Tomicide Solutions, July 2011

17 Common Direct Mail Mistakes IT Companies Make Part 1

By Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan

Podcast: MP3 Version

Have you heard that every year 13 people are killed by vending machines? Yes, that's correct. Vending machines fall on them and literally squeeze the living daylights out the poor bastards. It usually happens to people who raid vending machines and try to pry the goodies out of them.

By a mind-menglingly staggering coincidence, similar fate is waiting for IT marketing managers who try to pry too much out of their direct mail campaigns without doing the necessary preliminary work to prepare their campaigns for best the performance.

They haphazardly put their packages together, and then equally haphazardly roll them out to their markets. And quite often, the highly anticipated marketing campaign performs a spectacular belly flop and falls flat on its arse.

After this little incident, campaigns are often abandoned to their fate, and die a slow and agonising death.

In this article we look at 17 ingredients that are often missing from direct mail campaigns and undermine their overall performance.

Mistake #1: Missing What Makes Or Breaks Direct Mail Campaigns?

Many business owners erroneously believe that the success of their direct response marketing campaigns lie either in the copy or the overall design of their mail pieces.

And they are missing the boat.

The design of your mail piece can be so ugly that people may think it's just fallen down from the ugly tree, hitting every branch on the way down, but if it address the right people using the right message, then the ugliness is irrelevant.

Case in point: Your neighbour pushes a dirty, pizza sauce-stained serviette under your front door with a message written in seriously broken English...

"Joe, you winning 10 million dolar on lotery. Call lootery office write now to collect your monie."

Now, how angry will you get with your neighbour for the dirty serviette and the typo-ridden English?

I guess, you get busy calling the lottery people and collect the dough.

Yes, some idiots get pissed off because of the way the message was communicated, but most of us with sufficient self-esteem just thank the neighbour and call the lottery office.

Yes, copy is a major contributor to your success, which external copywriters can give you if you don't have the skill in-house.

What no one can give you and you have to do yourself in-house is to develop a kick-arse offer to mail and a great list to mail to.

If your offer is discounted running shoes and your list is a list a quadriplegics, then no copy can save you.

This is why it's unethical to hire copywriters on straight commission. In this case, copy is less than 20% of your success. I would say, it's 40% offer, 40% list, 15% copy and 5% design.

The irony is that most IT companies don't employ marketers who understand offer-crafting, list-building and copywriting, but employ multiple designers of different kinds.

So, in the best case, having amazing designers on the payroll, they get 5% of the equation right and miss only 95%.

But that 5% is much less than 5% because amazing designers run their own businesses, and wouldn't even consider bending their heads into the yokes of employment.

Let's get real and realise that most IT companies (Hell, most companies, period.) are swell ships for their skippers but hell ships for their crews. But this topic is for a different newsletter issue.

In direct mail, your list is the market. Your list is your future clientele. How much care do you take to assemble that list? How effectively does your marketing system filter and screen list members?

The best you can have is the so-called house-list. It's home-grown from scratch. Yes, it takes time to build it, but it's worth because it offers tremendous opportunities for repeat and referral business.

Typically, home-grown lists generate 100% higher response than purchased lists.

Why?

Because in the eyes of your home-grown list members, your company is the respected authority. For the members of the purchased lists, your company is just another vendor trying to flog its stuff.

So, again, we can choose how we want to market and sell.

Mistake #2: Trying To Get Copy Written Using In-House Staff

This point may sound self-serving but it's just plain, pedestrian, garden-variety reality.

Unless you run a marketing company or advertising agency, there is no more need for a full-time copywriter on the payroll than a dentist or a chimney sweeper.

Just as you use a dentist or a chimney sweeper on an as needed basis, this is how you should engage copywriters too.

Michael A. Stelzner has published his research results in The White Paper Writer Industry Report, and it turns out that freelance writers can write white papers in about 24 hours, while in-house writers take 50 hours and non-professionals take 46 hours.

Now, the result may not be exactly the same with other marketing documents, but I dare to bet some vital parts of my anatomy that they are very close to these white paper-writing numbers.

In-House Vs. Freelance Copywriters

This finding is significant for several reasons. First, many businesses assume there is a steep and long learning curve for freelance writers to bring themselves up to speed on the business. This can be easily solved by hiring writers with subject matter expertise and industrial experience in your industry.

Of course, that adds to their fees quite a bit. In the IT sector there are only a handful of freelance copywriters with technical degrees and industrial experience.

In my case, my main area, as an electronics/computer engineer, is the high-tech sector.

But for the sake of variety, I sometimes write for fitness businesses (I'm a certified personal trainer with over a decade in the industry), extreme sports (I'm a skydiver) and organic farming (I'm a joint venture partner, marketing guy and slaughterman/butcher with four small local family farms producing organic meat).

Yes, you can save money by engaging in-house staff for writing, but what is it that they have to stop doing in order to start writing?

What is the value of the work that they have to suspend?

