You think your brand is an asset. But testing may reveal it’s really not.

By Steve Cuno

If you and I were playing a friendly game of word association and I happened to toss out brand enthusiast, I bet direct marketer wouldn’t be the first thing you’d toss back. “Brand, shmand,” many a direct marketer is wont to say. “Does it sell or not?”

Point taken, but let’s not throw out the brand with the bathwater. A strong brand makes any direct marketer’s job easier. But also keep in mind what branding isn’t.

It’s important not to mistake a logo, look or tagline for a brand. Logos et al serve only to identify which products and services are yours. You give the concept of yours equity through consistent delivery. That means that the brand gives the logo meaning, not the other way around. A solid brand is the by-product of doing things right.

How to measure your brand strength
Here are five ways to test your brand strength. (The results may be revealing.)

1. The Masked Logo Test: If you hid your logo, would customers be able to tell your product or service from that of the competition by the experience you create for them? A yes indicates a strong brand. A no indicates you’re not as different as you think.

2. The Fickle Customer Test: Would your customers readily jilt you for a lower-priced look-alike? A no indicates a strong brand. A yes indicates that, to your customers, you’re just another commodity.

3. The Oh, Come On Test: Do people believe your claims, and not just pass them off as empty corporate boasts? A yes indicates a strong brand. A no indicates you’re pretty good at kidding yourself, while failing to notice as your customers roll their eyes and say, “Oh, come on.”

4. The Value Statement Transplant Test: About those values immortalized on your wall — could your competitors lay equal claim to them? A no indicates a strong brand. A yes indicates your value statement may be an exercise in spewing the usual hot air.

5. The Do Your Employees Get It Test: Can you tell from your employees’ behavior that they embrace the values that you think you stand for? A yes indicates a strong brand. A no indicates that you may have communicating and training to do, policies to revise, systems to redesign, or any combination of the above.

To be fair, no law says you absolutely must build a brand that has the potential to be revered for centuries. Marketing history brims with profitable short-lived brands, and with brands that made money even as they became the stuff of parody. A strong brand becomes more important when long-term credibility is an integral part of your marketing strategy.

The makings of a strong brand exist within most companies, or at least within the minds of their leadership. The trick is to discover the brand, develop it, live it and ensure its consistent delivery.

If you need help, there are many fine companies, including some ad agencies and direct response firms, that can lend a hand. But beware of anyone who tries to convince you that a logo and slogan are the answer to your branding prayers. To paraphrase, with apologies, the Epistle of James: “Show me your brand without your works, and I will show you my brand by my works. O foolish man, a brand without works is dead.”

Steve Cuno, something of a brand himself, heads the RESPONSE Agency in Salt Lake City. He is the author of the book Prove It Before You Promote It and a popular speaker for the Direct Marketing Association, American Advertising Federation, James Randi Educational Foundation and others. E-mail him at steve@responseagency.com.

Is Your Brand Being Ignored?

By Steve Cuno

Ethan knew how to propose. On a trip to the Serengeti, his back to a spectacular sunset, he knelt before Jessica, produced a lovely ring and begged for her hand. So it was that one of my shop’s best employees returned from her vacation engaged.

Of course, Ethan could have skipped the whole Serengeti sunset thing and simply sent Jessica a card that said, “Because we appreciate your being a valued significant other …”

If that fails to offend your inner incurable romantic, you may have a promising career with a company that mistakes sending mail to “valued customers like you” for loyalty marketing. For the rest of you, here are some tips.

Something odd happens when marketers try to create loyal customer relationships. Namely, they forget everything they know about loyalty and relationships. You earn personal friends by treating people well, being reliable, telling the truth and keeping promises — not by wearing a tagline that says, “Because we care,” awarding points toward merchandise or offering rebates for a two-year contract. Taglines, rewards and contracts have their place, but a business that wants genuine loyalty should first take a look at its practices.

Nothing says “lazy copywriter” like “valued customer.” Banish that term from your marketing lexicon. Use your creativity to show, not tell, customers that they matter.

Warm and fuzzy is a good start. A sincere “thank you” in the mail is a welcome surprise. Be sure it doesn’t appear mass produced, even if it is. Print it on your personal letterhead (“monarch” size makes a nice impression), address the customer by name, use a stamp (no indicia in this case) and add your signature in blue.

Beyond warm and fuzzy. To keep succeeding notes fresh, enclose something of value. Free merchandise is good. On the less costly side, you can enclose article reprints (be sure to obtain the rights), press releases (“I want you to hear this from me before you see it in the paper”), offers of better-than-advertised deals, smart shopping tips and so on.

