Direct Mail Copywriter

Although I've been a freelance copywriter for 10 years and I've worked on all kinds of copywriting projects--websites, email, direct mail, brochures, whitepapers, and more--I've resisted doing pay-per-click (PPC) ads all this time.

Why? Probably fear. Unlike organic SEO that takes time to gain traction, PPC is immediate...so I'd know right away if my copywriting was working or not.

But change comes into the lives of all good professional copywriters, including me, and I am embarking on my first PPC ad copywriting project. (Gulp.) 

In doing research for hints and help, I came across this great article of 18 tips for copywriting PPC ads.

Whether you're a freelance copywriter doing PPC ads for clients, or a small business owner tackling that copywriting job yourself, take a look at the tips, they're good.

All right then, enough procrastinating by blogging. Time for this freelance copywriter to earn her keep with some PPC ad work! 

Sigh...

Why is it people think anyone can be a copywriter? I just did a rush job as a website copywriter trying to save a project for a poor soul with hardly any budget or time. She had been sucked into what I think sounds like a shifty web designer deal. He hired some friend of his to write her website. She didn't like the copy. She turned to me in desperation, with little money and a hard due date of today.

I deleted 90% of the crap I was given that the supposed freelance "copywriter" had done. It wasn't poorly written. It wasn't wrong. But it wasn't doing its job. This guy had gone off on some tangents that while potentially helpful information to a prospect later in the sales cycle were totally irrelevant and useless as far as the website's job: marketing this person.

Not only did I delete most of the thousands of words, I completely redid the sitemap. None of the copy made sense, none of it, not even the structure.

In only seven hours, I did the best I could and the client now thinks I'm a goddess. (I even did some basic SEO, but very little.) But it's not going in my freelance copywriter portfolio because I know how much better it would be if I'd had the time. And this woman has to move forward with a "good enough" website, having wasted money on the schlep.

Too many freelance writers pass themselves off as freelance copy writers. They think because they can write, they can write copy. And people seem too accepting of whatever their writer gives them. So we get literally millions of bad websites, poorly written direct mail, spam instead of email copywriting, ads that do nothing but take up space in a magazine...I could go on and on.

The best copywriter is the copywriter who knows marketing as well as she knows words. And she knows her strengths. I am strong as a:
 

• Website copywriter
• Email copywriter
• Whitepaper writer
• Case study writer
• Newslettter writer

I do not do, because I don't know how to do:
 

• Script writing
• Speech writing
• Presentations (OK, I can do these, I just don't want to)
• True journalism
• Catalog copywriting
• Those convoluted direct mail pieces that have letters and postcards and...

I know my strengths, I know my limitations, and I'm honest about both. Every professional copywriter should be.

People, if you are hiring a freelance copywriter, be picky! Don't assume simply because they say they are a copywriter that they are. Ask for proof. Don't be afraid to question the samples you're given. Expect more.

This is your marketing, your branding, your voice, your reputation. Do you want the best copywriter for the job? Or any ol' freelancer with a laptop?

 

Last week as part of our 12 days of Christmas festivities, I took my daughter and her friend to the Washington State History Museum and then to dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory. We got to the restaurant early, before 5:00 even, but because it was the holiday break, there was already a wait for a table.

The hostess said 10 minutes but sat us in less than five. The two girls were both surprised and impressed! Plus we got a table in the trolley when the hostess had only replied “maybe” when we requested it.

That shows the power of under promising and over delivering. And the power of the experience. Our dining experience started out on a positive note, and even if things had gone wrong from that point forward, our attitude was bound to be good and our meal enjoyable.

The hostess could easily have said, “Oh, it will just be a couple of minutes.” But the restaurant gained an emotional advantage when she said 10.

The girls were still talking about this when we walked to the car after dinner. Their reaction made such an impression on me, I’ve been looking for a copywriting lesson to pull from this. This approach works in marketing and sales, but in copywriting?

