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.
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