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The Direct Mail Package

by Malcolm Decker

The highest and most comprehensive form of direct response selling is the full-dress direct mail package. It incorporates the widest variety of effective sales techniques. Writers and designers who master this complex form will have the skills to master all forms of direct response media

How the direct mail package works as a sales team

The direct mail package – especially a full-dress package – is a sales team. First the envelope knocks on the door to see if anyone’s home. Then the major letter – the salesman – takes over. Once the envelope is opened, the letter is the most important member of the team. It sells soft or it sells hard. It spins yarns or it spouts facts. It’s long (but never long-winded) or it’s pithy. However it comes on, it’s loaded with customer benefits… Customer Benefits… CUSTOMER BENEFITS.

Then the demonstrator – the folder or brochure – goes to work. Like the letter, it can stand on its own. But it’s the most effective when it demonstrates in graphics what the letter can only say in words. It should convince the reader in images that everything the letter said is true.

The publisher’s letter – or lift letter – is yet another voice backing up the key salesman, the long letter; its job is to convince the waiverers and salvage the skeptics. The order card restates the offer in the pithiest, most unambiguous language possible. And the business reply envelope brings the order home.

When each member of this sales team is performing at its best, it’s a formidable force. Let’s look at the individual elements:

The envelope sets up the sale

An envelope with a white background is hard to beat. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to beat it, because if your envelope doesn’t get opened, your package doesn’t get read… or responded to… and we all know what that means.

We had great success in a gold stamp offer with a pair of metallic gold wings stretched across the face of the envelope below the caption: “…the most brilliant art ever created in gold.” I thought we could do better, so we tested it against a jet black version, same gold wings, same caption in knockout white. It was absolutely stunning! P.S. White won handily.

Envelope copy can help, but it’s got to be a bull’s-eye. It shouldn’t promise or suggest more than the contents can deliver. The outer envelope sets the stage, strikes the mood for what is to follow, and the copy design must be “on-target.” Otherwise, there is a confusion element which could turn off your prospect.

Remember, your envelope stands between you and orders. More prospects see your envelopes than will ever see what’s inside them. So make sure your envelope not only carries the message, but also does everything possible to set up the sale.

The almighty letter sells and sells and sells

The letter itself is the paper-and-ink embodiment of a salesperson who is speaking personally and directly to the prospect on a one-to-one basis. It is the most powerful and persuasive selling force in direct marketing once the product, price, and offer are set. The writer creates the salesman, usually from whole cloth, and you must be certain that this sales representative is truly representative of your product or service as well as your company. He is likely to be the only “person” your market will ever meet – at least on the front end of the sale – so don’t make him highbrow if your market is lowbrow and vice-versa. Make sure he speaks your prospect’s language. If he’s a Tiffany salesman, he writes in one style; if he’s a grapefruit or pecan farmer or a beef grower, he writes differently. (‘Cause he talks diffrunt.) I develop as clear a profile of my prospect as the available research offers and then try to match it up with someone I know and “put him in a chair” across from me. Then I write to him more or less conversationally.

The salesperson in the letter is doing the job he obviously loves and is good at. He knows the product inside and out and its totally confident in and at ease with it and its values and benefits – even its inconsequential shortcomings – and wants to get his prospect in on a good thing. Here is someone with a sense of rhythm, timing, dramatic effect, and possibly even humor – gaining attention… piquing curiosity … holding interest… engaging rationality… anticipating and assuaging doubts… and ultimately winning the confidence (and the order) of the prospect.

This personal technique is seen most clearly in long letters. How long should a letter be? The best-known answer to that age-old question is: “As long as it has to be.” That doesn’t tell you much, but perhaps it suggests economy.

As a sometimes angler, I get a better sense of length by remembering a fishing trip to Maine when we used dry flies with barbless hooks. Unless you kept up the tension all the way to the net, you lost the trout. Try it. You should feel the same sort of tension when you write and when you read a letter. If not… reel in the slack.

Since the direct mail letter is the most highly personal, intimate form of commercial writing:

• It is not a monolithic corporation addressing a computer-generated market profile; it is not impersonal in tone, form, or content.
  
• It is not one or more pieces of 8 1/2”x11” paper with letterhead on top and a signature on the bottom and the most cherished sales pitch of the VP Marketing sandwiched in between.
  
• It is not set in standard type, is not illustrated with photographs, is not printed in four-color process, does not have a bang-tail or envelope-pocket or other devices attached.
  
• Briefly, it is as close to possible to what you can do with an old Underwood typewriter.
  
• A long letter – four pages and upwards – needs a bit of help, even if you’re an expert angler.
  
• It can have an “eyebrow” or “Johnson Box” above the salutation to tease, tantalize, or help the reader preview the letter, especially if it’s four or more pages.
  
• It can have handwritten notations in the margins, a scrawled P.S. or underlining for emphasis in a second color of the same hue and hand of the signature.
  
• It can be printed on two sides (as long as the stock is opaque). The color, weight, quality, and texture of your letter stock communicate too. Choose them very carefully. They’re your salesman’s clothes.
  