As a freelance Seattle copywriter, I try to under promise and over deliver on projects, meaning I often over-estimate the amount of time I think a project will take (and therefore the amount of the final bill), then I happily get the project done in less time and delight my clients with a bill under budget. (This doesn’t happen every time! But I finally after 9 years of doing this learned it’s easier to over estimate and charge less than the opposite!)

But when it comes to the actual copywriter end product--the website, email, direct mail postcard, ghost blog, whitepaper or press release--how does a copywriter under promise and over deliver, and should I?

I do cringe when clients ask me for copywriting that promises the moon and I suspect they can’t deliver it.

Alternatively if someone can offer the moon but I as the copywriter don’t tell prospects that, we likely won’t get their attention in the first place, meaning what we deliver is irrelevant.

On the other hand, I’m relentless at times, hounding clients to give me a moon to promise. I recently worked as a Web site copywriter for a client with a wonderful story to tell…and they reined me back in copywriting wise again and again and again.

I don’t have the answer. I know I don’t like to get less than I expect when I spend my money. And I often do! I’m delighted when I get more than I expect, which happens on occasion. But the sad thing is, I’m delighted when I get just what I expect because I’m so used to the over promise, under deliver that seems prevalent today.

Does that mean my clients must promise the moon…and then deliver even more than that? That would certainly wow the new customers and turn them into lifelong fans. But is it possible?

I don’t have the answer. Only a fond memory of two young ladies learning the power of the under promise, over deliver approach.

Yes, I admit it. I’m weird. I’m a copywriter who loves writing whitepapers. Is it because I spend too much time alone and my mind is warped? Is it the wet Seattle weather? Or maybe my hours spent as an SEO copywriter has damaged my perspective?

Nah. It’s none of those things. I enjoy working on whitepapers because they are such great sales tools, and because they give me as a copywriter the chance to really delve into the customer’s mindset.

I just got off the phone with one of my favorite copywriting clients. We are about to do three whitepapers around a new product launch, so this morning’s call was to get me ramped up. But we don’t spend all our time talking about how the product can do A, B and C. No, I as the copywriter want to know what to say based not on the product’s capabilities (what it can do) but rather based on the customer’s worldview (what do they want).

I get to learn about, and write to, their pain points, desires, daily frustrations and wish lists in a way I can’t do when a copywriter for ads or direct mail pieces.

The benefit for you as the marketer is the appeal of the whitepaper because it’s customer centric. The potential customer who downloads your whitepaper is pretty sure he or she is going to get mostly factual, useful information, not a 5-page sales pitch. That’s a feel good in your favor as the company they might buy from!

And crazy as I might sound, I think whitepapers are easy to write! They are straightforward and objective. They don’t require clever turns of phrase or picturesque verbosity. They are what they are.

I’ve also written enough whitepapers, and studied information about writing whitepapers, to have a structure I use pretty much every time. That’s how straightforward it is.

Plus they can be about a variety of topics. I started out writing whitepapers for high tech only, but over the years We Know Words copywriters have even written whitepapers for the corporate travel industry, and we wrote a series of banner ads and landing pages for a whitepaper written for the HR industry.

Whitepapers. They rock. For the copywriter and the customer both. Are you using them as part of your marketing mix?

To see a bit more about whitepapers written by We Know Words copywriters, go to http://weknowwords.com/whitepapers.htm.

Hmmm… I love them so much, my next blog topic might just be on how whitepapers help you date your prospects and customers!

If you're a fellow copywriter, maybe you can relate to this: It seems like the period of time between when I'm done with my copywriter duties and the actual project, whether it's a website or direct mail piece or whatever, is done and released to the world, I've practically forgotten about the project! I keep telling myself I'll blog on projects as part of this copywriter blog, but I don't for that very reason: I'm 10 projects down the road lots of times before something is a done deal.

But here's one! Here's a website copywriter project I worked on a few months ago, now gone live and worth the wait. The good folks at We Shop and Deliver really just wanted help with the home page and suggestions for the rest of the website, and I happily obliged, and was even able to come up with what I think is a killer tagline to boot! "We Shop and Deliver. Because you have better things to do."

