A really weak direct mail pack
15 February 2007
In our famous Subscriptions Strategy newsletter we usually publish great promotions we can all learn from. We rarely show poor examples.
Our rationale is that subscribers are paying us good money for expert advice, not for criticism, no matter how gleefully entertaining that can be.
But this website is a different animal to our newsletter. The information you see here is free and it can be quite instructive to show how easily a marketing person can go wrong. It’s also easy to write this stuff because there are so many poor mailings around.
Searching out and analysing expertly created promotions is a time consuming job – there are fewer and fewer around. So it’s only fair you pay the subscription rate for that kind of advice.
But let’s look at the most common error marketers make, which is to copy other promotions without knowing any background details such as:
- How well did the promotion work? What was the Return On Investment?
- Is the promotion going to be regularly repeated? If not, why not?
- What made it work so well – was it the headline, USP, offer or concept?
- What were the problems faced by the person who created the promotion and how did he or she overcome them?
- Which media worked for the promotion, and which didn’t?
Here is what happens: your promotion is sent out and response is so poor it’s never used again. Which is probably what happened with the original promotion, but you didn’t know it.
If you don’t subscribe to Subscriptions Strategy you probably know little of what is working elsewhere and can’t take advantage of that knowledge.
However, we can also learn from looking at what not to do, which follows the maxim that everyone on Earth is here for a purpose even if only to serve as a poor example.
If you have no successful example to emulate, you could observe some bad or weak promotions and change the things that are wrong.
In terms of general marketing strategies that’s an approach that can work, if you are selling cars or running a hotel for example. But with subscriptions marketing you will need to discuss it with an expert who can tell you if your changes will work and make the necessary alterations.
If you are a good writer, it’s worth thinking about because that way you can save money: you have done most of the creative, which is the time consuming part.
Register with our confidential section to see a a recent direct mail promotion for Conde Naste Traveller magazine. It’s an in-house job (how do we know these things?!).
Take a look, then let me have as many answers to these questions you can come up with. If you can answer more than two questions more or less correctly will win a free copy of our Subscriptions Strategy newsletter worth £25:
- What is wrong with the overall message?
- What will happen with year one renewals?
- What is wrong with the offer?
- Why is it unlikely this promotion will be repeated?
- Why wouldn’t you see this kind of direct mail pack coming from a marketing-led publisher?
Send your answers by completing the form below
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