Direct Marketing For You

Tuesday 26 July 2016

The 7 Best Direct Mail Teasers of 2015

How do you engage direct mail prospects in your message? It’s a question that’s always in the back of my mind when I analyze mail for Who’s Mailing What! The easiest and hardest place to start with, if you’re mailing with envelopes, is the teaser.

Let’s put aside for the moment the never-ending debate of whether envelopes should even have a teaser. To quote copywriter Lea Pierce, “You have three seconds to live or die” as your mail is being opened.

So what makes a good one? I know, it’s a loaded question.

I compiled a list of about four dozen new teasers that engaged me right off the bat in 2015, especially once I saw that the message inside fulfilled my expectations.

In no specific order, here are seven of the top ten.

1.GEICO
Sure, many insurance companies vow to save you money. GEICO is particularly good at this with much of its mail.

But what got me here was mixing type sizes so that the promise really stands out, and pairing it with a QR code that can be scanned to completely bypass the message inside. Or … you know … open the envelope anyway.

2. California College San Diego
This mailer also mentions money (“the income you deserve”) in the teaser as it flatters the recipient.

That tactic – tapping into the yearning for a better life – is pretty uncommon for college mail, even when the target audience is working adults. The letter and other components inside reassure the student that they can balance their responsibilities while achieving their goals.

3. Lifelock
It seems like every week brings news stories about financial, employment, or customer records being hacked from a variety of places around the world.

Lifelock leverages fear of identity theft in this membership effort by using the teaser to noting a healthcare records attack, and then go into more detail about the crimes (and their solution) on a buck slip inside the envelope.

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Saving Bees With the Ultimate Direct Mail Freemium

Direct mail freemiums can seem pretty dull after a while when you’ve seen as many as I have over the years at Who’s Mailing What! Address labels, notepads, calendars, stickers … you can argue about how much real value they provide to donors these days. And, even knowing that they still lift response for many nonprofits, I might agree with you.

But sometimes a tactic — a simple packet of seeds — makes me sit up and take notice … and it all started with dying bees.

The collapse in honeybee populations in recent years is a big story because it has implications beyond the intrinsic worth of an animal species. Besides providing honey, bees pollinate the crops that provide a third of American food. Yes, a third. That’s a lot of nuts, seeds, fruits, and vegetables.

Originally I wanted to write about how environmental groups are fundraising around this crisis. I had gathered mail from Friends of the Earth, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Earthjustice, and intended to compare outers, letters, incentives, etc.

Then, a #10 envelope from the Sierra Club was dropped on my desk.

There’s nothing like a short teaser in a distressed typeface (“BUZZ KILL”) and a large image of a dead bee to immediately grab your attention.

This member acquisition effort centers on how the usage of certain pesticides is threatening farms and businesses because it is also killing bees. The letter and inserts name the culprits, and there’s a brief petition to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on the reply form to push for a legislative remedy.

So in most respects, Sierra Club isn’t doing anything different from its colleagues named earlier, with one exception: this envelope includes a “BEE FEED Flower Mix.”

As the packet says, these seeds are for flowers that “provide nectar and pollen to wild bees, honey bees, and other pollinators.” Besides growing instructions, the back of the pack lists the ingredients: seeds for California Poppy, Blue Flax, New England Aster, etc.

Seeds have long been included in direct mail packages, but purely as an incentive to donate. Any connection to a group’s specific message or appeal has been tangential at best.

Here, the seed packet is a powerful involvement device, not a reward. It gives the recipient something literally hands-on to do: plant seeds for flowers that will save bees. It doesn’t get any more practical or relevant to the mission than that.

Also, like other elements mailed by advocacy groups, it makes the contributor a partner in the mission. Instead of a “street team,” you’re part of the garden team.

As the letter puts it: “Before long, we’ll provide plenty of clean, healthy, unpoisoned food for bees. We’ll regenerate the bees and the planet.”

The front and back of the packet also contain reassurances that the seeds are untreated and non-GMO, important considerations for much of the target audience for this mailer.