And the best news is, they didn't mess with my website copywriter prowess, they just let me do my job and left my copywriting alone. :-) 

See the site at www.weshopanddeliver.com, and if you watch the video, you'll witness my first time at scriptwriting, something I usually leave to fellow copywriter Mavis, but in this case it made more sense for copywriting me to tackle it.

As for We Shop and Deliver, they are the first grocery delivery franchise in the country and that's pretty neat to be part of! They do grocery delivery already, but one can buy a franchise for a neighborhood or a whole city and take care of that tiresome chore for their customers while taking care of their quality of life by being self-employed. :-)

Great job on the website, We Shop and Deliver! 

Have you ever met someone and liked them but figured they didn’t like you? This happens in the dating world all the time, right? But marketers do this without meaning to, telling prospects “We don’t want you” with their words, even though what they really want is to turn them into customers…

Last summer at a party I did not plan on attending, I met someone who gave every indication of not being interested. I hadn’t even planned on attending this party. Worse, I wasn’t even invited. I was supposed to be somewhere else, as I drove home from the barn where I boarded my horse, dusty and sweaty. But my cell phone rang with the persuading voice of a friend promising this party would cheer me up and there would be single men. For the record, that night single men were the reason for my glum mood, so that wasn’t enticing, but the cheerful note in my friend’s voice assured me this would take my mind off my troubles.

I arrived at the party, not knowing a soul but the one friend, and not getting any help from him as he flirted his way through the female portion of the crowd. That was okay, I kind of wanted to keep to myself anyway. But there was one guy I thought cute, and as the night wore on, I engineered myself to be sitting by the fire pit with him when no one else was around. Well, that didn’t matter. His body language, his obvious unwillingness to engage in conversation, the fact that he never asked me a thing but only curtly answered the questions I tossed out there all told me “not interested.” No problem! I climbed in the hot tub with a bunch of strangers and didn’t’ think anything of it.

The irony is, later this guy asked my one friend about me, and ended up calling me and asking me out on a date. When I asked him about that night, and told him I thought he was cold as ice and didn’t give any indication at all that he liked me, he said, “That was me being interested.” Like I’m supposed to figure that out!

But, people. Marketers do this all the time. We sit across the fire pit, at a party, under the influence of alcohol in a fun, Friday evening environment…and turn people off. We do! Our words do! Our words can be horribly narcissistic and make the prospect think all we’re really saying is “go away.”

That’s why your copywriting and message are so critical! When someone lands at your Web site, or gets your email, or pulls your direct mail out of the mailbox, or even checks out your Facebook page, your message needs to speak to them, tell them you want them, tell them you are interested in them as a customer.

Plenty of businesses make the mistake of the guy at the party. They don’t talk my talk, they don’t give any indication they are interested in ME, they simply fold their arms and lean back. Then they complain about prospects (i.e. women) and never look at what they’re doing to cause the disconnect.

Be engaging, marketers. Make sure your copywriting engages, that it talks to your potential customer, not at her. That it tells her, “I’m interested, I really am interested.”

This morning I realized there are seven bottles of shampoo in my shower. This is odd for two reasons: 1) only two people live in my house right now, and 2) I only just noticed and counted the bottles…which have been there for a while. A long while.

This is noteworthy and relevant because those shampoo bottles are like your marketing: easy to ignore. I don’t know how long I’ve been showering surrounded by seven bottles of shampoo (and two conditioner containers). I’m sure these bottles were collected gradually. But until I knocked one over and became aware of the astounding number, it didn’t register that we had such a buildup. That’s because I was so used to all of those bottles that I stopped seeing them.

This happens in marketing all the time. When your copywriting reads the same as the six other Web sites your prospect just looked at, you become just one more unseen shampoo bottle, taking up space and not getting noticed. Ditto for your direct mail, your email marketing, even your blog.

Don’t be just another shampoo bottle hoping to get noticed. Be different, stand out, and get noticed instead.

This Seattle copywriter is finally updating the We Know Words web site. It's a running joke that I need to hire a website copywriter to keep the web site maintained! But a pleasant lull in the copywriting business is making the update doable.

