The power of the written word is legendary. Yet it is only relatively recently that the power of the Direct Mail medium has become widely acknowledged. While its place as a crucial part of the overall marketing mix is now secure.

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Direct Mail flourishes because it has unique strength

• No budget is unlimited. A medium must justify its place on your schedule. Either it must replace others by doing what they cannot, or do something better, or for less, or complement them and create synergy.

• In earlier years the mass media were so cheap and their reach so great that it paid to deliver the same message to millions. Often, it still does; but the cost has become increasingly daunting – and there are other factors you will be aware of.

• In the ‘60s there were only three car magazines. Today, who knows how many there are? Not many years ago, terrestrial TV gave you four choices. Today digital offers hundreds. The same proliferation has occurred in all product and service categories.

• As you know, customers have driven the changes. Firms had to refine their offerings to reach particular, increasingly discriminating, groups. So did the media. And because the rise in media costs has far outpaced general inflation, marketers had to reduce wastage.

• Happily, thanks to the computer and the database you can reach customers far more efficiently today. Wastage is far less if you only speak to those individuals interested in what you offer. That is what Direct Mail helps you do.

• You will already know much about Direct Mail’s strengths – but few appreciate them fully. And that’s vital if you want to know how to get the most out of it.

Results are directly measurable

 . You can often see that advertising works, but not which parts worked best. Direct Mail results reveal precisely what works and what doesn’t – to a penny.

• You can test different mailings or elements, different timings and targeting to see what works best.

• Changes in important factors, such as product, positioning or price, new lists and new creative can produce startling increases in sales – for very little investment.

• The knowledge gained enables you to fine-tune or alter your plans. Studying responses by area tells you where customers live and which local media might pay.

You speak to somebody, not everybody, reducing waste

• A good database enables your Direct Mail to reach your best prospects. Say 10% of the population buys 90% of all yoghurt; and 50% never buy yoghurt at all. Clearly mass advertising of yoghurts is not always wise.

• You can focus on small, disproportionately profitable customer groups. For example, 5% of P & G’s Oil of Olay customers account for the vast majority of sales.

• There is no faster way to build awareness and propensity to buy in large numbers than mass advertising. But Direct Mail is perfect for hitting special groups like doctors or shareholders.

• Direct Mail can supplement advertising coverage of important groups – for example, AB’s keen on health, or older people concerned about inheritance tax  

You can vary the message to suit the recipient 

• Take selling to business. Different prospects for a new computer have varied interests. The Finance Director seeks value for money, the IT Director is concerned with technology, the staff member wants to know it is easy to use.

• The same principle applies among families. Husband and wife often have different motivations. So do young people and old, and different classes or ethnic groups.

• “One to One” is a misleading phrase. Even with today’s technology it is hugely expensive to send a different message to every individual on a large database. But you can very cheaply tailor messages to groups of individuals with common interests

Direct Mail is a private medium

• Due to its targeted nature Direct Mail is a private medium. No one person will ever see every message. Perhaps that is one reason why many marketers are not as knowledgeable about Direct Mail as they might be.

• Your competitors don’t know what you are doing. You can test a new idea without them seeing. This may indicate whether a proposed advertising theme will work

• “Public” advertising makes your brand known not just to those who buy it, but to the world at large. It gives the customer “bragging rights”. A private medium like mail can’t, though many customers enjoy being a small group “in the know”.  

You can do a complete selling job - even for complex products

 “Advertising takes a horse to water. Direct Mail makes it drink”. You may have spent millions creating a preference for your brand. Direct Mail can turn inclination into action. Once people start reading, you’ve got them on their own. You’re not competing with the next spot, the ad facing or the next poster. So though it costs far more to reach one person than through TV, it pays.

• It’s hard to fully explain a complex product in a 30-second spot or on a 48-sheet poster. You can make a simple point very powerfully, but you can’t make the complete sale. Direct Mail is amazingly flexible. You can send almost anything within reason through the post. A good creative team with space to play with can take a prospect from complete unawareness of the product to purchase in one mailing.

• People can and do study Direct Mail. They read and reread it. It can answer their questions, quell their fears: there’s no face-to-face sales pressure. They like that, especially with financial products.

• When there’s lots to say about a product or service, Direct Mail gives you as much space as you need to cover every benefit thoroughly.

Direct Mail is a private medium

It can build a brand – on its own or with other media

• “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail”- Nietzsche. When building a brand, most think first of image advertising in public media. Yet Direct Mail is advertising.

• The Readers’ Digest Association and Time-Life used it almost exclusively to build very big brands. In the financial sector, MBNA, First Direct and Direct Line use it as their principal medium.

• If you wish to build a brand among a discrete group, Direct Mail is perfect.

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Direct Mail can act as your salesforce

.• Personal selling is expensive – and getting more so as cities become more congested and petrol much dearer. Today, for instance, traffic in London often moves no faster than 100 years ago.

• Moreover, as products and services get more complex the cost of training sales people rises. So investing to get a sales person sitting in front of an interested prospect is a serious business.