Privileges motivate. There’s nothing quite so heady as knowing you have a privilege that others don’t have. You might provide your best customers a straight-to-the-CEO e-mail address, spare them a wait in line, reserve them the best parking spaces … your imagination is the limit.

Know the difference between loyalty and frequency. This is loyalty: when it’s safer to broach religion or politics than to tell a devotee of a certain motorcycle (hint: rhymes with barley) that another brand is as good. Frequency, which is easier to measure, may or may not indicate loyalty. For instance, a frequent customer may only be a coupon-surfer — easy prey for the first competitor who undercuts you.

Rewards programs can build frequency and profitability. Two cautions are in order: (1) There are limits to the number of programs in which people will participate. (2) They’re trickier than they look. A homemade program could end up costing you money and embarrassment. Before you get too far, consult with one or more pros.

A good loyalty program pays for itself. Whether yours is a complex rewards system or a simple thank-you note program, maintain a control group that resembles your loyalty group. If the loyalty group produces more revenue than the control, chances are your program is working.

So, is loyalty for you? Loyalty marketing is based on the idea that selling to established customers costs less than creating new customers. This is often true, but not always. Before you invest in a loyalty program, be sure your company will truly benefit from having one. Not every relationship requires a Serengeti sunset.

Steve Cuno, a LOYAL contributor to Deliver, heads the RESPONSE Agency in Salt Lake City. He is the author of the book Prove It Before You Promote It and a popular speaker for the Direct Marketing Association, American Advertising Federation, James Randi Educational Foundation and others. E-mail him at steve@responseagency.com.

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By Steve Cuno

An international magazine offered three subscription options. Option A: For a modest price, you could have the online edition. Option B: For about twice as much, you could have the printed edition instead. Option C: For the same price as the printed edition alone, you could have both the printed and online edition.

If you think that no fool would choose Option B, you will be pleased to know that no fool is likely to. Yet to accuse Option B of pulling zero response would be inaccurate. According to one test, it more than pulls its weight. Just not in the way you might expect.

Welcome to the wacky world of the decoy offer.

Option B is what behavioral economists call a decoy offer. Rather than attempt to garner sales of its own, Option B’s effect seems to be to draw attention away from the less-costly Option A and convince you that C is a heckuva deal that is not to be missed.

Except, not just in effect. In tests omitting Option B, 68 percent of respondents preferred the lower-priced Option A, with just 32 percent preferring Option C. Adding Option B to the lineup literally turned that result on its head. Now 84 percent chose the higher-priced Option C. No one chose Option B. It appears that Option B played a crucial role of leading people who would normally spend less … to see the value of spending more.

Decoy offers are a form of what behavioral economists call anchoring. The idea is to fix an expectation in customer minds, so that when something better comes along, they can more readily see its value. A simple yet effective test illustrates. Researchers show subjects a printed number. Then they show subjects a product and ask them to estimate its price. People who have been shown higher numbers invariably estimate higher prices. This holds true even when subjects are told not to let the number influence them.

For behavioral economists, decoy offers are merely interesting. For direct marketers, they can be profitable. When direct marketers test a succession of offers, the idea is to learn which one will win the greatest number of customers. By contrast, a decoy can increase total spend among customers you already have. This can be especially useful if you happen to have saturated your market.

One of our corporate clients, for instance, had good reason to believe his customer base was as big as it was going to get. His business was profitable, but he was troubled by how often established customers purchased against their best interest by looking only at price tags. So, we added two higher-priced options alongside his popular, low-priced one. The new options were identical to one another in price, but one was clearly a better value. The result? Most of his customers shifted from the low-price option to the more valuable of the high-priced ones. The lower-value/high-priced option, which was the decoy, had led his customers to weigh value instead of just price.

Our agency recently tested a decoy offer for a retail service industry client who charges by the piece. This client’s internal costs drop significantly for orders of seven pieces or more, so it was worth it to him to offer deep discounts for anything over that quantity. Yet, regardless of volume discounts he’d tried in the past, the average order remained at about five pieces.

We decided to try a decoy offer. Again, the objective wasn’t to attract new customers, but to increase order size among existing ones. We created a direct mail package with three options. (To avoid confusion with the case cited earlier, I’ll label them 1, 2 and 3.) Option 1: Save five percent on orders of up to six pieces. Option 2: Save 20 percent for seven to 12 pieces. Option 3: Save 25 percent on 13 pieces or more.

