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How to Get Attention with Your Direct Marketing Mailers

Written by: Elizabeth Ruiz

Article Overview: Today we’re bombarded with all kinds of mail: bills, junk mail, magazine subscriptions and notes from family and friends. And we all sort it in a similar way…into priority stacks of the good, the bad and the ugly!

How to Get Attention with Your Direct Marketing Mailers

Today we’re bombarded with all kinds of mail: bills, junk mail, magazine subscriptions and notes from family and friends. And we all sort it in a similar way…into priority stacks of the good, the bad and the ugly!

The “Ugly” stack gets tossed straight into the recycle bin because it hollers “I’m junk mail from some stranger trying to get you to buy something you don’t want.” It’s loud, obnoxious and just too ugly to open it up. You really don’t want your mailers in this pile!

The “Bad” pile is stuff you have to open like bills or notices from the IRS. It’s not fun and it’s going to cost you money you don’t want to spend.

The “Good” pile is the stuff you can’t wait to open and read: letters from your family, your old college roommate, the latest issue of Business Week, Entrepreneur or whatever magazines you subscribe to and mail that looks intriguing or fun to open.

Your goal is to make it into the “I can’t wait to open it” Good pile.

Here’s where the 3 dimensional or lumpy mail comes in. The objective is to get noticed and be on the top off the stack of the Good pile. Every day people are overloaded with marketing messages…usually boring messages when people love to be entertained. Some only spend 3.5 seconds sorting through information they’ve requested! Lumpy mail is a vital part of direct marketing that gets attention.

Adding a lumpy or 3-D element to your mailers is sure to get them opened and read. It creates curiosity and gets your mailer put in the “Good” pile instead of the recycle bin.

It can be something useful like an audio cd or DVD of important tips your prospect will find helpful. Or send a something fun like a mini beach ball or pet toy.

Think of items that will tie in a promotional theme you have running through your sales letter. You don’t want to randomly send items that don’t fit in with your offer that would be a pointless waste of your marketing dollars.

If you are offering a “Knock Your Socks off Deal that Can’t Be Missed” send out a pair of socks to you mailing list. The lumpy package will make them curious to open it especially if you use teaser copy on the envelope.

Or you could mail pacifiers for clients who will “Sleep like a Baby When ____” and fill in the blank with the benefits of your offer.

Or mail a plastic “Message in a Bottle”. The ideas are endless to get your mail opened and read before anything else in the “Good” pile.

Once you come up with the theme of your sales letter pick the 3 dimensional item to make it lumpy and then work on crafting a pitch that gets your customers saying “I’ve got to buy that, try that, do that…” Whatever action you want them to take.

Your new job is to become a practitioner of outrageous marketing and advertising. You don’t want people to say “boy that ad is clever”. You want them to take action that makes you money.

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Article Tags: direct marketing, junk mail, mailers



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