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How are direct marketers coping?
by Denny Hatch, Contributing Editor
On November 22, 1963, Consumer Reports circulation director Paul Goldberg was having lunch at the Pierre hotel in New York with two of his counterparts in the business when the maitre d' came over to say that the President of the United States had been shot. "Oh, my God!" said the woman on Goldberg's right. "Oh, my God!," said the woman on Goldberg's left. "Oh, my mail!" said Goldberg.
It's a given: A major catastrophe will clobber results as Americans spend an inordinate number of additional hours watching events unfold on television while mail, household chores and bills pile up. In terms of trying to make sense of results in the wake of a national tragedy, don't bother. In the words of Dorothy Fields, "Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again."
The 24-hour cable news networks are hell bent on prolonging the agony. Particularly insidious is the media game of "What if...": What if a hijacked plane flies into a nuclear power facility? What if smallpox is loosed on the country? Remember the seven basic copy drivers of direct mail consultants Bob Hacker and Axel Andersson: Fear, Greed, Guilt, Anger, Exclusivity, Salvation, Flattery. It's no coincidence that fear, guilt and anger are among the first four, and the media are feeding on them to the hilt.
The government is doing its best to exact revenge against those who took advantage of its massive intelligence failure. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is buying machines to kill anthrax. This is a bump in the road. So let's get on with it.
How are direct marketers getting on with it?
I called a slew of list brokers, consultants and publishers to try to discover what they and their clients have done in light of the Sept. 11 horror and the anthrax scare. Most marketers did the obvious: immediately canceled all mailings to downtown Manhattan and Pentagon area ZIP codes.
When USPS letter carriers went on strike a number of years ago, the entire financial system was bollixed up. Nobody knew where the money was. One of the three great lies of mankind was suddenly true: "The check is in the mail."
Same thing today. Mitch Davis, publisher of "The Yearbook of Experts, Authorities & Spokespersons," told me his BRE mail was held up for four weeks and he had to chase all over Washington to get it.
Murial Diamond of Alan Drey in New York reported good news and bad news. The bad news: Response to seminar mailings cascaded like Enron stock following Sept. 11; nobody, it seems, had any interest in traveling. The good news: "I never in my life have received so many catalogs as I have in October and November," Diamond said.
Cheryl Bagdan of Leon Henry says she is being hit with credit card penalties because of slow mail delivery. "California mail is being delivered but local New York mail is slow as molasses," she said. On the positive side, Leon Henry is seeing a lift in its specialty package insert programs. "People order through the mail, are expecting a package, and feel safe opening it." Bagdan says.
One of Bagdan's clients is actively pursuing off-the-page advertising as a stopgap measure. Another client rented a prospecting list twice and, for the first effort, sent out a pre-alert postcard urging the prospect to watch for the mailing to follow. "People are not afraid to read a postcard," Bagdan says.
Ann Zinser of LZL Inc. reports one of her timeshare mailers has gone to a 6˝x 9˝ postcard for 25 percent of its prospecting efforts. The response mechanism is an 800 number, and results are OK.
Speaking of pre-alerts, a number of catalogers are using recorded phone calls to their best customers urging them to watch their mail for the new catalog.
Philip Zodhaites of Response Unlimited has a fund-raising client who, on hearing about the anthrax situation, immediately canceled the test of a handwritten, personalized envelope mailed from India. Another of his fundraising clients made a highly successful appeal to help get missionaries out harm's way in the Middle East. Conversely, a couple of other clients jumped in the mail with a Sept.11 theme and did not do well. Zodhaites felt that the Sept.11 fund and the Red Cross got that money.
Russell Dunn of Mal Dunn Associates has two publishing clients who deal in traditional home values and comfort food recipes. Both had phenomenal September results. Good Housekeeping is doing a December drop which will be fascinating to monitor.
Alexis Kimberly-Bryant of DJ Associates' Conway, NH office, reports her catalog clients are doing nothing different and responses are good so far; the worst results are just 5 percent below plan.
A food client of catalog consultant Jack Schmid asked if he should scrap the four-color outer carrier envelope for his 16-page catalog. Schmid said no, but suggested he put a big notice on the front that said, "From your good friends at [Cataloger Name] for our preferred customers." Schmid is a firm believer in Axel Andersson's dictum: If you want to dramatically increase response, you must dramatically improve you offer. Another of Schmid's food clients makes five major mailings between August and December, usually with time-dated offers. Schmid's advice was to stay the course, read the flash counts and, if needed, on subsequent efforts, make some special offers, such as free or half-off shipping. Schmid has seen increases as high as 20 percent with free shipping offers. At the same time, a cataloger who doesn't know his arithmetic can lose his shirt on free shipping.