Astute readers may have picked up on the noticeably greater gap in savings between Options 1 and 2 than between Options 2 and 3. That was intentional. Our client’s data showed that orders of 13 pieces or more were rare. So rare, in fact, that we doubted whether customers even owned 13 pieces. We determined to make the savings for 13 pieces miniscule in comparison to the savings for seven. We hoped that the advantages of bringing in seven pieces would shine by virtue of significant savings over bringing in fewer, and by virtue of its attainability relative to bringing in 13.

The result? For the first time in this client’s experience, 73 percent of orders were for seven pieces or more. Orders for six pieces or less dropped to 27 percent.

Post-analysis revealed a nice bonus surprise. Remember our assumption that few of our client’s customers owned 13 pieces? Dead wrong. Over 25 percent of total orders were for that quantity or more.

Most direct marketers know that an enticing new incentive offer can increase response. But to dramatize the advantage of a deal that is truly in your customer’s best interest, try the powerful decoy offer. You may both increase spend and better serve your customer. And who knows. With careful tracking, you may, like us, just happen upon other useful information you weren’t expecting.

By Steve Cuno

Note to parents: Washing your kid’s mouth with soap doesn’t prevent cussing. I know this because when my son was small, he tested it. Upon seeing a repeat-offender friend’s mouth cleansed for the umpteenth time, he came home, applied soap to his own mouth and then tried to say “damn.” And succeeded.

Little did he know that he’d used the scientific method. And if potty-mouthed kids can use it, so can marketers who want to increase their effectiveness.

First, let’s explain the scientific method in “Real People-ese:” You start with a hunch (soaping a mouth prevents cussing); you do a predictive test (if that’s so, then I shouldn’t be able to swear after soaping my mouth); and you draw a conclusion from the results (I could still say “damn,” so the hunch was most likely wrong).

Consider, for instance, how I used this method to help a client choose between two covers for a romantic music CD. One cover was black with a red heart in the middle. The other featured a golden sunset. In intercept interviews, nearly everyone scoffed at the sunset cliché and expressed a strong preference for the sexier black cover.

I wasn’t convinced. As a direct marketer, I know that arguably trite elements like time-worn phrases, gaudy design elements and peel-off stickers can pack a good deal of selling power. For a more predictive test, I stacked the two versions side-by-side on a tray, told people that the CDs were identical and offered to let them take one free. I did not reveal that I was testing, and I didn’t ask for opinions. Each time someone chose a CD, I replaced it to keep the stacks equal. I also switched the position of the stacks in case people were biased toward one side or the other. The results were eye-opening. Though nearly everyone had expressed a preference for the black cover, when it came time to choose one, nearly everyone opted for the sunset. Cliché and all.

The more I resort to the scientific method, the more I’m surprised at what I learn. I must admit that, in the above-referenced example, both the client and I preferred — and were rooting for — the losing design. Other tests have equally shown that I am a fallible clairvoyant. I was certain that a free offer for an entertainment center remote control would outperform a free offer for a five-inch flashlight. But in a series of direct mail tests, the flashlight won three times over. In a direct mail test for a university fundraiser, I “knew” that a mission-centered appeal would outperform a member-benefits appeal. But when we tested and observed, there was no difference in response. Further testing revealed that response rose only when the school’s football team won a significant tournament. (Not an easy strategy to roll out, as fixing games isn’t one of my agency’s core capabilities.)

The facts aren’t always what you want them to be, which is why the scientific method is important. Careful testing, observing and tallying are the surest ways to protect against seeing what you hope to see at the expense of facts.

Sadly, not all marketers want facts. I know many who readily disqualify all inconvenient data. Still others exhibit remarkable creativity when it comes to making data turn out the way they want. One enterprising fellow split a test mailing 90-10 instead of 50-50 to ensure that the version he preferred resulted in a higher gross response. In his report, he hid the fact that the other version outperformed on a percentage basis.

Someone should have washed his mouth with soap.

By Steve Cuno

Eons ago, when I’d been hired to work on the client side, my new employer’s ad agency invited me for a tour. The umpteenth person who had to feign being happy to meet me was the copy chief. This fellow’s ego would have fit easily inside a retail giant’s main warehouse (yeah, yeah, I know, look who’s talking), so the account executive who introduced us decided to needle him. This day’s needling took the form of introducing him as “the guy who writes those reply cards in direct mail.”

While they yucked it up at the intended slight, I smiled inwardly at the unwitting betrayal of their lack of knowledge. I happened to know then, as I do now, that “those reply cards” do an important job. And that it takes a pro to write a good one.