Part of the update is simplifying the site since I now rely more on blogs as marketing tools. (More on that in my next blog.) But I as a copywriter have a tendency to get a little fond of copy. As a result, I'm posting an article on email newsletters here since it's being deleted off the copywriting web site. It's an oldie but goodie and maybe a bit unusal to spot here since I've become such an evangelist for blogs as marketing tools. Why would I be encouraging the use of email newsletters? Granted they are not necessarily the best choice for small business marketing, but for the right size business, and right business, email newsletters are still great for marketing, even in an age of social media. Enough explaining, here's the article...

Market with email newsletters
Perhaps the hardest part of marketing is to keep doing it. The irony is, this is also one of the most important. One contact with a potential customer is less effective than repeated contacts over time. We also live in a world of skepticism and doubt, a world where trust matters more than price when people make buying decisions.

To market effectively, you need to establish and nurture a relationship with a prospect. Ditto for existing customers: Once someone has bought from you, don't assume she'll be back someday. You must stay in touch with her on a regular basis so she'll think of you next time she's ready to buy, and possibly refer you to others in the meantime.

So how do you stay in touch with your past, present and potential customers on a regular basis? E-newsletters. An e-newsletter is perhaps the most effective and cost-effective way to build and maintain relationships that earn their trust. And trust is crucial to sales.

E-newsletters reinforce your other marketing efforts too by:

·         Driving traffic to your Web site through links and special offers.

·         Establishing credibility and positioning your business as a leader and resource.

·         Improving your search engine rankings: Archiving the newsletters on your Web site adds to your content, and search engines love good content!

So why are we suggesting email rather than print? It's cheaper than printing and mailing a hardcopy version, for one thing. Plus you don't know if a snail-mailed newsletter even gets read or if it goes straight into the recycling bin. With an emailed newsletter, you can know right away how many people opened it and even how many clicked on a URL to go to your Web site. Email marketing also gets a higher response rate than direct mail: 10-15% compared to 1-2%.

Of course, as with all good marketing, your results depend on doing your e-newsletter correctly. Newsletters that are infrequent, boring, purely promotional, or sent to people who didn't ask to hear from you only harm your marketing efforts. But do your email newsletter right, and you will reap the rewards of that ongoing contact as you build relationships, earn trust…and make sales.

I’ve been thinking about communication and how you can keep saying the same thing over and over and not get heard. And the implications when you consider marketing is like dating.

Ever been in a relationship and had trouble communicating? Or understanding your partner? It happens. People have differing communication styles. The meaning of words, tone of voice, body language and even the topics of discussion can vary greatly between people. It’s not for lack of trying. We want to communicate. We are humans, after all, social beings. And that can lead to frustration when we feel like we’re not getting heard, or conversely, not understanding the other person.

Think of a time when you felt like the person you were dating just wasn’t listening. Argh! How frustrating is that?

Now remember a time when you met someone, or went on that first date, and you clicked. You could practically finish each other’s sentences, and delighted in the conversation because you were communicating so clearly.

How fun was that? You probably kept on dating that person, right?

That’s what you want your marketing to do: to click with that prospect, to make that instant connection that makes the prospect feel like she’s being heard.

Your marketing can do that when the message is relevant and timely…and when you recognize when it’s not working. Marketing is like dating.

Back to the analogy of the date with two people not communicating. If one of them could recognize what was happening and change their words or tone or topic to try and match how the other person seemed to be hearing them, they just might have a breakthrough and end up thoroughly enjoying their date (or relationship, if the dating has been going well!).

Same with your marketing. If it ain’t working, it is broken, and you gotta fix it! If your email marketing copywriting got poor results, change it. If your Web site copywriting isn’t converting, change it. If your direct mail copywriting bombed, change it.

You’ll save yourself frustration, and your prospect will appreciate being talked to, not at…and will maybe become someone you can continue to “date” with your marketing and ultimately a customer.

