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We noticed a falloff in mail at home. “For the first time in years,” Peggy said on the first day of June, “I carried a full month of junk mail into the archive in a single shopping bag.”
Should You Test Mail Now?
Some timely considerations:
• Nobody likes an empty mailbox, and with mailers cutting back, a really good offer to the right person in the mail has a good chance of being noticed and opened.
• “Of all practical advertising media, only direct mail offers a sufficiently large canvas for telling a complex story.” —Bill Jayme
• “Of all the formats used in direct mail, none has more power to generate action than the letter.” —Dick Hodgson
• “Any package containing a letter will generally pull greater response than a package without a letter; extensive testing has proved this to be true in most cases.” —Dick Hodgson
• “Success in direct mail is dependent on the following ratios: 40 percent lists, 40 percent offer, 20 percent everything else.” —Ed Mayer
• The success of a direct marketing project is 30 percent offer, 20 percent lists, 20 percent package cost and 20 percent creative. If you pay too much, you can never recover.” —Bob Hacker
• Finally, why go into the mail? Postage is the most expensive element, and the USPS had an unheard of summer sale—30 percent rebate on postage if eligible.
Denny Hatch is a freelance direct marketing consultant and copywriter, and author of the e-mail newsletter, Denny Hatch’s Business Common Sense. Visit him at www.businesscommonsense.com or www.dennyhatch.com, or contact him via e-mail at dennyhatch@yahoo.com.
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