One slight criticism: the call to action (to use the seeds) appears three times in the letter, but nowhere on the reply form. Even with a lot going on there, it’s another opportunity to connect the dots for the donor.

You know that old parable about the kid throwing beached starfish back into the water?

A packet of seeds may not seem like that much either, but it will still make a difference.

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Direct Mail: Reach Out and Touch

Direct mail can take advantage of one aspect that no digital channel can ever use — touch. As human beings, our brains are hard-wired with the need for touch. It plays a huge role in our everyday lives. When we are able to harness the power of touch with direct mail, we are able to create an experience that recipients will not forget and may even share with others.

Our hands are very sensitive and designed to touch. They have the greatest density of tactile receptors on our bodies. Let’s take advantage of that with our direct mail pieces. Touching the mail piece is required as one gets the mail from the mail box and sorts through the mail. Grab attention immediately with a unique feel.

Consider using these five elements in your direct mail to enhance touch.

1. Paper Stock
Instead of choosing your paper stock by what is on sale or the cheapest one, consider choosing a heavier nicer feeling stock. The lasting impression you give to recipients will help them not only to remember you better, but trust you as well.

2. Coatings
Now, there are many coating choices. Consider how each one could work with your design and pick the best fit. One that is really popular right now is a soft touch coating. When you are able to match the feel of the piece with the message, you have a greater impact on the recipient.

3. Emboss/Deboss
Consider how you can incorporate an emboss or a deboss into your design to add a more 3D look and feel. What could you emboss or deboss that would draw attention?

4. Engraving
This not only adds beauty — it really enhances the feel. Think of all the ways a design can include engraving. You could outline key points or draw attention to parts of images that help to showcase your product or service.

5. Raised Ink
This can be a fun way to add a dimension and appeal to the touch need. You can do it for lettering and images. Get creative!

Adding touchable elements to your direct mail not only enhances the recipient’s experience, but it can drive their decision to buy from you. People make subconscious reactions and decisions all of the time based on what they touch. We can therefore influence people in our direct mail through touch. For instance, when you use a thicker paper stock and a soft touch coating, your product or service is viewed as trustworthy and your company as knowledgeable. Think of how you can influence with touch knowing that what we touch shapes what we feel and perceive.

The crucial point is to add touch elements so they enhance your direct mail, not draw attention away from your message. The elements should work with your message to give it more power. If you just add elements without planning on how they work together with your design and messaging, you are wasting your money and confusing recipients. This will have the exact opposite effect on your ROI than what you are aiming for.

When you have put together your plan, meet with a couple of your top customers to show them your idea. See what they think and if they understand it the way you intended them to. Make sure to get their opinions before you explain what you were trying to do. You want to see if your recipients will get the right message because you won’t be there to explain it to them.

Try to exploit the sense of touch in your next direct mail campaign.

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It's Our Mail Moment

“What are we going to do with this moment?” That’s the big challenge from a presentation I attended by Harris Diamond, the chairman and CEO of McCann Worldgroup, at this week’s National Postal Forum in Nashville, Tenn.

He was part of a discussion, “Welcome to the Experience Economy,” led by U.S. Postal Service Chief Marketing and Sales Officer Jim Cochrane. The all-star industry panelists shared their perspectives on how technological and cultural changes are affecting how consumers experience brands, and the implications this has for direct mail.

In one sense, Diamond was talking about the “mail moment,” the reaction of consumers to the direct mail that they receive. The lives of most people are increasingly cluttered with digital messaging, so this is the time when the tactile, physical nature of mail arriving at a consumer’s home can make a different impression. It’s a concept that the USPS has been talking about for a few years.

But he was also talking about the new possibilities facing marketers.

Thanks to advancements in technology, as well as an ability to align with developing social trends, “mail is on the edge of a new frontier,” he said, far beyond catchy art and copy. It has “the potential to be more powerful than ever before.”

A lot of this we already know. Maybe it’s using special textures, scents, or sizes in a mailing. Or maybe it’s digital technologies, like augmented reality, QR Codes, or NFC.