Some in-house writers are technical professionals without writing skills, and as being parts of their companies' politics, which creates an instant bias. If they put too many salesy bits into the documents that they write, readers get pissed off. If they put too little salesy bits in, then nothing will happen. On the top of all that, most of them hate writing.

In-house non-professional writers are secretaries and receptionists most of whom are skilled neither in technology nor in writing.

Can they really represent your products and services to buyers with advanced technical- and/or business degrees? I doubt it.

The key is not to cut costs to the bone by hiring the cheapest people for minimum wage, but hiring highly skilled people to give your high return.

Are you hiring for low cost or high ROI. Huge difference.

Mistake #3: Trying To Balance Cheap Copy With Dazzling Graphics

Just look at many IT companies and what you find is that they have several web designers and graphics artists on the payroll, but don't hire copywriters because they think copywriters are too expensive.

And to a certain degree they are right.

According to BtoB Magazine, the average hourly rate of a copywriter was $123 per hour. I use the word "was" because this is 2002 data. And with the importance and increasing demand of kick-arse copy, this $123 is no longer $123 but significantly higher.

And since in many IT companies the HR budget is not "wasted" on people who offer high-return, but carefully doled out on people who offer low cost of hiring, most IT companies opt to hire the significantly cheaper web developers and graphics designers.

Side note:

Also, just think about it. If you're a good copywriter, by definition, you should be able to get tonnes of clients for your writing services, and you need the emotional burden and the intellectual restraint of an employer no more than a fish needs a bicycle.

Side note ends.

So, now those poor buggers have designers falling out of the rafters but they still can't produce the kind of high-calibre content that buyers would be interested in consuming.

So, they put one more Flash animation on the home page and hope harder for better results.

Again, the same old mindset that has been cursing mankind from the beginning of times: Do the same thing, but do it harder and longer.

Does it work? No, but it's comfortable, convenient and relatively cheap. And it gives people another opportunity to hope and pray for improvement.

Mark Twain put it so well when he said...

"Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work."

Similarly, dazzling graphics may be impressive, but it's kick-arse copy that rings your cash register. Just like lightning, it quietly does its job of enticing your readers to read more and to take action.

You can build the thunder of colours and Flash on copy, but without good copy, all the graphics is useless.

Mistake #4: Rolling The Offer Out Without Testing

One extreme of direct mail marketing campaigns is that IT companies don't do them at all. The other is that they do them without due testing.

They put together packages that the key executives like (as opposed to what works) and then send them out by the bushel baskets.

And while business to consumer (B2C) marketers have a deeply ingrained habit of testing and tracking their direct mail campaigns, most business to business (B2B) operations have adopted a sort of fighter bomber approach: "Drop it and move on."

So what happens?

They keep repeating their mistakes for years to come. They end up with the same results because they fail to realise that improvement is possible.

Business owners assume that just because one approach has worked on one offer to one market segment, it will automatically work with other offers too.

Let's look at one example...

Many years ago Milt Pierce created a direct mail piece for Good Housekeeping. For 25 years, no other package could beat his package.

Then he applied the same approach to Science Digest, Popular Mechanics and House Beautiful.

And the result?

Well, it failed rather miserably.

As one of the greatest copywriters, Eugene Schwartz is fond of saying...

"There are no answers in direct mail except test answers. You don't know whether something will work until you test it. And you cannot predict test results based on past experience."

And there is not much I could add Eugene's wisdom. Noting really, so let's move on...

Mistake #5: Putting Anything In The Mail Without a Personalised Letter

Has it happened to you that you've received an envelope full of generic junk but no personal letter?

Who is this shit for? And who is it from?

It's for "To Whom It May Concern", and it's from "Behemoth Idiot Corporation".

What is likely to happen to these pieces? They land in the rubbish bin, most likely. After all, they are junk.

And let's pause here for a second. It's only one thing that readers can deem letters to be junk.

Quite often, senders also deem their letters to be junk the way they package them and send them out.

What do you do with junk letters? You throw them away.

Very often, it's senders who condemn their mail pieces by sending them out in junk ways: Fancy envelope with letterhead, mailing label, sometimes even teasers on envelopes and only the company name as sender.

Tests have proved again and again that packages that include personal letters perform much better than self-mailers, postcards, brochures or letters addressed to "To Whom It May Concern".

We have to understand that humans are social creatures and they want to belong. And personalised letters with personalised signatures provide this sense of belonging.

So, what to do here?

Write a letter without any frills. Put it in a plain large envelope, so you don't have to fold the letter. Address the letter by hand in blue ink. Lick sufficient real stamps on the envelope. Address the letter to a specific person, and as sender, write your own name without a company name.

Now you have a personalised letter.

Later you can make your letter more sophisticated, but first start generating sales leads and revenue with this pedestrian approach.

That's all to it really.

Mistake #6: Bragging About The Seller Company Too Much

One huge direct mail mistake is to brag too much about the seller company, its achievements and its products and services.

People don't want to read about other people's successes or their products and services. They want to read about their own problems and how to solve them.

