letter, back of the letter, front and back panels of your brochure, address side of your reply card);

· The 28 primary offers (too many to list here, but they range from “Free Information, to Risk Free Trial!)

But before all of those come the
all-important, Seven Success Principles:

These are written about direct mail, mainly, but they apply in their way to all other media.

1. Always have a clear and expressible goal for your direct marketing. You need some way to measure your results (total responses, net revenues, per cent response, etc.).

2. Never mail unless you have a reasonable expectation of at least breaking even. Don't spend $20,000 for $10,000 in results unless there's an excellent reason for doing so (i.e., you make a fortune on repeat business).

3. Test a random sample of your list before rolling out a major campaign. As few as 1,000 test pieces can give you a reliable estimate of how the whole mailing will go.

4. Continually test against your control package (your best performer). The package that beats it should become your new control.

5. Don't be dull. You're fighting for attention in a noisy, overcrowded world. If you want responses, you have to be noticed.

6. Always analyze your returns to look for non-obvious results. That unhappy one per cent response may represent a part of the list which, if mailed to separately would respond at 10%.

7. Don't be half-hearted. Commit enough time and resources (money and people) to your direct marketing to give it a fair test. You can always learn something, even from a mailing that flops, so your money's never completely wasted.

Copywriters are self-made, not born

John's Top rules for good copywriting

Nobody can teach you to be a good copywriter; that comes from your own desire... from paying attention to good copywriting... from listening to your inner reader... from actually tracking what works and what doesn't (direct marketing only). There are, however, a few tips, tricks and rules that can help make you better that you already are:

The overarching rules

1. Be interested in everything. Read widely – you never know what is going to come in handy.
2. Pay attention to good writing. Notice how good writing is effortless to read, or nearly so.
3. Read a few good books on writing
4. Grab attention right away.
5. Keep on grabbing attention.
6. Bring your personal knowledge and experiences into play to add fascinating facts and dramatic scenarios and details.
7. Look beyond the obvious and keep your mind receptive.

The nitty-gritty rules

1. Lay it out so it’s easy to read.
2. Just sit down and write. For longer pieces, do an outline, then write.
3. Don’t revise as you go, that’s just a way of procrastinating.
4. Write it, forget it for awhile, then re-write it.
5. There are close to a million words in English, try to pick the best ones for your topic, audience and tone. Among those million words are thousands of words of jargon. Avoid jargon, unless your audience really expects it. Look up 'jargon' in your dictionary. Pin the definition up where you can see it.
6. Don’t fall in love with what you’ve written. What seems charming, witty or affecting to you may just be affected and trite to others.
7. Trim away the fat, especially that ‘just warming up’ lard you started out with. Remember that your real lead may be two or more paragraphs away from your starting point. Cut out the dross.
8. Seek non-sycophantic second opinions.
9. Collect as much information as you can. You’re not just looking for facts to use, but also deep background that gives you a better understanding of the topic, product or service. Prepare a list of at least 20 questions before interviewing a client or subject.
10. Try not to let committees suck the life out of your work. But remember who’s paying your bill.
11. Don’t be afraid to fire clients, especially those who force you to work with intransigent committees.
12. Charge by the project, not by the hour or day. Charging by time limits your earning capacity.
13. If you’re working too hard, you aren’t charging enough.

A few good books

On the art of writing copy - Herschell Gordon Lewis
Direct Mail Copy That Sells - Herschell Gordon Lewis
Selling Your Services - Robert Bly
On Writing Well - William Zinsser
The Careful Writer - Theodore M. Bernstein
Tested Advertising Methods - John Caples
Telling Lies for Fun and Profit - Lawrence Block

You can find all those books at reasonable prices on Abebooks.com
Anything by Lewis or Bly will give you lots of tips for writing DM copy and, in Bly's case, marketing yourself.