It’s why the USPS has the “Irresistible Mail” campaign: to incentivize marketers to use new techniques that make mail more personal and relevant to the consumer. To make the “mail moment” more powerful.

To provide food for thought, Diamond offered five interesting creative rules. As you would expect, they focus on using electronic media in direct mail to engage with audiences in the most effective way possible.

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Why Your Postage Rates Could Go Down in April

Since postage is the most expensive part of direct mail marketing, any postal rates changes are big news. Usually, the USPS announces a pending rate increase. On Feb. 25 the USPS filed a notice with the Postal Regulatory Commission that would reduce postage rates. Within the filing, the USPS stated:

“… It intends to remove the exigent surcharge on Sunday, April 10, absent action by Congress or the courts to make the existing exigent surcharge for Market Dominant Products and Services part of the rate base or to otherwise extend it.”

In this filing, the USPS also noted that while it “… recognizes that daily revenue fluctuations could result in a one or two day variation on when the revenue limitation is reached, our current estimate is that the revenue limitation will be reached some time on Saturday, April 9, 2016.”

The end of the 4.3 percent increase surcharge has been anticipated for some time, though the rate of collection left the actual date hard to determine. The reason there was a 4.3 percent increase was because the post office was granted an exigency rate case that allowed it to try to recoup some of the funds lost during the great recession. The court ruled that the rates could not be permanent and must be rolled back after the allotted amount was reached. That means that on April 10 we will see an overall decrease in postage by 4.3 percent.

The post office has been hoping for either legislation or court action to allow the higher rates in order to help offset the losses the post office has suffered for the past several years. The Postal Service worries how it will replace the 4.3 percent of revenue that’s been essential to keeping it in the black for the past two years. These rates have been in place since January 26, 2014, so it will be good for marketing budgets to have more money for the rest of 2016.

So let’s take a look at what some of the most common new postage rates will be:

First class single piece letter = $0.47
First class single piece postcard = $0.34
First class single piece flat = $0.94
Presorted automation first class letter mixed rate = $0.419
Presorted automation first class postcard mixed rate = $0.272
Presorted automation first class flat mixed rate = $0.75
Presorted automation standard letter mixed rate = $0.291
Presorted automation standard flat mixed rate = $0.539
Presorted automation nonprofit letter mixed rate = $0.176
Presorted automation nonprofit flat mixed rate = $0.40

As you can see, these amounts will add up over time to marketer’s postage savings. This means you may be able to mail more pieces or add additional design elements that would not have been affordable under the current postage rates. There is still a chance that action could be taken by either the courts or Congress to change the rates, but as of now, it does appear that we will have a postage reduction starting on April 10. What will you do with your postage savings?

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4 Delicious Ways to Leverage Recipes in Direct Mail

Direct mail can affect you in a lot of ways. It can make you happy, angry, inspired or sad … but can it make you hungry? It can when it includes food recipes, even when one of them turns out to be for borscht.

A few weeks ago, Ashley Roberts of Printing Impressions (a sister brand of Target Marketing) asked me to appear in a video with her to profile a mailing that Agfa Graphics sent to its VIP file. The beautiful food photography of the calendar and its accompanying cookbook was enhanced by augmented reality.

It got me thinking about other companies that have used recipes as an important ingredient in their marketing mix. Here are some ideas, based on mail found in Who’s Mailing What!, on how to entice customers with food content.

1. Demonstrate Your Product
This is almost too obvious: if food is your product, it certainly can’t hurt to help to offer a demonstration of how it can be prepared or used in a meal. For instance, supermarkets or packaged goods marketers can tie a recipe to a food that’s part of a sales promotion, special offer, or coupon.

Penzeys Spices sells high-quality spices for the home chef, from cinnamon and lemon peel to extracts and chili peppers. It has a chain of brick-and-mortar stores, an e-commerce website, and a direct mail catalog, all of which rely on recipes.

Here’s an example. This partial page from a Penzeys catalog describes saffron’s properties, the varieties that are available, and their pricing. The recipe that’s shown is so simple to follow that even I can master it.

When combined with numerous sidebar pieces and long-form articles in each issue of the catalog, this tactic bolsters the authenticity of Penzeys’ brand.