So, if you sell CRM, write about how salespeople can better and more effectively communicate with their prospects and clients and how that better communication improves client satisfaction, client retention, repeat and referral business and, well, the bottom line.

In your communication, don't try to sell things. Open readers' eyes to concepts that result in better business and better life for them.

If that CRM can help users to increase sales by 25% without adding one single new salesperson to the equation, thus, without increasing the cost of sales, that's highly valuable. That 25% is basically all profit.

Now, in your case of selling complex, high-ticket technical solutions, several technical people will read your letters too, and for technical people it's not only the outcome that matters but also the process of getting there. So, they want to know features and specs.

Actually, depending on to whom you write in the company, you have to customise your letters slightly differently.

Technical people want lots of details, but also remember that in most cases, technical people can't make buying decisions. They can make recommendations but they don't have budgets to authorise purchases.

In general, the more highly your buyers are educated, the more facts and figures they require. They can't be moved by pounding on their emotional hot buttons as so many B2C copywriters teach their clients.

In the B2C world decision-making is an emotional decision. In the B2B world, it's a systematic decision, that is, all elements of the decision-making mechanism in the buyer's business must be aligned.

The mistake many people make is that they believe that if a decision is not fact-based intellectual, then it's automatically feeling-based emotional.

I think systematic is the third way.

Mistake #7: Delegating Your Direct Mail Initiative To A Committee

There are mountains of jokes about committees out there. Committees have designed the moose from a cow.

Committees have designed the Australian egg-laying, venomous, duck-billed platypus from a duck (bill), a beaver (tail) and an otter (feet).

And, for far too many years, committees tried to make communism work, and, based on first-hand experience, I can confidently say, they failed.

The problem is that most committee members are not marketing experts. They don't know the concept of direct response marketing, don't understand what makes copy work and have never studied the relationship between marketing and human behaviour.

Besides soccer, in Europe, and ice hockey in North America, they opine on something that they know nothing about.

The typical example is when these cantankerous curmudgeons insist that no one reads long letters, and any piece of communication should be no longer than a few paragraphs.

But history proves that long letters perform better than short ones. But they don't are because the fact goes against their opinions.

And sadly, when it comes to the choice between the opinions of laypeople in charge and facts, laypeople and their opinions will almost always win.

It takes an exceptionally smart business owner to overrule the prejudices, opinions of the committee and let marketers do what works.

So, when the marketing committee comes up with modification requests, ask the members to support their requests with evidence, and only then submit the request to your marketing folks.

Don't let the committee mess with any element of the direct mail package until it's been tested on a small scale and you have results.

Better yet, abolish committees and send them back to work, so they can actually accomplish something useful and deserve their salaries and employment.

Mistake #8: Firing Your Biggest Gun Last

This point is about hiding your best and biggest benefit until the last moment.

The problem is that by the last moment, your message has created a dull ho-hum effect.

Using military lingo, no matter how powerful your big guns are, but if you start the battle using peashooters and bb guns, then you're toast even before you could say Jemima Puddle Duck.

In the brain there is a primacy effect and as recency effect. They refer to the brains ability to recall information, and were extensively researched and coined by German psychologist, Hermann Ebbinghaus.

Hermann Ebbinghaus - Primacy-Recency Effects

As we can see on the figure above, the brain can excellently recall information from the beginning of a letter, and fairly well from the end. But it forgets a lot of the middle bits.

So, using military language, fire your big guns first and last. And in between you can fiddle with your bb gun, pea shooter, paintball gun or catapult.

Many in-house writers, due to not writing copy often enough (they write content but not copy), either fire the big guns in the dead zone or at the end of their letters where recall is better than in the dead zone but worse than at the beginning of the letter.

Research indicates that typical readers read for five seconds and then decide whether or not to continue reading the next section.

So, it's vital that your latter grabs readers by the eyeballs and seduces them into reading the whole letter.

So, how do you fire your big guns at the beginning of your letter?

It's a combination of your headline and opening.

There is one caveat though.

When you write a big screaming headline on a letter, it screams sales letter, so on a rather short and fast trajectory, it quickly lands in the rubbish bin and your name lands on the company's blacklist.

So, place your bet on the opening by asking provocative questions, starting with an interesting fact, explaining the reader's biggest problem, arousing curiosity.

Some copywriters start with the price first and offer discounts, but in 5-6-7-figure solutions, I don't think it's a good approach.

You'd better know your letter's and your readers' attention hotspots. One of the hotspots is the opening paragraph. There are some others, and we'll discuss them in other points.

Coming Up In Part 2

In the second part of this literary masterpiece we take a closer look at other direct mail mistakes, including...

And some other exciting bits and bobs.

Come and let's discuss this newsletter issue on my blog...

Attribution: "This article was written by Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan who helps privately held information technology companies to develop high leverage client acquisition systems and business development teams in order to sell their products and services to premium clients at premium fees and prices. Visit Tom's website at http://www.varjan.com.