Schmid pointed out that the economy was soft prior to Sept.11 and he was already working with his clients to be "squeaky tight" on prospecting. He also added that he believed anthrax was no big deal in the Midwest and West, but was a problem back East. This is the message I got from The DMA Conference in October. My own feeling is that the anthrax scare is akin to the Tylenol tampering business years ago. Pill makers quickly redesigned their packaging to make it tamper-proof (or easy to spot any tampering). In the case of anthrax, the USPS will put irradiation machines everywhere and nuke all mail.
Steve Bogner of NRL Direct was in touch with three major catalogers, all of whom had "blow-out" Thanksgiving weekends. He spent a week trying to get in touch with one client who never returned his calls; she was too busy taking orders. Bogner believes the reason for the success of catalogs is summed up by four words of his ex-brother-in-law from Chicago: "The malls are empty."
Pamela Kelly of Valerie Davis validated Goldberg's experience after Kennedy was shot: incredibly poor results after the tragedy. Several of her clients are exploring e-mail; one is looking into polybag envelopes which have a perception of safety. And one of Bob Hacker's rules: "Wanna make money this quarter? Don't mail the bottom quintile of your list."
The B-to-B Arena. The big question mark is the effect of Sept. 11 and anthrax in the b-to-b arena. After all, anthrax mailings were sent to business mail rooms at American Media Headquarters, publisher of The National Enquirer, Star, Globe, Sun and National Examiner, in Boca Raton, FL, and the U.S. Senate.
Douglas von Hassel of List Strategies relates that things are slow for his b-to-b clients but many are still mailing. Others are stepping up their telemarketing efforts and testing e-mail.
Conversely, according to one source, a flag cataloger reported such a huge surge in orders following Sept. 11 (as was the case in 1991 during the Gulf War) that the phone was no longer answered and shipping quantities were strictly limited so that the needs of regular customers could be met. "There's nothing new about getting past the major domos of the mail rooms," says Merit Direct's Ralph Drybrough. "It's been a problem for as long as I have been a broker."
Most savvy business mailers limit the total number of pieces going to the same mail room at the same time, so the staff won't see a huge pile of identical catalogs and order the whole thing chucked out. In addition, the use of individual names rather than titles tends raise deliverability. With business lists going out of date at the rate of 50 percent a year, Drybrough suggests business mailers rely on recency in their prospecting by renting 3- and 6-month hotline names.
Drybrough also surveyed 16 business mailers and asked how their mailing plans differed in 2001 from 2000. Nine cut the amount of prospect efforts while two mailed the same and five mailed more. In 2002, seven will mail less while the balance will prospect the same amount as 2002 or more.
If I were running a company, I would order a brainstorming session between my marketing and merchandising teams. Then, I would review two areas of the business—product and promotional material.
Product
What do we have that could take advantage of the current neurotic psyche of the American consumer and business? For example, Mail-Well once designed an envelope with two glassine windows—one on the face for the name and address to show through and another at the bottom edge so an interior bar code could be seen and read. In an example of marketing wizardry, Mail-Well resurrected the design and offered it as the Visulope "Safety Window Envelope" that has windows that wrap around the bottom of the envelope. Mail-Well's PR person, Bevo Beaven, reports the new Visulope created quite a buzz in the media: Stories about the Visulope were carried on 115 NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX and WB TV affiliate stations, plus CNN between Nov. 21 and 29.
As of Nov. 19, Mail-Well had orders for resurrected products that totaled $2 million. LZL's has a client who is considering the Visulopes, although it is gun shy about the slight added cost.
Ralph Drybrough cited a promotional marketing company that put out a catalog featuring American flag key rings and flashlights, ballpoint pens, etc. Great results.
Promotional Material
Carefully flyspeck all current efforts to make sure none of the copy or illustrations take on an inappropriate meaning in light of Sept. 11 or anthrax. If, for example, your brochure is illustrated with a New York City scene that includes the World Trade Center, it will be jarring to your prospect, causing an interruption of the interruption as the images of Sept.11 are remembered. In an instant, you've lost the continuity of the sales argument and, likely, the sale.
