What we are doing when direct marketing (DM), is presenting an offer with a strong message, to a selected audience, with the aim of attracting a response.
We all know about clutter. Last time I looked, it was 3000 messages per day that hit the "average" citizen. All competing for attention. Because of clutter our first concern must be to make our campaigns:
Arresting, Compelling, Clear and Credible
Ask yourself, how eye-catching is the message? What can we do to make it more impressive, noticeable or striking?
To make it compelling, have you connected with the hopes, dreams or fears of your audience? Have you done enough to persuade your readers that they really need to take the next step?
Making sure campaigns are clear seems to be a major black hole for countless marketers. If you are trying to reach the consumer marketplace, get a 12-year old child to read your communication first. If the message does not get through easily, you need to re-draft.
In this age of advanced scepticism, credibility is critical. The starting point for so many people is that they don't believe advertisers. Do everything you can to convince them that you are sincere. Make sure your promotion sounds realistic. On the streets of New York, the Psychological Society tried to hand out $20 bills. Free. Few were accepted. It seemed too good to be true.
Emotional, Insightful and Informative
This is all about getting people involved. All selling is emotional, so in your creativity you must do all you can to raise the excitement level in one way or another. Get them to smile, get them to cry, or worry or be disturbed.
In terms of being insightful, the challenge is to demonstrate your understanding of the problems of your target audience. Or their hopes, dreams, needs or aspirations.
Don't tell them what they already know! So many marketing promotions state the obvious. I know that sun-cream, studying, visiting my parents and eating right are all important. Don't start with a tired old line that's been repeated so many times it feels as stale as a politician's promise. If readers give you their time, you have to inform them with something fresh in return.
Relevant, Valuable and Motivating
If you understand the people you are targeting, and if you put yourself inside their heads, you won't even think of proceeding without being relevant.
Equally, offering something of value is very much entwined with getting the target right. My offer of discounted ballet tickets worked very well because the audience was made up of ballet lovers. That same offer may well struggle to perform if it went only to sport-mad teenage boys.
The last big fundamental is motivation. Fosters' 'Big Ad' was a great ad that lots of people enjoyed. It won awards. It was acclaimed everywhere it was seen. The only problem was that it did not sell any beer for the Fosters Group. In DM we can't afford that sort of failure. We want action. And we want to generate it now.
If you are managing a DM campaign you must do everything you can to motivate your prospect into action. Your message should have urgency built into it and you should make liberal use of proven DM words and techniques.