How To Kill Your Direct Marketing Piece
Okay, just for the record, I don’t actually recommend and/or endorse the slaying of innocent direct mail. We’re actually quite fond of direct mail here at Highland Marketing, and want to see it working for you. However, as experience has unfortunately shown us, the effectiveness of direct mail can be too-easily squashed by simple oversight or poor design. To put it into a memorable phrase: “Without a CTA your DM will be DOA“.
Let’s break this down.
The CTA stands for Call To Action. It is that part of the message that entices your customer or prospect into some sort of action, and is vitally important.
Obviously, DM stands for Direct Mail.
Finally, DOA stands, quite famously, for Dead On Arrival, which seems extremely appropriate, given the way that direct mail actually arrives in your mailbox.
With all that in mind, what I am basically saying is that failing to include a call to action in your direct marketing piece is the best way to kill its effectiveness, and ensure that it accomplishes virtually nothing when it arrives in your customer’s hands.
Why? It all comes down to the simple fact that direct mail is a response driven form of advertising. You put a piece out to your customers and prospects, with the purpose of eliciting a particular action, commonly called the “response”. That action can be any number of things, such as calling your office, coming in to your store or visiting a website, but without it your mailing piece ultimately looses its purpose.
Let’s consider an example. Suppose that you receive a postcard in the mail. The card is attractively designed, with rich graphics and beautiful, bold type. It’s attractive enough that you actually take the time to read it over. It tells you that a new boutique is opening in your region. It gives some general information about the store, it’s address and telephone number and the date of the opening. That’s about it.
Assuming that the boutique would actually be of some interest to you, what’s your reaction?
Are you going to rush off to the store on opening day? Probably not. There’s no incentive there – no call to action. You may have every intention of visiting the store some day, but you’re probably not going to go out of your way to visit during it’s grand opening. Why would you? There’s no real benefit to you. In fact, you may actually avoid the grand opening altogether, under the (probably erroneous) assumption that the boutique will be overly busy.
However, if the card had a call to action (by actually asking you to visit), combined with some sort special offer or incentive, it might be a different story. Maybe the boutique could offer 25% off of selected merchandise during the grand opening. Maybe they have door crashers or a special draw. These are all interesting ways to support a call to action and are designed to motivate you to act (in this case, by visiting the boutique).
As basic as it seems, it’s a vital point. We’ve seen too many direct mail pieces that simply don’t contain that all important call to action. Not surprisingly, these same pieces have tended to elicit almost no responses.
So, the next time you decide to mail, remember to include a clear and strong call to action, preferably one that is emphasized by the design of the piece itself. After all, how can we possibly expect people to take a desired action if we never tell them what that action is?
