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If you want to grab attention with direct mail you’re up against some tough competition – from mailshots that grow into flowers to an online personality test
Among the great irritations of life in the 21st century have been the offers of cheap Viagra cluttering our inboxes and the credit card adverts bulking up our post. Only the most naive of consumers is not armed with a merciless e-mail spam filter and a recycling bin for the many missives that plop onto the doormat each day. So how can bona fide marketers make sure their mail doesn’t go straight into the trash?
While reputable direct mail (DM) practitioners will not be touting little blue diamond‑shaped pills, some have been guilty of adopting a big-is-beautiful strategy of blanket mailings in the hope that at least some hit the mark.
But these days there are many reasons underlining why a more targeted approach is best. From complaints about the waste of resources used in mail that heads straight to landfill, to the changes in regulation allowing customers and businesses to opt out of mailings altogether, marketers involved in direct campaigns have had to overcome a large degree of scepticism among many in their audience.
And while issues such as the arrival of the Mailing Preference Service have limited the scope of some campaigns, direct marketing remains a useful medium for reaching customers and a central part of many campaigns. According to the Direct Mail Information Service direct mail generates £14 for every £1 invested, so it’s little wonder marketing practitioners are still keen to use it.
Hitting the target
Whether the medium is direct mail or e-mail, it’s really just a matter of common sense, says Nik Margolis, head of direct and digital at integrated agency DCH. His mantra is that relevance should drive everything.
“There’s a three-second rule with DM – you’ve got that long to make someone open it. With e-mail it’s down to about one second. So you’ve got to consider what’s particularly relevant,” says Margolis.
So how can you make sure your mail is opened? On or offline, direct mail allows for a large degree of personalisation and this can make it a far more engaging form of communication – much more likely to grab attention. The process starts with having accurate data and segmenting it. With direct mail, digital printing can allow for different versions to be tailored to customers, while with e-mail, dynamic content makes this personalisation process even easier.
So whether you want to vary the copy depending on the age, gender or geographic region of the recipient, it’s all possible. Tink Taylor, business development director at digital marketing agency DotMailer is a strong advocate of e-mail marketing because of all the information it provides about how effective your marketing message was. “We know what time someone opened the e-mail, who clicked on it and whether they went through to the website. We know so much without even trying.”
But he warns that even when people have subscribed, if an e-mail isn’t personalised it can end up being skipped over – non-spam spam that’s known as “bacn” in the industry, better than spam but not as good as a personal e-mail.
Even though the tools for targeting have become much more sophisticated, Matthew Heath, strategy director at LIDA, says that targeting remains a challenge for an industry that hasn’t moved as fast as it should: “People need to understand it’s not just better business practice, but the only commercial way to make direct mail efficient.”
Going green
The environment has moved up the agenda in many industries, and no more so than in direct marketing. Mailing hundreds of thousands of pieces of paper when a large proportion will end up in the bin, or at best in the recycling, is bound to attract the attention of environmentalists. And the direct marketing industry has indeed found itself the subject of much environmental scrutiny.
But thinking about the environment is intrinsically linked to better targeting as far as direct mail is concerned – better targeting equals less waste. Robert Keitch, director of media channel development and environmental affairs at the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), argues that the most environmentally insensitive thing you can do is to be ineffective and forget the purpose of the communication. “Then it’s just pure waste,” he says. “The industry has to view waste as the enemy.”
Marketers can ensure their suppliers have environmental management systems in place. If paper is being used, make sure it is Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) accredited and look all the way down the chain of custody to the plantation to ensure it’s not part of the illegal logging trade.
When it comes to printer ink there are vegetable dyes that use fewer VOCs (volatile organic compounds that give off polluting gases) but they are not always appropriate for all printing applications, so marketers should get their printer’s advice on this matter.
While you may be tempted to go for lavish packaging or paper stocks, consider first whether it’s recyclable. “Don’t put things in there that would be a pig to get recycled. Ideally there should be a call to action to ‘please recycle after use’,” adds Keitch.
Head direct for creativity
If there was once a time when direct marketers thought the quickest route to doing creative DM was to use more sumptuous paper stock, those days have gone. The point of being creative is that it can drive response rates. This medium does allow for some clever work such as LIDA’s mailing of a ping pong bat for a Mini Clubman promotion. The idea was that the Clubman is like nothing you’ve seen in a car before and the ping pong bat is like nothing you’ve seen in a mailing before.
Royal Mail garnered interest in the industry with its chocolate-scented letters, highlighting how it is also possible to add aromas to direct mail as another way to engage the senses.
Other companies have played on environmental concerns: Honda promoted its garden products with a direct mail that had seeds embedded in its envelopes, inviting recipients to plant the whole thing in their garden once read, where it would grow into flowers.