• Be sure the right person signs the letter. Recently two investors’ newsletters – Advance Planning Letter and Investors World Intelligence Report sent out long (12- and 16-page) highly technical promotional letters filled with forecasts and recommendations. The former was signed by Bobbie Bunch, Assistant to the Publisher; the latter was signed by Joan Pendergraft, Executive Assistant to Sid Pulitzer. Obviously neither wrote the letter, so believability is out the window.
  
• Don’t overlook the color, size and vitality of your signature. They’re your salesman’s handshake. Even people who aren’t graphologists pick up a lot from the way a name is signed. It’s interesting to compare the signatures of Carolyn Davis [Reader’s Digest] or Carol Wright with those of Salvador Dali or Gloria Vanderbilt. Then ask yourself why the former are so lackluster while the latter are so distinctive.
  
• The other signature that can work for you is your company name and logotype. Use them to tell your prospect what kind of a company you are: traditional, avant-garde, industrial, financial. Whatever your marketing stance, a good designer can help you express it, and that helps your reader identify you. The objective is individuation – to stand out in the increasingly competitive marketplace of the mailbox – so that when it comes time to toss the me-too mail, yours won’t be part of it.
  
• The letter is easy on the eyes, open, inviting and varying in its “texture” – with normal margins… individual paragraphs with line space between… at least one cross-head per page (two per page for long letters)… occasional variation in paragraph width… a quotation, underlined sentence or phrase… numbers or bullets to list benefits… and/or other bits of “color” to maintain reader interest by promoting visual variety. The longer the letter, the more important these techniques.

The lift letter

If your prospect is setting on the fence, a quick little shove could get him on your side. But be careful – because those already on your side will read it, too. It should be yet another voice, e.g., not the person who signed the main letter, but David Ogilvy or Malcolm Forbes or Madonna speaking very plainly to point up a benefit, reassure the fence-sitter or disarm the naysayer. It should never introduce anything new; that’s the top salesman’s job.

The brochure as visual proof

The folder or brochure is “show-and-tell time.” It should illustrate what the letter describes. Because it is impersonal, the voice should differ in tone and color from the letter; it is the company – not an individual – talking to the prospect. It shows and demonstrates – it proves that everything the very enthusiastic salesman said in the letter is true. Its job is to add visual dimension, and amplify certain points touched on lightly in the letter, thereby gaining further credibility for the offer.

The circular is frequently – but not necessarily – four-color. The pace is much different from the driving letter or the greased order card. The reader should be given as much time with this piece as needed or wanted. Although it must be carefully designed to unfold in the way you want to bring your prospect into the offer, he should be able to read every panel or page or spread independent of the others. Think of it as a smorgasbord rather than a seven-course sit-down dinner.

Every panel and spread and broadside in this major illustrated piece has its own particular function. You can’t expect the deadfold to do the same job as the cover. As vitally important as the designer is, the organization of the piece – and the decisions of what panel or spread does what job – is still the primary responsibility of the writer.

I read books and articles and any kind of authoritative materials about my subject I can find until I feel comfortable – or, as Robert Frost said, “easy in my harness.” Then I take some 8 1/2”x11” bond (web presses all print multiples of this dimension) and make up as many dummies as I need until I finally “see” all the things I want to say in the right space and in the right relationships. I make notes of all the “pictures” and then I start on my letter. When I’m through, I go back and write the brochure. I haven’t thought about colors or white space or decorative borders or any of the innumerable things that make a brochure sing, but I do have a sturdy piece of architecture in the form of a thumbnail layout to give the designer – with copy that almost fits. The rest of it comes out of working together with the designer all the way down to the signed press sheet.

The fastest order card in the West

We give the order card more time and effort per square inch than any other piece in the package. And it’s time well spent. It’s the net that secures the trout, so it can’t have any holes in it. Write it in conjunction with the people who do your order processing, telephone sales, white mail response and customer service. Give them the final vote. It must be simple, clear, direct, and – if you can possibly imagine it – foolproof. Use the combined talents of your most clever people to write it, but make sure even a fool can understand it.

Yes, the order card should also sell. But basically it has a particular job to do: it should reprise the essence of the letter in the reader’s voice. That is, the writer (salesperson) has had his say, and now the prospect (customer) responds.

The order card should contain absolutely nothing new: it should stand on its own feet and crystallize everything that’s gone before it. Its purpose is to speed the action. If you’re looking for maximum response, it’s better to send the reader to your website, better to check off or call toll-free than fill in; better to tear off (no pencil required) than check off. However, you’ll have to decide (by testing) whether the fastest order card in the West gives you the quality customer you require.

Finally, its important to remember that in direct mail, as in all direct response media, the word is king. Copy is the architect of the sale. Design and art are the strongly supportive interior designers that often set up the sale. Because lookers are shoppers while readers are buyers, if you can firmly engage your prospect – and keep him engaged – through reading, you’re on your way to a sale.