I hate The Ram. When Kent Station opened a couple of years ago, people were so excited to get a chain restaurant in downtown Kent. Meaning they were happy to get The Ram. My first experience there was awful, and after three more tries, I finally gave up on the place. Besides I like the food and the bar at Zephyrs better, it’s more my style, and now I have a martini bar as an option too.

But the other night a friend wanted to go to The Ram, because it would be new to him, and I’d drug him to Zephyrs and Shindig Martini Bar a few times already. Now he knows why I was reluctant to go there. The service was atrocious, the food awful and the prices high.

Hang on, hang on, this isn’t copywriter PMS. This ties into my copywriter theory that marketing is like dating: the customer expecting one thing and getting another.

When you are marketing to potential customers, you are wooing them, trying to get them to date you. You woo them with promises in your copywriting: good beer, good food, friendly service. But if you don’t follow through on your promise, your marketing and copywriting are for naught. Your marketing is a lie and trickery meant to get them in the door to spend their money. And then your marketing goes after the next prospect, just like a serial dater who seems intent only on getting someone to say “yes” to a date so he can start on his next potential date, to win her over.

Great marketing isn’t just great copywriting, killer taglines, awesome email copywriting, fabulous Web sites, kickass direct mail, etc. Great marketing is the whole enchilada. It means a business promises something to me as a customer, then delivers on it. That’s how you win a repeat customer.

If your company is a serial dater, then keep plowing away at marketing that gets them in the door but disappoints. Because you’re only aiming for the next customer anyway, not aiming to keep the one you just got. But if you’re company wants to be in a committed relationship, follow through on the promises your marketing makes. If you can’t, hold off on your marketing until you can, or make your marketing fit what you can really deliver.

And if you go to The Ram and order the calamari? Don’t be hungry or picky. So sayeth one disappointed freelance copywriter!

This Seattle copywriter has been swamped!! So I have no time for dating the guy who went from sweet to not-so-sweet anyway!

Being such a busy copywriter means it’s a struggle to find blogging time—which I shouldn’t admit to because I believe in blogs as marketing tools—but that’s my long-winded excuse for referring to something I heard weeks ago at Online Marketing Summit Seattle…

One of the speakers (maybe Aaron Kahlow?) talked about Web sites and how the user has control, the user is like your competitor now. My memory is fuzzy on exactly what was said, but it sparked my take on it as a copywriter/marcom person: The customer now is your competitor. It’s less about your company vs. the competition and more about the customer simply deleting your email marketing, ignoring the Web copywriting by clicking the Back button, or tossing your direct mail.

Because “marketing is like dating” is my favorite analogy, put it in that context: Say you’re a man who wants to date a certain woman. You’re not up against all the other men who want to date her. You’re up against what she wants. She will choose to go out with you or not based on criteria like your behavior and appearance. (If she’s shallow, she’ll also check out your shoes and car apparently.) It’s not you vs. them. It’s you vs. her expectations.

Now apply that to marketing: Customers today are more likely to decide whether or not to buy from you (date you) based on their criteria, not on how you stack up against a competitor. (I’m talking B2C here.) If you’re selling things like pop, clothes, sheepskin slippers, espresso and cars, the customer will first consider how well you fit his view of himself and how he wants to world to see him, not comparison shop.

And it’s your marketing that tells the story the customer bases his decision on! Does your story map to his or not?

Be customer-centric. Be focused on what the customer wants, and do your copywriting in his terms. Make your email marketing relevant. If you use blogs as marketing tools, make your blogs personal and authentic. Purge your database so your direct mail goes to a quality list, not a quantity one. Segment and personalize.

It’s no long you against “them” (the competition). It’s you against the customer. Meet her criteria and she will choose you. You’ll win.

This fits right in with my “marketing is like dating” theory: BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse just took me out to dinner to court me as a customer.

Yep. My kids, my best buddy Rico and I got to dine for free as part of the training for a new BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse. They are opening in the Seattle area, in Tukwila, and I had received an invite for a free meal for four during their training time. We all thought it was pretty neat to take part in the training…and get a free meal. OK, three of us. My teenager is too cool to think anything is pretty neat. It’s the first BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse in Washington state, so the newness of that was fun too.

