THE EXACT SAME LETTER MAILED FOR 28 YEARS

The copywriter was Martin Conroy. His famous letter, introduced in 1974 for The Wall Street Journal, goes by the name “Two Young Men.”

Direct mail expert and author Denny Hatch claims Conroy’s storytelling letter is the single most successful advertisement in the history of the world. According to Hatch, the same letter was used for 28 years and is directly responsible for bringing in over $2 billion in gross revenues to The Wall Street Journal.

Now that's consistency!

In 2002, Conroy's legendary control letter was finally beaten by a package written by copywriter Mal Decker. Paying tribute, Decker used Conroy's famous lead in his new letter.

A copy of Conroy's famous letter is available here.

Over the years, direct mail experts have written three major reference books on the best direct mail letters ever written. They are:

1. Million Dollar Mailings, written by Dennison Hatch. Published in 1992, this oversized book contains 71 complete, fully-illustrated direct mail packages.

2. World’s Greatest Direct Mail Letters, by Herschell Gordon Lewis and Carol Nelson. Published in 1996, this 467-page oversized book contains 93 sample letters.

3. Hall of Fame – Great Selling Ideas from 50 Super-Successful Direct Mail Letters and Direct Response Ads, from the American Writers & Artists Institute. Published in 2002, this 319-page manual is only available to students enrolling in AWAI’s copywriting course that includes the 457-page spiral-bound textbook, Michael Masterson’s Accelerated Program For Six-Figure Copywriting.

Martin Conroy’s engaging two-page letter appears as the first letter in two of the three reference books listed above.

Perhaps in an effort to “save the best for last,” Hatch’s coverage of Conroy’s “Two Young Men” letter appears at the back of his book. Hatch calls the Conroy letter “...the granddaddy of all the Grand Controls.”

While a committee of direct mail experts chose the direct mail samples for two of the books, the samples in Hatch's book were chosen by the marketplace. Every sample included had been generating profits for the mailer for three years or more, with the WSJ letter running for 18 years at the time.

Think about that for a minute or two, "Every sample in Hatch's book has been in use for a minimum of three years or longer with the WSJ letter in use for 18 years." And they were selected because of the revenue generated for their mailers. NOW THAT IS THE VALUE OF CONSISTENCY.

Stick with the creative that is working for you. Tweak it sparingly.

THE DIRECT MAIL "CONTROL" PACKAGE

There's little more sacred in direct mail than the "control" package. This is the benchmark package that works best for you.

At ACTON Marketing, our standard self-mailer design and product offer in use today – our control package – is the result of 28 years of direct mail experience in what works best for our clients. It provides consistency, familiarity, and recognition to your bank and your free checking marketing effort, mail drop after mail drop.

Yet, for a control to remain effective, you must test against it in subsequent mail drops. The goal is to see if your agency can find one or more package "tweaks" that will improve response. When such a test package out pulls the control, it becomes the new control.

Canadian Ted Kikoler is one of the direct mail industry's best graphic designers. Here's what Kikoler wrote about testing your control package: "You'd be surprised how long a control can be kept alive with simple cosmetic changes. That's because we have a harder time remembering what we have read than what we have seen."

As it relates to your free checking self-mailers, one of the easiest cosmetic changes to make is the free gift offer which changes with each mail drop anyway. And since your changing offer appears on both outside panels of your self-mailer, there is little likelihood that customers and prospects will quickly tire of your mailer.

Introducing totally new creative with each mail drop not only introduces inconsistency, it violates the sanctity of the control package approach to maximizing response.

JOE'S BULLETIN BOARD SPEECH

When it comes to clients requesting new creative or major creative makeovers, our senior copywriter delivers his standard "bulletin board" speech. It goes like this: "It doesn't matter how much we love our creative or the bank loves the creative. The person who gets the mail piece doesn't tape it to the refrigerator or pin it to the bulletin board so she can compare the copy and design to the next mail piece six or eight weeks later. No prospect ever says she won't switch to a bank because they used the same creative twice."

Joe's talking about your control group package – the one that's currently working best for you.

Like all direct mail experts, Joe and the other members of his creative team understand the value and necessity of package consistency. Why is package consistency so important? Besides delivering the best response results, it also creates familiarity and recognition which is critical for building and maintaining your brand.