Whenever I acquire a new client, I always suggest we go through the black binders on the shelf containing control efforts over the past five or more years. What old products and promotion pieces do you have sitting around your company that could be revitalized and enable you to profit from the fear, anger and angst of the American public?
by Denny Hatch, Contributing Editor
On November 22, 1963, Consumer Reports circulation director Paul Goldberg was having lunch at the Pierre hotel in New York with two of his counterparts in the business when the maitre d' came over to say that the President of the United States had been shot. "Oh, my God!" said the woman on Goldberg's right. "Oh, my God!," said the woman on Goldberg's left. "Oh, my mail!" said Goldberg.
It's a given: A major catastrophe will clobber results as Americans spend an inordinate number of additional hours watching events unfold on television while mail, household chores and bills pile up. In terms of trying to make sense of results in the wake of a national tragedy, don't bother. In the words of Dorothy Fields, "Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again."
The 24-hour cable news networks are hell bent on prolonging the agony. Particularly insidious is the media game of "What if...": What if a hijacked plane flies into a nuclear power facility? What if smallpox is loosed on the country? Remember the seven basic copy drivers of direct mail consultants Bob Hacker and Axel Andersson: Fear, Greed, Guilt, Anger, Exclusivity, Salvation, Flattery. It's no coincidence that fear, guilt and anger are among the first four, and the media are feeding on them to the hilt.
The government is doing its best to exact revenge against those who took advantage of its massive intelligence failure. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is buying machines to kill anthrax. This is a bump in the road. So let's get on with it.
How are direct marketers getting on with it?
I called a slew of list brokers, consultants and publishers to try to discover what they and their clients have done in light of the Sept. 11 horror and the anthrax scare. Most marketers did the obvious: immediately canceled all mailings to downtown Manhattan and Pentagon area ZIP codes.
When USPS letter carriers went on strike a number of years ago, the entire financial system was bollixed up. Nobody knew where the money was. One of the three great lies of mankind was suddenly true: "The check is in the mail."
Same thing today. Mitch Davis, publisher of "The Yearbook of Experts, Authorities & Spokespersons," told me his BRE mail was held up for four weeks and he had to chase all over Washington to get it.
Murial Diamond of Alan Drey in New York reported good news and bad news. The bad news: Response to seminar mailings cascaded like Enron stock following Sept. 11; nobody, it seems, had any interest in traveling. The good news: "I never in my life have received so many catalogs as I have in October and November," Diamond said.
Cheryl Bagdan of Leon Henry says she is being hit with credit card penalties because of slow mail delivery. "California mail is being delivered but local New York mail is slow as molasses," she said. On the positive side, Leon Henry is seeing a lift in its specialty package insert programs. "People order through the mail, are expecting a package, and feel safe opening it." Bagdan says.
One of Bagdan's clients is actively pursuing off-the-page advertising as a stopgap measure. Another client rented a prospecting list twice and, for the first effort, sent out a pre-alert postcard urging the prospect to watch for the mailing to follow. "People are not afraid to read a postcard," Bagdan says.
Ann Zinser of LZL Inc. reports one of her timeshare mailers has gone to a 6˝x 9˝ postcard for 25 percent of its prospecting efforts. The response mechanism is an 800 number, and results are OK.
Speaking of pre-alerts, a number of catalogers are using recorded phone calls to their best customers urging them to watch their mail for the new catalog.
Philip Zodhaites of Response Unlimited has a fund-raising client who, on hearing about the anthrax situation, immediately canceled the test of a handwritten, personalized envelope mailed from India. Another of his fundraising clients made a highly successful appeal to help get missionaries out harm's way in the Middle East. Conversely, a couple of other clients jumped in the mail with a Sept.11 theme and did not do well. Zodhaites felt that the Sept.11 fund and the Red Cross got that money.
Russell Dunn of Mal Dunn Associates has two publishing clients who deal in traditional home values and comfort food recipes. Both had phenomenal September results. Good Housekeeping is doing a December drop which will be fascinating to monitor.
Alexis Kimberly-Bryant of DJ Associates' Conway, NH office, reports her catalog clients are doing nothing different and responses are good so far; the worst results are just 5 percent below plan.
A food client of catalog consultant Jack Schmid asked if he should scrap the four-color outer carrier envelope for his 16-page catalog. Schmid said no, but suggested he put a big notice on the front that said, "From your good friends at [Cataloger Name] for our preferred customers." Schmid is a firm believer in Axel Andersson's dictum: If you want to dramatically increase response, you must dramatically improve you offer. Another of Schmid's food clients makes five major mailings between August and December, usually with time-dated offers. Schmid's advice was to stay the course, read the flash counts and, if needed, on subsequent efforts, make some special offers, such as free or half-off shipping. Schmid has seen increases as high as 20 percent with free shipping offers. At the same time, a cataloger who doesn't know his arithmetic can lose his shirt on free shipping.