If you think that shouldn’t be so, I’d be the first to agree. If I ruled the world, all people would read and react to their direct mail in this order: they would read the envelope copy and pause to bask in its brilliance; savor the sales letter, even rereading it several times for sheer joy; pore over and consider framing the brochure; reverently ponder the lift letter; and then check YES on the reply card as they rush it to the nearest mailbox before realizing what hit them.

I can’t speak for you, but experience has shown me that I don’t rule the world. Sometimes my more impatient direct mail recipients want to know what I’m up to before deciding if they’ll examine the rest of the envelope’s contents. So they dig out and read the reply card first. When that happens, the reply card has the daunting task of single-handedly motivating them to back up and read the rest of the envelope’s contents.

Even more challenging are people who read all the contents of my direct mail package, but have the temerity to wait for a few days before responding. And some of those have the gall to discard the rest of the package and keep only the reply card while they ponder. In the entirely likely event that their memory has waned by the time they pull out and reread the card, there is no sales letter, brochure or lift letter to help out. The reply card must sell the product, tout the incentive offer and close the sale. All by itself.

Even when people keep the envelope and its other contents, it is the reply card that they mail back, or hold in their hand when calling or logging on to respond. In fact, it’s well known among catalog marketers that people who purchase by phone or online often complete the order form, which is the reply card’s close cousin, in advance as of way of organizing their purchase.

So the reply card deserves full attention when it comes to the creative effort. Excluding it from your direct mail package can drive response down, as can poor execution. But what makes for a good, hard-working reply card? Here are some tips:

• Give readers a box to check. I’ve found in my experience that it will increase response. Make the box square. Do not color it or put a shadow behind it, no matter how “design-y” it looks. Otherwise, the box will look like a bullet, which people are less likely to check.

• Copy should read like the reader’s response to a call to action. Like, “YES! Send me the…” or, “SURE, I accept your free trial offer for a…” It may seem redundant, since a check mark and a mailed card imply a “yes.” But putting it in type, my experience has shown, increases response.

• Summarize main selling points, benefits, the incentive offer, expiration date and reassurances like “no obligation,” guarantees, return policies and so on. It goes without saying that you’ll need to do this with very few words. Set aside plenty of time for the task. Concision to this degree isn’t easy.

• Clarity sells better than cleverness.

• Make your phone number and your URL too big to miss. If your art director doesn’t whine, it’s too small.

• Don’t print the reply card on coated stock. People need to be able to write on it. And speaking of stock, depending on its size, make sure the card is at least seven or nine micrometers thick.

• Study and emulate the reply cards created by direct mail pros.

• Whether you’re creating a First Class Mail® Business Reply Mail® card or courtesy reply card, run it past the U.S. Postal Service to ensure it meets standards for cost-effective processing. For that matter, run the whole package past them. These folks want your direct mail to succeed, which means they are a willing and valuable resource. Checking in advance with the Postal Service has saved me time, trouble and money, and spared me from what would have been embarrassing mistakes, more than once.

Reply cards may not look like much, but they are powerful and crucial selling tools. If you’re ever introduced as a person who writes them, blush and say, “Aw, shucks.”

Steve Cuno heads the RESPONSE Agency in Salt Lake City. He is the author of the book Prove It Before You Promote It: How to Take the Guesswork Out of Marketing and is a popular convention speaker for the Direct Marketing Association, the American Marketing Association, the James Randi Educational Foundation and others. He can be reached at steve@responseagency.com.

By Steve Cuno

Try this test to see if you were born with critical thinking skills (“critical” as in analytical). Are you:

A. Human (2 points)
B. Not Human (1 point)
C. Not Sure (0 points)

A score of 2 indicates that, even if you’re a good critical thinker, you probably weren’t born that way. (If you scored one or less, be careful whom you tell.)

Critical thinking has to do with learning to identify and evaluate facts in order to avoid being duped. This type of thinking doesn’t come naturally to humans (there are biological explanations why) but it can be profitable, especially for marketers.

Consider the arguments typically used to establish marketing success: sales are up; focus group participants liked the ads; phone research showed an increase in the number of people who said they’d purchase; Web hits rose; the video went viral; the campaign won awards; post-campaign research showed an awareness increase; and, not to be overlooked, someone’s gut intuition just knows the campaign worked.

Fine. Except, not fine.

All it takes to call the above into question is a bit of critical analysis. It’s as simple as stepping back and saying, “Just a darned minute. What does the evidence really show?”

A sales increase can result from factors other than advertising; focus group research is not predictive; people saying they’ll purchase may not; Web hits aren’t sales; a message can go viral but not sell; awards do not indicate market success; and awareness needn’t lead to sales. Oh, and as for gut intuition, be honest: Your gut tells you the sun orbits Earth.