But don’t go too crazy: “There are rules that do work, such as a relevant and intriguing message on the outer envelope. Then giving people a clear path through the mailing and call to action at the end,” says LIDA’s Matthew Heath.
The opportunities for creativity in e-mails may seem more limited, but Paul Bates, UK managing director of Strongmail, points to some best practices: “Internet service providers don’t like attachments or video links. So smarter marketers will send e-mails with HTML links in the e-mail to a landing page or microsite. Then the glitzy stuff can be held back in the right environment,” he says.
Including images in e-mail can be risky, as many filters have images turned off as a default. “In e-mail, the things that get forgotten are the subject line and the ‘from’ address. It’s tempting to think of witty and creative subject lines, but think about the context. Research shows that when people decide whether to open an e-mail or not the subject comes behind the ‘from’ address,” says DCH’s Nik Margolis.
Abide by the law
Since the introduction of the Mailing Preference Service marketers have a clearer idea of who they can talk to, in theory reducing wasted missives. The downside is that people who may well be receptive have used the system to opt out, perhaps because they have previously been put off by blanket mailings.
Opt outs can be complex territory. Guidelines on how to operate legally with both direct mail and e-mail are given as part of The Institute’s direct marketing masterclass (visit the A-Z of courses at www.cim.co.uk) or in the DMA’s Best Practice Guidelines. Put simply, “if you have permission to e-mail and a reason to do so, you’ll be fine”, says Margolis. He goes on to say that “if you’re not sure you’ve got permission, you shouldn’t be e-mailing. There’s the EU directive on privacy, but it’s also bad practice and people will respond badly.”
It is now considered good practice to allow customers to opt in to receive additional information rather than having to opt out. “The groundswell changed to people saying they will tell you if they want to receive extra mailings. It’s a lot more effective to talk to those who want to talk to you,” says Heath.
E-mailing without permission is spam and this will quickly get you into trouble. Internet protocol (IP) addresses get a black mark if they are flagged as spam, and if it happens repeatedly they can be blacklisted. As a consequence, IP reputation is seen as crucial in the industry.
“The perception with e-mail is that it doesn’t matter [if it’s unsolicited] as it doesn’t cost so much, but it damages that firm’s future ability to mail,” says Margolis.
I’ll show you mine
While the ideal is to use data that you have generated yourself, there are invariably times, such as for customer acquisition, when you may want to buy lists. “From a profile of your current customers, and ideally the best ones, you can then talk to data organisations and they will find ‘lookalikes’,” explains Heath. It is now possible to buy very niche lists – but those on the lists must have clearly opted in for their data to be passed to a third party.
DotMailer’s Taylor warns that when moving lists you must watch out for the legal parameters, depending on the country the data is being supplied from. Within Europe it’s fine to move data across borders, but it’s not so simple if you use an agency based in the US, for example. Marketers will need to have obtained permission for this when the person first opted in.
Paul Bates of Strongmail thinks the biggest problem is knowing how often companies refresh data. Out-of-date data can elicit too many hard bounces – when an e-mail fails to get through because the address doesn’t exist or a spam filter has blocked it out.
“Your reputation is determined by how many times you e-mail the same person. So if you resend to hard bounce failures you’ll get blocked. Our solution is to automatically suppress hard bounces,” says Bates. His crucial word of advice is to ensure you only buy data from reputable companies that you can be confident keep it up to date.
Case study: Drive of your life?
Land Rover mailed customers a simple personality test to help them work out exactly which vehicle was best for them
In June this year Land Rover launched the campaign, “Discover more about yourself”, to profile prospective customers. The creative, designed by its agency Wunderman, was based on the idea that Land Rover drivers are different, choosing their cars based on attitudes and personality, rather than traditional demographics.
A mailing was sent to 200,000 people inviting them to complete a questionnaire. It opened with the line: “There’s a fascinating territory we’d like to explore with you.”
Inside was a detailed image of the human brain made to look like mountainous terrain.
The eight-page pack folded out to show a series of psychometric questions, designed to give insight into the prospect’s personality, tastes and attitude. An off-road trip along the Adriatic coast was up for grabs as an incentive.
Land Rover used direct mail and e-mails to drive people to the site. It communicated with subscribers of magazines such as Sailing Today, National Geographic and Climbing, with the opportunity to fill in the questionnaire at www.brainterrain.co.uk.
The results were analysed to allocate the vehicle to best fit the respondent’s personality and a second mailing will include an invitation to a test drive.
If you want to grab attention with direct mail you’re up against some tough competition – from mailshots that grow into flowers to an online personality test