Direct mail - the big brother of direct marketing (page 1 of 5)

Direct mail fascinates me. It is a remarkable medium.

But one that is still very much misunderstood...

Latest figures show that 82% of the adult population have bought by mail and 84% of trading companies now use it, for promotional purposes...

..yet, the vast majority of it is still so poor... not only in the UK and Europe, but overseas as well. Especially here in the Gulf.

You only have to look at your own mail to see that. In fact, there's probably more junk around now, than when the media picked up on the Junk Mail tag and ran it incessantly, nearly a decade ago.

Why is this? Well, there are many reasons. The main one, in my view, is that we, the direct marketing professionals, have not sold our culture too well over the last few years. Yes, I know this is not going to go down too well in certain circles - specialist agencies for one, but it's true - I see it at the sharp end every day.

It's patently obvious to me that we haven't convinced a huge amount of end users that direct mail is a very specialist area, requiring specialist input. Accordingly, marketing departments in companies large and small, don't recognise the need to employ specialists, who fully understand the elements of direct mail and how they work together to create that successful mailing.

Here in the Gulf region, people consider direct mail to be a flyer in an envelope, with a label on the front. They must do, because that's mainly what you see.

It is jaw droppingly poor, in the vast majority of cases. And, despite efforts by a number of dm professionals including myself, people who should know better, still 'play' with the medium, instead of taking it seriously.

So, in an effort to clarify key areas of direct mail, I thought it would be prudent to start with some proven facts...

Million Dollar Mailings, a first class book which analyses 71 of the best US mailings, which the editors call 'grand controls', offers absolutely priceless advice, about what works best and the reasons why.

A control mailing is the one that works best, after being tested against numerous other packs. So these examples have beaten everything they were tested against in the world's most competitive market over long periods of time.

One very special mailing deserves to be highlighted and discussed. The Wall Street Journal, has been running and working for over 23 years, pulling in a staggering $1.3bn (£800m) in sales. It has generated more revenue per word written, than anything else ever published, including the Bible.

The characteristics of a lot of the most successful mailings will probably surprise you. Not one tried to conceal its intentions by masquerading as personal mail. In fact, quite the opposite. They were all blatantly commercial.

88% had messages on the envelope; 83% used window envelopes

Every single mailing pack contained a personalised letter ( more of that later ) and most were longer than a single page, once again disproving that fairy story that no one will read a long letter.

The average length of a letter to sell a consumer magazine was 3.3 pages: for business magazines, 2.1 pages. To sell a newsletter, the average was four pages; for a home study course, six pages.

FREE offers were the order of the day in the mailing packs, both to consumers and business people, and were even more common in the latter case, a trend which has continued to grow and become more successful in the last five years.