We had fun with the casual atmosphere as the servers made occasional mistakes, and we had a great meal and some really good beer. (The highlight for me was when I ordered a “Nitwit” and Rico ordered a “Brewnette” because it sounded like we were talking about each other!)

Now you’re wondering what the heck this has to do with marketing…and why I’m saying it’s like dating…and why a Seattle copywriter would even think you care…

Because it’s brilliant. Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell talk about “napsterizing” your business, figuring out how you can give away free samples so people can try before you buy. I think the BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse experience is a fantastic example of how to do just that.

Not only did we get to sample the food and the beer and the pop (they make their own root beer, cream soda and black cherry soda). We got to experience the atmosphere, what it was like to physically be there. For me, that’s huge because I’m not usually a fan of chain restaurants. But I liked this place and can easily see suggesting to Seattle friends reluctant to drive all the way to Kent (where I am) that we meet there.

Did it cost them money? Oh yeah. The restaurant was packed when we were there. BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse was giving away a lot of food! But it was both part of the training and part of the marketing, so therefore money well spent. I’m sure it created buzz: I know I’m telling people about the restaurant! And the best training comes from doing, so that was a smart investment in their staff. The only other cost was in the direct mail invitations that went to people like me, and those were pretty simple. No blogging, no email marketing, just plain old fashioned direct mail.

So BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse, kudos to you on several fronts: for good food and beer and atmosphere (at reasonable prices!), and for marketing like dating.

Now, what would happen if you took your customers out to dinner? What’s the equivalent for your business? Could you be bold and spring for an investment like that, knowing you’d be getting ROI on that investment for some time?

How can you date your customers with your marketing?

I really do love small businesses and small business owners, but they can make me crazy…

My best example right now is the small business owner who is pissed at me because they put up their new Web site and aren’t getting any hits. This is apparently my fault because my copywriting agency did the writing for the Web site. Never mind that their Web developer neglected to use the title tags and other meta tags we’d written. Never mind that it’s poorly coded and designed. Never mind that they chose not to do all of the pages we’d suggested for more content. Never mind that it only went up three weeks ago. Never mind that no sites link to it yet. Never mind that they have no content management strategy for updating the site. Never mind that I had explained all of this to him months ago when we first started on the project.

Just because someone is running and marketing a small business doesn’t excuse them from educating themselves about marketing. I’m not saying they should be an expert. (I joke that I don’t want to know about taxes, that’s why I have an accountant. But I still know what taxes get paid and when, I just don’t have to know the nitty gritty.) But they should know something.

Not all are like the client described above. I’ve worked with plenty of small business owners who took the initiative and learned enough to have a dialog about their marketing, whether it’s an email newsletter, web marketing, blogging or direct mail.

And thank goodness for those clients! Copywriters and marketers can’t do their jobs with clients who don’t know anything and aren’t willing to learn is the lesson I’m learning this week. Sadly, it’s usually the small business that falls into that category.

And for any small business owners who now feel compelled to know it bit more about web marketing and SEO based on this gripe, start here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769.

My corporate and personal taxes are finally done, yay! Thanks, Rick!! And I now have two bills to pay, one for each. Rick is a doll and keeps his costs down for me, but still his rate is $200/hour and he’s worth every penny because I know my taxes will be done right. I’m paying for his time and knowledge, but also his experience…which is hard to price at all!

As I work through my divorce, I am paying my lawyer $175/hour. (Don’t tell the lawyer what the accountant is charging or else his rate will go up to match it!) As my “ex” and I navigate the complications of a “dissolution of marriage” in the county we live in, where people with kids jump through lots of hoops to get divorced, I know my lawyer’s also worth his hourly rate. He knows the system, and he knows how to work with couples who have lots of difficult discussions to work through. Again, I’m paying for time and knowledge, but also 20+ years of experience as a family law attorney.

And that’s what copywriters sell: their time and their knowledge, but ultimately their experience. In a word, their expertise. And the more experienced and knowledgeable the copywriter, the higher the hourly rate should be, whether you’re paying her for email marketing or Web writing, a case study or an online press release.

