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People love talking about themselves. Many years ago, I had a client who mailed consumer surveys, which were happily filled out and returned by the zillions. All kinds of questions were asked: on toothpaste, leisure activities, travel, vehicle ownership, hobbies and interests, auto insurance, etc. Much of the information the responders revealed was highly confidential, especially in the area of health.
For example, one of the questions asked if anyone in the household had one or more of 26 ailments. Included in the list: arthritis, asthma, bed-wetting, Crohn’s, emphysema, heart attack or angina, Parkinson’s, psoriasis, etc.
In addition to the list of ailments, individual health problems were given their own sections—diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma and allergies—along with lists of medicines used.
Any of half a dozen arthritis drug manufacturers may have sponsored one or more questions about rheumatoid arthritis and received exclusive rights to responses, plus the name and address of the person who filled out the survey.
And because this was all voluntarily “self-reported” information, this was a license for the sponsoring pharmaceutical company to hustle its drugs by mail to targeted patients. In addition, the nonsponsored responses were up for grabs by marketers, and the results found their way into vast databases made up of individual behavioral and demographic dossiers that were rocketed around the country dozens of times a day and rented by marketers.
Can You Get Personal?
Newbie direct marketers and copywriters assume that if they can talk personally to a prospect by mail or e-mail about the individual’s problems, needs or wants, attention will be paid and action will be taken.
“As someone who likes camping” or “No longer do you need to suffer the pain of arthritis” may seem like good ledes. But in fact, they can spook a prospect—take the positive knowledge about a person and generate a highly negative reaction.
I am talking here about prospects only. Obviously, if a marketer is talking to a long-time customer with whom a relationship has existed and mutual trust has been built, that is a different scenario. But quite simply, it is dumb to hit up a stranger with intimate knowledge that came to you from some outside source.
How to Approach a Stranger
Here are two possible ledes:
- “If you love camping in the wild—or know someone who does …”
- “If you know someone—a friend or family member—who suffers from arthritis …”
One of the great direct mail letters of all time was the late Ed McLean’s masterpiece for Newsweek. It began:
Dear Reader,
If the list upon which I found your name is any indication, this is not the first—nor will it be the last—subscription letter you receive.
Quite frankly, your education and income set you apart from the general population and make you a highly rated prospect for everything from magazines to mutual funds.
It was an offbeat approach—one that both flattered the reader and, at the same time, let prospects in on how they came to receive the solicitations. Newsweek rented a list—no big deal.
Many people wrote in to ask what list they were on. A few complained. Many more responded by subscribing to the magazine. It was a control for many years (1960-1975) and was mailed in the hundreds of millions.
This effort is certainly one of the top 10 direct mail letters of all time, along with Martin Conroy’s “Two Young Men …” effort for The Wall Street Journal that was a control for 20-plus years and brought in more than $1 billion in subscription income.
Today, McLean’s mailing would never fly. In fact, McLean’s rule was: You’ve got to dumb down what you know.
In other words, you may have a great deal of personal and intimate information about your prospect, but that knowledge must operate behind the copy. You cannot reel off in-your-face information to a person that you got from an outside source. It is eerie. It is creepy. It is disrespectful.
It will hurt response and hurt the reputation of the marketer.
Denny Hatch is a freelance direct marketing consultant and copywriter, and author of the online 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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