Toolkit: Putting together a direct mailing

Phil H

Marketing & PR. Getting customers and keeping them without breaking the bank. (2007) Philip R Holden and Nick Wilde. London, A&C Black.

Toolkit: Putting together a direct mailing

Why use direct mail?
Direct mail (DM) is, despite its reputation, one of the most effective and precise forms of marketing communication. In the main chapters of this book, we emphasise the importance of quantifying objectives and monitoring the effect of your marketing activities; the good news is that direct mail is absolutely measurable.
DM can cover everything from invoices sent to existing customers right through to large sample packs sent to company decision-makers. Response from direct mail gives us valuable information. It gives us new potential customers as well as information about the kinds of customers who might respond in the future. It also tells us who will not respond. This data enables the future selection of recipients to be even more precise and cost-effective (see Toolkit: Buying a mailing list).

Planning
The sole purpose of direct mail is to get a response. That’s it.
The first imperative, therefore, is to get to the right people. Choose the list of names and addresses carefully; a cheap list with the wrong names is actually very expensive since it is mostly waste (look up ‘allowable marketing cost’ in Chapter 8 of 'Marketing & PR'). DM should always be personalised.
The sole purpose of mailing a group of customers is to get them to get in touch with you. That means you must include at least one and probably two or three ways for them to respond. If there is to be a telephone number it should, if possible, be free (0800 – although there are other options to reduce the cost) and must be answered 24 hours a day (even if that means an answering service of some kind). Likewise, addresses must be ‘freepost’ or ‘reply paid’. These forms of assistance remove a barrier to response.
As you get more practised at direct mail, you may test various forms of response mechanism, but in the early days you need to invest in order to
maximise response. So keep the barriers as low as possible.

Writing the story
Whatever else you do, don’t feel that you have to write like the direct mail letters you receive (and throw in the waste paper bin); don’t try to be ‘creative’ (unless you are). It’s sometimes useful to imagine you are writing to one particular customer. You should be writing to someone you already know and understand. That doesn’t mean you pretend to know them intimately; just write about what you do know. If you are writing to a small number of customers or to customers with slightly different needs or interests, take time to write different letters; DM doesn’t need to be mass produced.
The very first thing your recipient needs to read is the biggest offer or benefit of your product or service. Write in short sentences using positive words. Be straightforward and honest, but if the benefit is aspirational or emotional, be honest about that too and use appropriate language; don’t try to use words you wouldn’t be comfortable using at other times. Don’t write about just yourself and your company, but do write about the customer and what he or she will gain from the product.
For small businesses, it is often a good idea to give the recipients an idea of your personality (remember your values?). People like to buy from people they can visualise and trust, so including pictures of yourself, your staff and the place they work can help. This could be a separate insert. You might also include (true) testimonials from satisfied customers.
As far as possible you should show the product in detail, maybe on a page all to itself. Depending on your industry, though, you may actually want to send the product out (although you cannot send ‘unsolicited’ goods and expect or demand payment), or offer to send it without obligation to buy. In these cases, you must pay for the return carriage. Sometimes it’s important to the customers to be able to touch and try the product.
After convincing the recipients about the benefits they will get from your product, you need to give them reasons to respond now rather than later. Often this means giving some kind of extra incentive for a response – and a greater incentive for an early response.*
Beware of simply giving ‘money off’ offers. The guidance in the toolkit on sales promotion applies here: if price isn’t significant to your customers, don’t make it the focus of your incentive. Instead, offer additional benefits; why not offer complementary products that the customers might require to enjoy the main product or service? For example, booking a spa break and getting beauty products or a CD designed to help with relaxation as a reward.
Finally don’t forget to ask for the order! Too many mailings go out without a clear ‘call to action’. Be crystal clear about what the customers should do: ‘Fill in the order form, place in the pre-paid envelope, send to this address, send no money now’. Make it easy for them.

Testing, testing
For any given list of customers, you can test different products, benefits, response mechanisms, incentives and offers or guarantees. Simply split the list into two or more sections (though not too many small groups), each of which gets a different mailing. If you do this you must have a different code for the response device in each mailing. If in doubt, test the biggest/ most expensive things first.
No-one has yet managed to second guess a group of customers and experience suggests that after testing the list itself, the most important thing to test is the product/offer combination. If DM is going to be a major part of your marketing activities, then it’s essential that you build testing in from the start and throughout in order to keep track of the return on your marketing investment.

More information
You can find out more about direct mail from the Royal Mail (www.royalmail.com) including freepost and other business services. It also offers a service for small businesses to create direct mail online.
Freephone services are available from a number of suppliers such as 0800numbers UK (www.0800numbers-uk.co.uk), along with a range of services to manage calls.
See also Toolkit: Buying a mailing list.

* You should be cautious about incentives that could appear to be games of chance. See Toolkit: Sales promotion and the guidance given by The Institute of Sales Promotion (www.isp.org.uk).

Now, please post your comments and experience. Have you been using direct mail? Have you been planning with measurable results in mind? What problems have you faced?

(c) 2007 Philip R Holden & Nick Wilde