• Direct Mail can be used to make appointments, follow up and keep prospects warm between visits. A good example is in the Guinness case history later in this media pack.

Direct Mail can increase loyalty

• All informed marketers know it costs far more to find a new customer than to keep an existing one. Direct Mail is a powerful way to retain, reward and profit from your customers – especially the more valuable ones.

• Direct Mailers have long known that the customers who are mailed more tend to buy more.

• Research shows that customers say a mailshot would be likely to make them buy again from the sender.

Lost Opportunities

Consumers feel closer to companies they have an existing relationship with and, in such circumstances, welcome communication from them that either keeps them informed or makes them a relevant offer.

In certain sectors there is clear evidence that companies underestimate this positive desire for communication.  

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Objectives tend to differ

There is often more emphasis when planning advertising on what you want people to think, feel and know than what you want them to do.

Few ads focus on immediate action Most Direct Mail does call for such action, though it can be used just to inform or flatter.

An example was a letter to bank customers which was simply a “thank you”.

After receiving it the recipients bought far more of the bank’s services than those not mailed, and the mailing was recalled by over 90% of them after two months  

It takes longer than you think

It can take a surprisingly long time to plan and carry out a campaign. Non-specialists are often unaware that:

• The database (list) selection, whether internal or external, needs to be made well in advance.

• The same applies to envelopes. And special sizes and makes take longer and cost more.

• In an integrated campaign, it’s unwise to give the Direct Mail people the theme after the ads have been done. Their job often takes longer than the ads. Involve them at the start. They have ideas too!

• When your ads seek a response, make sure those who create and produce the Direct Mail response have plenty of advance notice. Delays in reply kill sales.

• Don’t think that the last in the supply chain - Direct Mail houses - can make up time lost along the way.

Why is the database so critical? 

A database once cost millions to set up and run. Now it can often be done on a desktop computer - and the software required comes free with that computer.

A good Direct Mail strategy, as opposed to a tactical mailing, depends on building and exploiting such a database intelligently.

The information held enables marketers to recognise people for whom and what they are and talk to them appropriately.

The more relevant information you hold the better.

Knowing what customers and prospects have enquired about or bought and when, how much they paid and by what means is all valuable ammunition Intelligent use of data prevents wasting precious marketing budget through the deployment of irrelevant or unnecessary mailings.

Any means you can suggest to collect names, addresses and relevant information is a good idea

Direct Mail calls for greater creativity - not less

Three times as many awards are given for Direct Mail now as ten years ago, from D&AD to Campaign honours.

But it is a challenging medium for the creative department. For one thing, it isn’t glamorous.

Will a creative director boast about his new mailing as eagerly as his new commercial?

Associations with Hollywood and show business make TV or the cinema sexy. You have movement, sound, vision and colour to play with.

Conversely, the physical constraints of a press space or poster concentrate the creative mind, and simplify the task Direct Mail is neither glamorous nor simple. It may demand more creative imagination, not less.

You don’t have sound and movement – or at least not without great ingenuity.

But you do have great possibilities. You can make a Direct Mail pack highly involving.

You can have things that pop out or scratch off. You can even have the paper scented.

You can have textures. You can put things inside that provoke curiosity before the envelope is even opened

All you need is creative teams who can see the possibilities, rise to the challenge and have sympathy for the medium

What response can you expect? 

You will hardly be amazed that in this area of marketing as any other it is impossible to predict the results with any certainty.

It depends on how good your mailing is, and what it is asking the recipient to do

• The easier the task and the closer the relationship between you and the recipient, the greater the likely response rate.

• Thus, it is much easier to get an enquiry – which requires no commitment - than make a sale – which does. Equally the higher the price, the lower the likely response rate. This makes obvious sense when you think about it.

• If you’re selling something for £1000 to people with whom you had no previous relationship, 1% would be a superb result – even if you only sought enquiries.

• If you just want someone to complete a questionnaire, and you offer the chance to win a sweepstake, 30% would be quite possible. If you were writing to your own customers over 50% might be expected.

• A huge factor is the quality of the mailing list or database selection. A list of spendthrift millionaires might be better than one of bad debtors, depending on the product or service being offered

• If the response you anticipate indicates a vast profit with very little effort, you are probably being unduly optimistic – and vice versa. The chart overleaf shows you average response rates, but read it with the above in mind, as it covers a wide variety of campaigns.

Planning a Direct Mail Campaign

• Define campaign objectives

• Audit current market / competitive conditions

• Confirm overall budget

• Utilise customer insight

• Agree target audience

• Database / list selections made

• Create outline integrated media / activity plan

• - Consider testing opportunities

• Design campaign evaluation process / measures Implementation

• Develop campaign messages / themes

• Define response channels

• Develop production schedule

• Brief agencies / data supplier/ printers etc

• Brief fulfilment / response handling/ research agency etc

• Design the mail pack / response elements Evaluation

• Assess response data

• Evaluate research feedback

• Report on campaign objectives

• Quantify sales / life time value impacts

• Evaluate list performance

• Communicate key learning