Innovations in direct mail pull in buyers - Circulation

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Oct 15, 1993 by Eliot Schein

The trick is to use the concepts before they age, and switch to the breakthroughs before everyone else tries them.

Ever since Benjamin Franklin reorganized the United States Post Office, mailers have been racking their brains to develop brilliant ideas for making mail more noticeable, and thus a more effective selling medium.

The past three decades have seen some remarkable innovations in direct mail, but the payback doesn't necessarily go to those who develop and design the new formats, approaches, concepts or ideas. Rather, it's those who jump on the bandwagon earliest who reap the most benefits.

The most notable novelty in the sixties was the computer letter and its "amazing" ability to incorporate the recipient's name and address into the promotion. Inevitably, of course, the computer letter was overused. Remembered fondly is one particular over-personalized effort to sell a subscription to a famous culinary magazine to Joel J. Blattstein. Imagine the hilarity when the recipients read how "The Blattstein household |by subscribing to the magazine~ will be able to challenge the epicurean efforts of the best French restaurants in Garnerville, New York"--a town which did not then and does not now have any French restaurants, to the best of our knowledge and belief. Listed in the innards of the promotion were some of the dishes that would quickly make the Blattstein family famous--recipes such as "Eggs a la Blattstein, Souffle du Blattstein" and various others far too side-splitting to relate here. (In her defense, Mrs. Blattstein does happen to make some of the world's very best beef brisket and roast turkey.)

How can you forget the first computer letter you ever received? The one I remember best talked about my winning a new 1968 Cadillac, and how exciting it would be when, should I win, the car would be parked in front of 420 Madison Avenue. The 420 Madison Avenue part was the computer fill-in, and I remember wondering just how long that Cadillac would last before being towed away by zealous Manhattan traffic agents!

By the early 1970s, the computer letter had gone stale. At this time, Kurt H. Volk Inc. came up with something called the Letter-lope, which the company immediately trademarked. You've probably seen a million of them. This worked well too, and continued to achieve some success as the pulling power of the computer letter waned.

The next level of promotional excitement came well after the public was bored to tears with computer fill-ins and computer letters began to be creamed in competition with more traditional pieces of promotion. This backlash was probably effected, at least in part, by the desire of the consumer to maintain a greater level of privacy--a desire fueled, in turn, by certain consumer advocate groups.

Fortunately, along came the telegram look-alike. Boy, was there a flurry of those. We recall a suggestion that the American Journal of Cardiology send something called a "cardiogram" to subscriber physicians. That was laughed out of the box, but "Medigram" was embraced, and to some degree is still in use. Everybody, it seems, had grams. There were datagrams and Instagrams and everything that looked and felt like an overnight or telegraphed delivery piece. These were very effective for everything from new business to renewals to billing.

Eventually, that concept became saturated and the results started to drift off. Around the same time, the double postcard reared its ugly, albeit inexpensive, head. And for some publications, it has become the control or standard for much of the work they do. Larry Sporn, when at the circulation helm of Ziff-Davis, used to count on the effectiveness of these double postcards for well-known publications, and said on a number of occasions that it was because of the lower postage rates and lower production costs. These savings, he said, allowed him to put almost twice as many pieces in the mail. A good idea then and not so bad now--but again, its effectiveness erodes as time goes on and the novelty begins to wear with overuse.

A recent development had to wait until overnight courier services like Express Mail and Federal Express became well known in the marketplace--even though it is now difficult to imagine a world without them. Copying the overnight delivery format and design was predictable, and tons of companies pushed these out of the hopper.

Another relatively new wrinkle making significant headway is the certified mail look-alike package. When the question comes up, "What kind of format should I use in an emergency to shore up a sagging renewal effort in a series?" the smart money is on the certified mail look-alike. It is relatively inexpensive to produce and commands significant attention--and thus results. You might want to try this one yourself.

On the heels of this approach is another that is so new, printed samples are hard to come by. But, you may have seen it by now. It features the words, in giant type, "Next Morning Delivery. Enclosed contents require immediate attention. Deliver upon receipt." The carrier is usually a #10 envelope, which is a more efficient size than the larger, ersatz "Express Mail" promotion piece.