Perhaps it's time to recollect all the sage advice about consistency you've been given over the years.

"Don't change horses in the middle of the stream."

"Stick with the winners."

"Keep doing what works best for you."

"Dance with the one that brung you."

This last bit of advice was a favorite of Darrell Royal, the legendary University of Texas football coach. During his 20 years coaching at the University of Texas (1956-1976), Royal never had a losing season. To him it meant sticking with the players and plays that win games... in other words, consistency.

To marketers it means sticking with your winning creative. Don't make changes just because you are tired of seeing it. And don't make changes thinking that you can somehow make dramatic improvements based on intuition or feel. With few exceptions, changes should only be made after testing.

Your control package is your winner...you ride your winner as long as possible.

DR. FRANK LUNTZ PREACHES CONSISTENCY

Rule number four is "Consistency Matters."

The man making the rules has the attention of politicians and corporate executives all over America…and the world.

After years as a master pollster and communications expert, Dr. Frank Luntz shares his treasure trove of secrets for choosing the right words to influence and motivate consumers.

Chapter 1 of Dr. Luntz's 2007 book, Words That Work – It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear, covers his ten rules of effective communication.

According to the biography on the book’s dust jacket, “Dr. Frank Luntz was named the ‘hottest pollster in America’ by the Boston Globe, and ‘has a special expertise, one that happens to be in demand these days,’ according to the New York Times.

“He is sought by CEOs of Fortune 100 companies, political candidates, public advocacy groups, and world leaders – just about anyone who wants to know how to say things better and more effectively.

“Dr. Luntz has supervised more than 1,200 surveys and focus groups in twenty countries, and has engineered some of the most potent political and corporate [ad] campaigns of the last decade.”

According to Luntz, "Too many politicians insist on new talking points on a daily basis, and companies are running too many different ad executions. By the time we begin to recognize and remember a particular message, it has already been changed."

Everywhere he goes, Luntz is preaching the gospel of consistency and why it is critical if your messages are to be heard, believed, and remembered. He tells corporate executives that "message consistency builds customer loyalty."

Remember, your creative has one task – and one task only – to grab attention so that your customers and prospects will read your message. Creative consistency and message consistency work together as a team…change one and you impact the other.

When asked why consistency is critical, Luntz replies, "Finding a good message and then sticking with it takes extraordinary discipline, but it pays off tenfold in the end. Remember, you may be making yourself sick by saying the same exact thing for the umpteenth time, but many in your audience will be hearing it for the first time. The overwhelming majority of your customers aren't paying as much attention as you are."

His advice sounds quite similar to that of David Ogilvy.

Knowing that politicians and corporate CEOs continue paying Luntz hundreds of thousands of dollars for his expertise and advice…when he tells them that consistency matters you should not only believe it but practice it.

Consistency matters!

ACHIEVING CONSISTENCY

Achieving consistency is relatively easy.

Coming to the realization that it is critical to your success and practicing it is the hard part.

The secret lies in remembering the Direct Mail Formula we presented in the December, 2008 issue.

The seemingly little-known formula is:

40% List

40% Offer

20% Everything else (the creative, the timing, and the format)  

Put another way:

40% List + 40% Offer + 20% Creative, Timing, Format = Direct Mail Success

As you can see from the formula, you should spend the majority of your time and effort on the two most critical components – your list and your offer.

Not the creative.

Unfortunately, our experience over many years has been that most marketers spend too much time on the creative component of the formula and not enough time on the list and offer.

One of our ongoing goals of this newsletter is to convince you that if you're currently using direct mail or are interested in adding direct mail to your marketing mix, your mailing list and your offer is where the action is.

They're not glamorous.

They're not fun and sexy like creative.

But they are the most important components of the Direct Mail Formula.

It's where you go when you want to make improvements in your costs, response rates, and your marketing ROI.

The secret to avoiding a direct mail disaster is to "FOLLOW THE RULES."

And this means following the formula.

Leave the copy and creative to the experts – your direct response agency…not your general media agency.

Your direct response agency creative team knows that experts like David Ogilvy and Frank Luntz speak the truth when they preach the value of consistency.