How to Make Your Direct Response Marketing NOT Suck

Direct response marketing that sucks is kind of like plain vanilla ice cream. Now there’s nothing particularly wrong with plain vanilla ice cream. In some cases, like when it's paired with warm apple pie, it can be a delicious experience. But when your marketing is like plain vanilla ice cream; then you have a problem on your hands. That's because plain vanilla marketing lacks uniqueness. It lacks any special flavors. It lacks any pretty colors. It's just plain boring and ordinary. Worst of all, there’s nothing about it that makes it stand out amongst all the other plain vanilla marketing efforts of every other business that’s competing with you to capture the attention of your target. So when you get a stack of mail in front of you and they all look the same, chances are that they’re all going in the trash. Goodbye ROI.

People are Overloaded With the Same Boring Stuff
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When you realize that the average American gets hit with about 1500 marketing messages per day and a good majority of those marketing messages are your run-of-the-mill plain old vanilla type of marketing; you begin to understand that plain and ordinary marketing just isn't going to cut it anymore in this highly competitive environment.

People get so much plain vanilla marketing shoved in front of their faces every day that they’ve developed a natural immunity to it. Marketing almost becomes invisible to them. They subconsciously block it out. If you want to cut through the sea of plain vanilla marketing, then you must make your marketing stand out. You do that by 1) being unique and 2) being personal.

Make Your Marketing Unique
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You can make your marketing unique by making it appear different than all the other mail pieces that one receives. There seems to be a kind of stubborn attitude with both small businesses and large alike that want to keep their mail pieces looking formal, corporate and intimidating. That’s great if you’re into throwing your marketing dollars right into the trash which is what literally happens when your target recipient tosses your marketing pieces without even opening it up. Ask yourself, what’s more important – Looking corporate and powerful, or getting results that will make you money?

In direct mail, being unique means that you’re sending lumpy mail pieces, or mail pieces that are unusually large, unusual or colorful – anything that’s different from your marketing competitors. Here are some examples of unusual marketing pieces:

• Tube mailers
• Express envelopes
• Packages
• Bank cash bags
• Pill bottles

These are just some examples of truly unusual mail pieces and I’m not saying that you need to use these examples specifically, but just take the main concept of being unique and build it into your own marketing campaigns to make them to make them stand out.

Make Your Marketing Personal: Lessons From Grandma
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Marketing that’s personal gets read. Marketing that’s corporate usually gets tossed in the trash.
So how do you make your marketing pieces more personal? The simple answer is to study the examples of the best direct mail marketer around with a 100% open rate – no it’s not Jay Abraham, Dan Kennedy or Frank Kern. The most savvy direct response marketer out there is good old Grandma.

What does Grandma do that’s different from a large corporation? Well, first of all is the shape of the envelope. Corporations use a #10 standard business envelope and it’s a sure “junk mail” indicator amongst its recipients. Grandma would use an odd shaped envelope that can fit a greeting card and it might be colored as well depending on the occasion.

Another point is the postage. A corporation would use either metered mail or a bulk rate or pre-paid certification. Grandma would never do this. Instead, Grandma would use those Elvis stamps she had lying around the house or perhaps ones of Disney or Peanuts® cartoons. Heck, the stamp might not even be centered correctly on the envelope.

Probably the most important aspect of Grandma’s direct mail versus that of a big corporation is the use of handwriting. Big corporations use high-production printers to print off addresses and usually pair them with a #10 envelope with a see-through address panel. It’s clinical, lifeless and bland. Grandma would never think to use this technology. Instead, she would handwrite the address information on the envelope and would either write out the return address or use one of those free self-adhesive return labels that she always receives free in the mail from non-profit organizations soliciting donations.

The magic of all these marketing tactics that Grandma deploys happens when you go and pick up Monday’s mail. You’re able to sift through credit card offers, insurance offers, offers to clean your carpets, automotive repair offers…all of which go straight into the trash. Then you come across an odd shaped card in red with a crooked Elvis stamp and handwritten addresses on it. Whether that’s Grandma’s work or not, it’s going to peak your interest enough to open it up.

At a time when big corporations are spending billions of dollars on advertising and mail pieces that get tossed, and spending millions of dollars more on hiring top marketing consultants and copywriters to boost their response, the real direct response marketing expert that you should be listening to is good old Grandma.