Issue #4, May 2008
“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily
what others have labored hard for.”
— Socrates
The Creative Process
The secret direct mail formula consists of the following elements:
40% List
40% Offer
20% Everything Else (Creative, Timing, and Format)
Why do we refer to it as the secret formula?
Because so few marketing folks are aware of its existence.
How important is your offer? Perhaps direct mail veteran Bob Hacker said it best: "It's the offer, stupid. If performance isn't what it should be, check the offer first."
Your offer is the reason your prospect or customer considers what you're selling. Your offer is the incentive and motivation for your prospect to respond to your direct mail piece.
Bottom line…your offer is the reason your prospect becomes your customer.
In this month's issue of the newsletter, we are going to focus on what happens when a bank fails to adequately describe its offer in a direct mail package.
It's an excellent example of "over promise and under deliver."
Or perhaps – bait and switch?
The offer was for a WorldPoints® Platinum Plus® MasterCard® Credit Card from Bank of America. That's a lot of adjectives – or, better yet, superlatives – to elevate a mundane credit card to a position of mass desirability.
The major problem facing credit card marketers today is finding "the big idea"...coming up with a unique selling proposition (USP) or point of differentiation. Failure to do so usually relegates your expensive direct mail package to the circular file.
In his out-of-print book, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Direct Marketing, veteran copywriter and prolific author, and direct marketing expert Robert W. Bly defines the offer as: "What your prospect gets when they respond to your ad or mailing, combined with what they have to do to get it."
Michael Masterson is a direct marketing veteran and entrepreneur. In his course book on direct marketing copywriting, Masterson describes the offer as "An exact, succinct description of what the customer will be getting."
The closed-face envelope package arrived in November...received by a long-time direct mail expert who forwarded it to your newsletter editor as a bad example.
A quick glance at the front of the colorful outer envelope (OSE) yielded the typical offer of a 0% fixed rate of interest on cash advances and balance transfers for a period of time. Nothing new about this!
But wait, what's that circular airplane/ship icon above the "2-for-1 Certificate" Offer to the right of the World Travelers of America logo on the front of the outer envelope?
Aha! This must be "the big idea" behind this credit card offer.
It was the "2-for-1 Certificate" Offer that intrigued our direct mail expert. Wanting to learn more, he quickly checked the back of the OSE where he discovered the second mention of the offer.
The next step was opening the envelope to learn more about this exciting offer in the letter or on a special "2-for-1 Certificate" Offer buckslip...or both.
Upon removing the letter from the envelope, our expert immediately noticed the same airplane/ship icon with modified "2-for-1 Certificate" Offer copy in the top right corner of the letter.
As you can see on the right, the offer was mentioned a fourth time at the end of the letter’s second paragraph. And then...nothing more. It's as if the copywriter forgot about the "2-for-1 Certificate" Offer that was so prominently featured on the front and back of the OSE, at the top of the letter, and mentioned briefly in the letter copy.
"What happened to the special '2-for-1 Certificate' Offer," our expert wondered? Where's the details?
Having spent over 30 years writing direct mail copy he was not about to give up the search for more information about this promising offer.
THE DEVIL'S IN THE DETAILS
After an exhaustive search, and near surrender, he spotted the footnoted, mice-type copy on the offer buried near the bottom on the back of the disclosure insert…seen at the right.
What are prospects, like our direct mail expert, suppose to think when they are made a big promise, twice on the OSE and twice in the letter, only to have it disappear into the black hole of disclosure copy?
In fact, how many prospects receiving this direct mail package are going to spend the time looking for the offer details? Let’s be honest...legal disclosures are probably read as frequently as the copy on a mattress tag.
Which brings us to the most important question...how did this special "2-for-1 Certificate" Offer start out with a bang and end in a whimper?
Our direct mail expert commented, "I don’t know how something like this gets through all the steps of approval without someone raising a flag over it."
In this instance, could it be that there were too many cooks in the kitchen?
This is a co-branded card between the marketing folks at World Travelers of America and Bank of America. Add yet another marketing team from someone's direct mail agency and you get too many marketing and creative experts and no one doing the heavy lifting of proofreading.
While we are unsure as to the source of the creative, Rapp Collins is Bank of America's direct mail agency.
This offer from Bank of America serves as a bad example of how you shouldn't present your offer in a direct mail package.
No wonder consumers, today, are tiring of the avalanche of meaningless and confusing credit card offers cluttering their mailboxes.
Prospects first encounter the "2-for-1 Certificate" Offer on the front of the outer envelope.
Checking the back of the outer envelope before opening it, our prospect again encounters the special "2-for-1 Certificate" Offer.
Upon removing the letter from the outer envelope, our prospect sees the "2-for-1 Certificate" Offer for a third time. What's this? The offer is mentioned again in the last sentence of the second paragraph.
Finally! First, the good news. The copywriter describes the offer in greater detail. Now, for the bad news. The offer explanation is buried in the fine print on the back of the separate disclosure insert.
Past Issues of the Newsletter
All past issues of the ACTON Marketing, LLC newsletter are available online in the archive.
Comments?
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