DIRECT MARKETING METHODS Direct magazine’s 2002 analysis shows 19 methods to persuade or sell your prospects and customers through direct marketing. Though not all are in this article, they all are covered in this article.

• Card packs

• Fax marketing outbound

• Catalogs

• Freestanding inserts

• CD-ROM marketing

• Inbound telemarketing (including toll-free)

• Co-op mailings

• Interactive TV

• Direct mail (noncatalog)

• Internet1

• Direct response promotions

• Outbound telemarketing/teleservicing

• Direct response radio advertising

• Package inserts

• Direct response TV

• Point of purchase

• E-mail to prospects

• Self-mailers

• E-mail to customers

• Trackable coupons

DIRECT MAIL

This article has three goals: 1. To help you create your own direct response mailings. 2. To guide you in the supervision of mailings done by staff or outside experts. 3. To give you the basic rules and cautions for doing both.

The article begins with some basic rules and cautions about what is likely to work—and what isn’t—in selling by mail. It continues with specific guidance on how to create a direct mail promotion—always keeping in mind those basic rules and cautions. Four of these will be absolutely critical to your success: 1. The single most important factor in selling by mail is the list. 2. Test whenever possible. Treat every mailing as a retest. 3. Believe the numbers. 4. Know the value of a customer, not just of the order.

Help Abounds Practically every major city in the United States has a direct marketing association that is able and eager to help you. Check the Yellow Pages. If you are unable to locate the association by this means, check the Direct Marketing Association. Web site at www.the_dma.org. Then join your local association. They will help you, even if you’re not a member, but the continuing contacts alone are worth the price of admission. In addition, there is the excellent how-to magazine, Direct Marketing, published monthly by Hoke Communications.

Call the company toll-free at (800) 229–6700. On a more managerial level, Direct magazine is published monthly by Primedia, (888) 892–3613. For up-to-the-minute news, there’s the weekly DM News, published by BPA International, (847) 588–0675; or www.submag.com/sub/du. Read several issues of each one. Subscribe to all that are helpful. Lots of additional publications exist. As member of a direct marketing club, you’ll get information about them, as well as the many new online sources.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT

DIRECT MARKETING LAW

Although it cannot take the place of your attorney, the Business Checklist for Direct Marketers is an excellent place to begin. The brief, pamphlet-form Checklist is described as “written for mail, telephone, fax, and computer order merchandisers to give them an overview of rules or statutes that the Federal Trade Commission enforces.” Note that each of the 50 states has its own laws and rules, which this pamphlet does not cover! Produced by DMA, the Direct Marketing Association, in cooperation with the Federal Trade Commission, the pamphlet is available without charge from DMA at 1120 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10036–6700, or by calling (212) 768–7277.

TO CREATE OR SUPERVISE: WHEN TO DO EACH Of course, any project may be supervised rather than self-produced, depending on the time, budget, and talent available for it. If you have no skill for doing designs or layouts, employ others for those tasks, no matter how simple the project or how much time is available. Whether you do it yourself or supervise, here are some basic rules any design should follow:

• Show and tell the readers what you are selling. If what you say and picture isn’t absolutely clear, they won’t guess. They won’t buy!

• Use type that’s easy to read. The less sans serif, the easier it will be to read.

• Keep it simple. The fancier the design, the more costly it will be to print it well.

• “Flow-channel” your reader; that is, make sure that the mailing as a whole, and every piece in it, flows from an attention-grabbing beginning to an action-doing end. These and other such “rules” are found throughout this article. Use them when you do the job yourself. But equally important, insist on them when you turn work over to others. Do this before they begin, as part of your directions, not as expensive, time-consuming client’s alterations after they’ve completed their initial copy and design. Make the rules part of your own checklist if they’re not already included in the ones presented here.

What You Must Not Do Yourself

Two kinds of mailings must be created by direct mail professionals and should never be attempted as do-it-yourself “gifted amateur” projects:

1. A project, no matter how seemingly simple, that determines the survival of your business. (Of course you’ll go to a specialist for a heart transplant, but will you try your own simple appendectomy?)

2. True direct mail “packages,” such as multicomponent sweepstakes, giant “bedsheet” folded and refolded self-mailers, pop-up or other multidimensional projects. On any mailing that will cost more than $15,000, allow 20 percent for copy and design, and you’ll probably be ahead in dollars and results. Good management includes learning to recognize the difference between getting something done exactly as you would do it yourself and having it done competently in some other way.

Doing Your Own Mailings

Help with creating your own mailings begins on page 90, but don’t go there yet. The basics of lists, testing, and numbers that you must know for success, hold true no matter who does the mailing or what it costs. The next few pages explain them and how to apply them to what you write, design, and mail.