2. Reinforce Your Mission
Clever organizations have leveraged recipes for the right types of foods that are in keeping with their goals. Lots of health systems and hospitals mail newsletters and magazines that are chock-full of juicy content, like tips on exercise and disease prevention, as part of creating a more healthy lifestyle. To encourage healthier eating of one kind or another — low salt, low sugar, etc. — recipes are provided.

National Osteoporosis Foundation focuses on bone health and improving screening and other preventative measures in its fundraising campaigns. To supplement those efforts, and to support the group’s expertise, a recent appeal included two recipe cards and highlighted the calcium amount for each food.

3. Support Your Product
Recipes have long been used to tease printed products — like magazines, cookbooks, diet plans, and recipe cards — that focus on food. But what if the product isn’t print?

Comcast, for example, partnered with the Food Network on a direct mail promotion for all of its entertainment and communications packages.

Images throughout the brochure show food in different holiday settings, as well as the channel’s programs and personalities.

And the next-to-last page? Two “tasty holiday recipes,” with pictures, for “Really Onion Dip” and “Butter-and-Jam Thumbprints.” Yum.

4. Reward Your Customers
As the forward to the cookbook shown below notes, “food and travel are inextricably connected.” It was mailed to past customers who had traveled with Grand Circle, a tour operator. There’s no promotion for any upcoming trips, just a request for feedback on the cookbook itself.

The book’s 48 pages are designed to “inspire a culinary journey at your table,” with recipes covering dishes from a variety of Mediterranean destinations. With its high-gloss coated stock and spiral binding, it’s the perfect thing to sit on a kitchen counter as the traveler cooks and dreams of their next trip with the company, and the food they’ll eat along the way.

The one big takeaway to using recipes in mail is that it’s really not all that different than cooking itself. It’s a tactic that should be carefully measured out in just the right amounts to achieve the desired outcome, and not overwhelm the senses, or the tastes, of the customer.

Get more recipes on http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/

Do the Unexpected in Direct Mail: The Opposite

Marketers often ask me if there any new tactics or creative approaches in their specific industry’s direct mail or email. That’s a tough one to answer, even with what I know about each sector. So, I sometimes recommend that they carefully evaluate what their competition does, and then do the opposite.

Let me explain.

If you were a fan of the classic TV series “Seinfeld,” you’ll remember that advice was the premise for an episode called “The Opposite.”

Perennial loser George Costanza turns his life around and finds success — at least for a while — by “doing the opposite” of every instinct in his body.

The whole premise of Who’s Mailing What! is to see what others are doing in direct mail and email, then “steal smart.” But you can be just as smart by not following the crowd.

Here’s a great “opposite” design tactic that I’ve seen:

Usually, most conference and seminar marketers promote a show or workshop using self-mailers with lots of grids, blocks upon blocks of copy, pages of bullet-pointed benefits … and that’s pretty much it.

But conventions by definition are where people get together.

A mailing like this from the Printing Association of Florida – for the Graphics of the Americas show — is the opposite of what most other marketers do in that vertical.

This spread has lots of photos that show people learning, buying and selling, and engaging. You know — all of the things you do at an actual trade show or conference. The photos can be a bit unpolished, unposed … because they’re real and authentic.

And here’s a control from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine with a great teaser on the front above an image of a beautiful Dalmatian mix:

She is suffering … And mailing you a nickel won’t help.”

The letter inside picks up the theme. “Some groups will mail a nickel to their letters to get your attention … we’d rather use that nickel to save a dog like Queenie.”

It makes a case for support without offering premiums, either on the front end or back end. In other words, it’s the opposite of what many other nonprofits rely on in their direct mail to build membership and drive donor acquisition.

This isn’t all that radical a concept for this vertical. Oxfam America has had an appeal in the mail for over 10 years — one of our Grand Controls — that says the same thing once you get to the letter.

Think through your marketing. Do you really want to your direct mail to be thrown immediately into recycling because it looks and reads just like your competitors? Or can you stand out by being really different?

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