About half the time we are asked for a copywriting estimate, we don’t get the job because the prospect doesn’t want to pay the price. (Note: We’d prefer to know the budget upfront so we can just tell the prospect what we can do within that budget, but somewhere it is written that budgets are to be guessed at, not disclosed! Silly people.) For me, it’s a filter. If someone doesn’t recognize the value in what we’re selling, I don’t want to do business with them anyway. Every freelance copywriter I’ve ever talked to agrees it’s the clients spending the least money who take up the most time!!

For those businesses who choose to scrimp on the copywriter, and plenty do, the results are typically less than stellar: email newsletters that don’t deliver, Web sites that don’t convert, direct mail goes directly into the recycle bin. That’s because you get what you pay for.

Just like my accountant, lawyer and saddle are all worth the money they cost, so is a great copywriter.

A while back, a company called We Know Words looking for a copywriter for an email campaign. I asked a ton of questions, as I always do, and found out this company was sending their email newsletter to a list of 80,000 people who had never requested it. At the same time, they had a list of 1,500 people they’d had contact with in the last two years, and a list of 500 from the past six months, but they weren’t doing anything with either of those lists.

Pop quiz!!!

Which list should that company focus on?

a)    The 80,000 people who don’t even want to get their newsletter

b)    The 1,500 from within past two years

c)     The 500 from within past six months

If you answered c or both b and c, good job!

But they didn’t want to, because all they can see is the numbers. Yes, 80,000, that’s a lotta prospects, baby! In real life, however, they’re not prospects, just victims of an overzealous email marketing effort. The smaller lists were the prospects, they were the people who had raised their hands and said “tell me more.” And they were ignored.

It’s a mentality I run into a lot: Companies choose quantity over quality when marketing. “Better to market to thousands who’ve never heard of us than concentrate on the few who actually expressed an interest!” And we wonder why direct mail averages a 1½ % return rate.

I was telling this story to my friend Jim Rosemary of New Tech Web, and he put it so well: Marketing to the masses is just that, mass marketing. Marketing to a specific audience is direct marketing.

Mass marketing vs. direct marketing. How many marketing managers know the difference? Not just in how they’re marketing but in how they’re impacting their potential ROI?

The biggest irony here is the job title of the person I spoke with: Manager of Direct Marketing. Sigh…

As a follow up to yesterday’s post about marketing and dating, here’s another argument for being more targeted in your marketing, in this case, with your direct mail…

Time and again we copywriters run into clients who choose the quantity over quality approach to marketing via direct mail. They’d rather spend the same money to send out a lot of boring, likely-to-be-tossed-right-away direct mail pieces than to spend the same amount of money on far fewer but much more impactful pieces.

It’s like shooting a bunch of arrows into the sky hoping one will hit a target vs. taking careful aim with one arrow and shooting straight at the target.

If you can spend $25 a pop to create, produce and mail a killer package to 100 C level executives that are your ideal prospects, for a total cost of $2500, why would you instead choose to spend that same amount of money to mail a plain postcard (OK, maybe it’s over-sized) to 1250 people who either won’t notice or even get the postcard? Seems silly, but that’s the route so many marketers take, I guess reasoning they are getting more bang for their marketing bucks because they are spending less per piece…

I ran into this with a copywriting client a few years ago who confessed that winning one customer from a direct mail campaign would equal $15,000 a month in revenue. But that company was unwilling to page for a campaign that would have cost just $1,500 because the cost per package was so high ($15), never mind that it was so targeted and likely to get noticed too.

If—after reading this blog post--you’re rethinking your quantity over quality approach to direct mail and seek inspirational, unique ideas, I highly recommend “Design for Response: Creative direct marketing that works” by Leslie H. Sherr and David J. Katz. I just got a copy and love it so much, I’m keeping it on my coffee table for now.

Although we’re often locked away expressing our brilliance with words behind closed doors, sometimes a copywriter gets a chance to go public. This copywriter gets another chance this spring.

