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If you want to sell or persuade effectively,
then your words must be crafted carefully to fit
your audience and to fit the venue or medium in which you are
communicating. What may be powerful and appropriate word crafting for one venue may be entirely ineffective for
another. In this series, we give you tools for molding your copy to fit
the medium.
Last time, we offered Seven
Keys to Persuasive Web Site Communications. In this article,
direct-mail specialist Earl Hogan shares some of his
best tips for understanding the unique challenges of selling your product
or service through a direct-mail campaign. Earl has been honing his craft
for nearly half a century, delivering award-winning results for customers
across the nation, such as Butler Manufacturing Company, Raytheon
Aviation, Hallmark Loyalty Division, AMC Theatres, Cellular One, Lexmark,
American Red Cross, Wal-Mart and many more.
Designing
Revenue-Generating Direct-Mail Copy
Direct mail is often the first medium a
company will employ to sell a product or service. Done right, direct mail
can effectively help you capture new customers or gain greater
"wallet share" with your current customers. Done poorly, a
direct mail campaign may simply empty your wallet.
Before launching into a direct mail
campaign, ask yourself a few key questions:
·
Is direct mail the right medium for your product or service? The
answer is not always “yes.”
·
Do you have a sufficient budget to do it well? If your
competition is doing it, yours had better be competitive, or you'll do
more damage to your business than good.
·
Do you have the willpower and budget to stick it out? Depending
on the type of direct-mail campaign, it's often repetition that gets the
customer to picture you when they think of the service or product you
sell.
If, after answering these questions,
you conclude that you are ready to move ahead with your direct-mail
campaign, remember that the words you choose for your campaign can define
or undermine your campaign's success. Don't go down the direct-mail road without
a solid understanding of the unique requirements inherent in direct-mail
marketing.
To help you craft powerful direct mail
copy that generates sales, start with our:
Five Critical Copywriting
Components for Achieving Success in Direct-Mail
1.
Know Your Audience
Well, and Write to Them Directly -- To Them Only
It's vital that you have a clear understanding of specifically who you
expect your
recipient to be. Make sure you're not talking down to or
over them.
Direct marketing strategist and copywriter Earl Hogan starts each assignment
by developing a profile of the client's ideal prospect. "My profiles contain as
much information as clients can share with me. For example, if it's a consumer
I'm writing to, I want to know their social and cultural circumstances,
education, income, hobbies, gender, marital status, children, plus other
factors."
You may not consider this critical at first blush. But imagine, for
example, how different your writing style would need to be if the target
prospects are university professors rather than hairdressers. What about
young apartment dwellers vs. retiring empty nesters? A business owner vs.
an employee?
2.
Fulfill the Unique
Requirements of Each Campaign Item
Think of each physical item that comprises your campaign as an
opportunity:
·
Unless it's a postcard, your campaign will most likely reach your
customer inside a carrier envelope. This envelope
can be more critical to the success of your campaign than what you stuff
inside it. Earl is quick to remind us that, "Since
it's the first thing your prospects see, it helps them decide whether to
open your mailing or send it promptly into their 'round files.'"
·
If you use a carrier envelope, your campaign should always
include a cover letter. It’s the
single most important component of a direct mail package. Earl recommends
that you start your cover letter as though you were physically
approaching your prospect, with an open invitation to present him or her
with your product or service. "Say what you need to say in order to
convince them to buy," Earl advises.
Too much cleverness can obfuscate your cover letter’s message. Too many
words may send them yawning, reaching for the next piece of mail. Too few
words may leave them confused, not certain what your message is. He adds,
"Bear in mind that a successful cover letter must be long enough to
answer all the questions your prospects need to have answered before
they're willing to take the action you've requested. In fact, many highly effective
letters I've written for clients have been four pages in length." On
the other hand, another product, targeted to a certain type of
individual, may require just two or three short, yet concise, paragraphs
to produce the desired reaction.
·
Another ingredient of a typical direct mail package is the brochure. Unless
the brochure is your entire campaign, sent as a mailer, it’s not as
important to a direct mail package’s effectiveness as the cover letter.
When creating the brochure copy, once again, Hogan suggests you
start with a frame of mind, rather than a set of rules. To properly set
the tone and craft an effective message, "Think of the brochure as
the sales tools you would use as a salesperson making on-site calls to
your prospects -- your audio/visual presentation, your demonstration
devices, etc.”
3.
Make Sure Your Words
Match the Visuals
Or, if the visuals haven't already been planned,
make sure the visuals match the words. If you have discord between your
words and your imagery, neither will effectively convey your message. It
is as though they cancel each other out.
For example, imagine a direct mail postcard sent out by a funeral home,
full of soothing, comforting words to gently build
confidence. How well will that message come through with a bold, playful
font, and a fluorescent-orange background? (No jokes about a layaway
plan, please.)
4.
Always Provide a Call
to Action
Make
sure your campaign includes a “call to action” -- something the recipient
is supposed to do (in case there is any question in their head about
this). Examples --
·
"Hurry in before the sale ends."
·
"Write for our free catalog."
·
"Call 1-800-FUN4YOU."
5.
Create Measurables
Make sure you provide opportunities for
measuring the results or effectiveness of your direct mail campaign. You
are spending good money on this marketing campaign -- you want to be sure
you can measure the results, not only for your current time and money
investment, but to help you develop better future campaigns. Some
effective ways to do this:.
·
Make a portion of your mailing a coupon. If you have multiple
campaigns, make the coupon for each one unique. Then, when people show up
at your store or mail in the coupon, you will know exactly which campaign
brought in that customer.
·
For walk-in or phone-in customers, require them to "mention
this code" -- a number that represents the specific campaign, or
even the specific batch in an ongoing campaign -- that they must use in
order to respond to the direct-mail offer. For mail-in customers, simply
include an inconspicuous key code in the order form you can use to track
where the sale came from.
·
Provide a unique Web address -- one they cannot find any other
way than from this direct-mail campaign, such as www.yourwebsite.com/free. As long as your Web host provides you a means of
measuring site traffic on a page-by-page basis, you can then easily
measure how many people responded to your campaign by going to your Web
site.
Some
Closing Thoughts from Earl:
Of
all the formulae for writing direct mail copy, my favorite is this
seven-step formula, developed by Bob Stone, my lifelong mentor and author
of Successful
Direct Marketing Methods:
1. Promise
your most important benefit in the first paragraph;
2. Immediately
enlarge upon the most important benefit;
3. Tell
the reader specifically what he or she is going to get;
4. Back
up your statements with proofs and endorsements;
5. Tell
the reader what he or she might lose if he or she doesn't act;
6. Rephrase
your prominent benefits in your closing offer;
7. Incite
action - now.
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When Your Words Must Count …
Considering
the cost -- and the potential value -- of an effective direct-mail
campaign, most businesses choose to outsource some or all parts of the
campaign to professional services, such as advertising agencies, design
specialists, printing specialists, and wordsmith experts. Successful
direct-mail campaigns rarely happen by luck. We've all certainly seen plenty of bad ones! Safeguard your marketing investment
by relying on experts with strong track records.
If you choose
to outsource the wordsmithing of your campaign
to WriteWorks, we will assign an experienced freelance writer, who can
help you achieve a winning direct-mail campaign.
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