Schmid pointed out that the economy was soft prior to Sept.11 and he was already working with his clients to be "squeaky tight" on prospecting. He also added that he believed anthrax was no big deal in the Midwest and West, but was a problem back East. This is the message I got from The DMA Conference in October. My own feeling is that the anthrax scare is akin to the Tylenol tampering business years ago. Pill makers quickly redesigned their packaging to make it tamper-proof (or easy to spot any tampering). In the case of anthrax, the USPS will put irradiation machines everywhere and nuke all mail.
Steve Bogner of NRL Direct was in touch with three major catalogers, all of whom had "blow-out" Thanksgiving weekends. He spent a week trying to get in touch with one client who never returned his calls; she was too busy taking orders. Bogner believes the reason for the success of catalogs is summed up by four words of his ex-brother-in-law from Chicago: "The malls are empty."
Pamela Kelly of Valerie Davis validated Goldberg's experience after Kennedy was shot: incredibly poor results after the tragedy. Several of her clients are exploring e-mail; one is looking into polybag envelopes which have a perception of safety. And one of Bob Hacker's rules: "Wanna make money this quarter? Don't mail the bottom quintile of your list."
The B-to-B Arena. The big question mark is the effect of Sept. 11 and anthrax in the b-to-b arena. After all, anthrax mailings were sent to business mail rooms at American Media Headquarters, publisher of The National Enquirer, Star, Globe, Sun and National Examiner, in Boca Raton, FL, and the U.S. Senate.
Douglas von Hassel of List Strategies relates that things are slow for his b-to-b clients but many are still mailing. Others are stepping up their telemarketing efforts and testing e-mail.
Conversely, according to one source, a flag cataloger reported such a huge surge in orders following Sept. 11 (as was the case in 1991 during the Gulf War) that the phone was no longer answered and shipping quantities were strictly limited so that the needs of regular customers could be met. "There's nothing new about getting past the major domos of the mail rooms," says Merit Direct's Ralph Drybrough. "It's been a problem for as long as I have been a broker."
Most savvy business mailers limit the total number of pieces going to the same mail room at the same time, so the staff won't see a huge pile of identical catalogs and order the whole thing chucked out. In addition, the use of individual names rather than titles tends raise deliverability. With business lists going out of date at the rate of 50 percent a year, Drybrough suggests business mailers rely on recency in their prospecting by renting 3- and 6-month hotline names.
Drybrough also surveyed 16 business mailers and asked how their mailing plans differed in 2001 from 2000. Nine cut the amount of prospect efforts while two mailed the same and five mailed more. In 2002, seven will mail less while the balance will prospect the same amount as 2002 or more.
If I were running a company, I would order a brainstorming session between my marketing and merchandising teams. Then, I would review two areas of the business—product and promotional material.
Product
What do we have that could take advantage of the current neurotic psyche of the American consumer and business? For example, Mail-Well once designed an envelope with two glassine windows—one on the face for the name and address to show through and another at the bottom edge so an interior bar code could be seen and read. In an example of marketing wizardry, Mail-Well resurrected the design and offered it as the Visulope "Safety Window Envelope" that has windows that wrap around the bottom of the envelope. Mail-Well's PR person, Bevo Beaven, reports the new Visulope created quite a buzz in the media: Stories about the Visulope were carried on 115 NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX and WB TV affiliate stations, plus CNN between Nov. 21 and 29.
As of Nov. 19, Mail-Well had orders for resurrected products that totaled $2 million. LZL's has a client who is considering the Visulopes, although it is gun shy about the slight added cost.
Ralph Drybrough cited a promotional marketing company that put out a catalog featuring American flag key rings and flashlights, ballpoint pens, etc. Great results.
Promotional Material
Carefully flyspeck all current efforts to make sure none of the copy or illustrations take on an inappropriate meaning in light of Sept. 11 or anthrax. If, for example, your brochure is illustrated with a New York City scene that includes the World Trade Center, it will be jarring to your prospect, causing an interruption of the interruption as the images of Sept.11 are remembered. In an instant, you've lost the continuity of the sales argument and, likely, the sale.
Whenever I acquire a new client, I always suggest we go through the black binders on the shelf containing control efforts over the past five or more years. What old products and promotion pieces do you have sitting around your company that could be revitalized and enable you to profit from the fear, anger and angst of the American public?
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