Saving money on a direct mail campaign

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December 2001
HOW NOT TO SAVE MONEY ON YOUR DIRECT MAIL CAMPAIGN

These days, companies are looking for any opportunity to make their marketing dollars work harder. One way not to cut costs is to have your direct marketing campaigns do "double duty" - for example, a direct mail brochure that also serves as a trade-show handout or a POP (point of purchase) brochure. It's tempting, and perfectly understandable, to want to "leverage" your direct mail investment in this way, but the strategy is counterproductive. Here's why:

A well-designed direct mail piece contains information specific to that campaign (call to action, URL, 800 number, offer). Moreover, direct mail is intended for one purpose - getting people to respond, and every word it contains should be written with that one objective.

A company or product brochure, whether it's for trade show, POP or general fulfillment purposes, is typically provided in response to a request for information. As such, it's more explanatory (vs. action-oriented) in tone and style, and will likely be more focused on the product (and reasons to buy) rather than the offer (and reasons to respond).

An effective direct mail campaign purposely contains only enough information to make the prospect take action. Include too much information, as in a product brochure, and you run the risk of creating objections in the reader's mind before your sales rep has the opportunity to counter them.

Any attempt to combine these two brochures into one will almost inevitably dilute the effectiveness of the direct mail version by altering the tone and content in a way that departs from the campaign's objective. One possible compromise: design two versions of the same brochure, and print them simultaneously on the same sheet. That way, you'll leverage the economy of scale afforded by combining the two print runs, without jeopardizing the effectiveness of either piece.