In March, I’ll be part of an email marketing panel presenting for the Northern California Direct Marketing Association. We're calling it Extreme Email Makeover: Marketers will submit their email marketing campaigns to have them reviewed by the panel. We’ll be covering deliverability, content, design and mobile deployment, and giving attendees the chance to learn from the email marketing mistakes of others.

It's a great panel, and I’m delighted to be part of it as the copywriter and messaging guru:

• Michelle Eichner - COO and Vice President of Client Services, Pivotal Veracity
• Morgan Witt - Director of Marketing Strategy, Juice Media Worldwide
• Cameron Kane - President, Strategic Design Group
• Michael Kelly (moderator) - Director, Sales and Business Development, ClickMail Marketing
• and me as President of We Know Words and Past President of the SDMA

Read more about it at http://www.dmanc.org/calendar.html (scroll down to the March 19 event).

And if you’re in the area and you can make the event, please do!

I envy the freelance copywriter who can cite an exact response rate for a direct mail campaign. Much of the copywriting we do at We Know Words falls more into the category of what I call indirect marketing. Our copywriters are often busy with writing whitepapers, email newsletters, case studies, guides and writing for the Web. It’s a nice change of pace when we write email marketing or landing pages, where we can get definite feedback.

The truth is, as much as executives might like it to be otherwise, not all marketing is measurable. Yet it is still valuable. Just about everything a small business or large corporation does in some way is marketing that has nothing to do with metrics. Can you measure the positive yet subtle effects of clean uniforms, courteous customer service folks or brand appropriate content? What about a tagline, or a well-written how to guide? Convenient parking at your location? Free mints by the cash register? I could go on and on. Marketing is a promise you make to your potential customer that their experience will be a certain way. And it’s a promise we are making each and every day in business, whether we’re copywriters, graphic designers, marketing managers, or the “director of first impressions” who greets people as they walk into your office.

Just because we can’t measure something doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.

p.s. I apologize for the seemingly random font sizes in the blogs lately. It's getting fixed on the tech end, nothing I can do about it for now!

Christmas cards have lost their meaning. In fact, I dread them because I have to figure out which ones can be recycled and which are all metallic and can’t. Oh, and I can’t recycle those photo cards either, nor do I keep them. It’s not that I’m Ebenezer, I love Christmas! But not the meaningless cards that add to the clutter of my life without adding to the spirit of the season. Really, how many cards did you receive this year from people you really wanted to hear from and otherwise wouldn’t? Here are my favorites useless cards from this past month:

• A photo card from a family I don’t know or even recognize in the photo (cute picture though!)
• A card from a former client who chose not to work with our copywriting agency any longer…and he didn’t sign the card, some assistant did
• A card from someone I have met briefly at a three chamber events and never said more than 10 words to
• The usual card from my cousin in Ohio who won’t respond to any emails asking what’s up, how’s life, but sends a card each year…without any note or anything

Let’s face it: Christmas cards have become obligatory and automatic. They are no longer the thoughtful communication of holidays past.

And you know where I’m going with this, right? Yep. Marketing. In many ways, marketing has lost its meaning too. It’s done on automatic pilot without much thought (sometimes without any thought at all).

Is your company marketing to people who don’t even want to hear from you? Are you assuming more of a relationship than really exists? Are you marketing AARP memberships to people in their 30s? In short, are you wasting money on pointless marketing?

This year, resolve to be relevant. Practice meaningful marketing.

• Send email newsletters only to people who’ve said “yes” and opted in
• Make sure your newsletter copywriter gives people useful information
• Target your marketing—Know thy audience
• Clean your lists
• Only market to prospects that make sense (Hint: the fact that someone is human does not automatically make them a prospect)
• Blog—If people like what you have to say, they’ll come back. Even small businesses can reap huge rewards from blogging (more on this in later marketing blogs)
• Make sure your Web writing meets your Web site visitors’ needs

Etc., etc., etc. Before your next direct mail project, before your freelance copywriter starts typing, before you lay out that email marketing campaign, ask yourself if you can make your marketing more meaningful.

Oh, and maybe do the same before sending out cards next Christmas too.