Yet who can blame marketers for buying the above arguments? They’ve heard them throughout their careers. The arguments seem to make sense. And marketers really, really want to believe their stuff is working. But if you want to know — regardless of how much you want to believe — you’ll need to borrow a few standards from science.

Mind you, I’m not suggesting that marketers are not smart. But even the smartest scientists acknowledge their dupability. That’s why they insist on blind tests, strict controls, replication and peer review. These standards help them guard against error and against being fooled by what they expect to see.

For instance, suppose you want to know whether your marketing, versus some other factor, was responsible for a sales increase. As a marketer, you might begin by asking, “What would it take to convince me that the marketing didn’t work?” If your answer is, “Nothing, because I know I’m right,” you’re not thinking critically; you’re thinking dogmatically.

But as a scientist, you might say, “Suppose I divide a representative sample of my market into Group 1 and Group 2, taking care to keep them alike in terms of demographics and psychographics. I’ll expose only Group 1 to the marketing so that, to the best of my knowledge, that will be the only difference between the groups. If Group 1 purchases more than Group 2, I can reasonably conclude that my marketing is responsible. If the groups perform equally, I can conclude that my marketing made no difference. And, heaven forbid, should Group 2 outperform Group 1, I’ll conclude that my marketing is hurting sales.”

Want to get really scientific? Triple-blind the test: (1) Do not let either group know about the other, what you’re trying to learn, or that they are even part of a test. (2) Ensure that whoever tracks purchases doesn’t know which group was exposed to the marketing. (3) Ensure that whoever compiles and interprets the data doesn’t know, either.

Good scientific tests can be replicated. This is important for ruling out flukes. So repeat the test two or three times to new, equally valid samples. Consistent test results are highly reliable indicators.

You might be wondering how you’ll expose Group 1 to your marketing while insulating Group 2 from it. Easy. Target Group 1 with the medium that gives you optimum distribution control: direct mail. Leave Group 2 alone.

A critical approach isn’t for people who want to prove themselves right. It’s for people who want to find out what’s right. And it brims with advantages. It reduces error and self-delusion. Every test leads to learning. Moreover, you’ll know what’s working, so you can do more of it. Equally important, you’ll know what’s not working, so you can modify, replace or retire it instead of throwing good money after bad.

All of which would seem to indicate that critical thinking can be critical to your continued success and employment.

Steve Cuno heads the RESPONSE Agency in Salt Lake City. He is the author of the book Prove It Before You Promote It: How to Take the Guesswork Out of Marketing and is a popular convention speaker for the Direct Marketing Association, the American Marketing Association, the James Randi Educational Foundation and others. He can be reached at steve@responseagency.com.

By Steve Cuno

I cringed when I read an article on how to launch a successful business. The author claimed that after deciding upon a product or service, the next most important step was to come up with a “catchy slogan.” The article appeared in a national magazine. Heaven only knows how many more lame slogans you and I will have to endure as a result.

To be fair, there are good slogans. It’s hard to argue with, say, a mailer or TV ad that features a catchy line that also happens to be descriptive, believable and persuasive. Positive examples include a company that puts to charming use a double negative about nobody not liking their baked goods and, going back a few years, a watchmaker’s rhyme about its product’s ability to endure maniacal abuse and still function.

But needless and lame slogans abound, thanks to insecure marketers who fear a brand isn’t a brand unless they dollop it with one more flatulent boast. Often these slogans appear under the watchful eye of a TM or ®.

And thank goodness for that TM and that ®, too. Now marketers can sleep nights, secure in the knowledge that they have staked an official claim to the likes of “proudly serving you” (lest we suspect them of serving us abashedly) or “a tradition of excellence” (differentiates from companies bragging about a tradition of mediocrity).

Not to be overlooked are myriad slogans using the word “people.” I came up with my own slogan for slogans with “people” in them: The Default Slogan.™ Or how about The Who Do You Think You’re Impressing Slogan.™ Sticking “people” in your slogan neither humanizes you nor endears you to your market. It will not set your business apart unless competitors start using slogans like, “Proudly hiring the dregs of society,” “Designed by feral cats,” or “Our employees don’t know which way is up.”

Bad slogans are not exclusive to amateurs. One of the reasons small companies come up with them is that large ones do.

But the real question is: Do slogans sell anything? For an answer, I conducted a mini study. I searched through a well-known magazine that carries an approximately equal volume of branding and direct response ads, and counted the number in each category that sported a slogan. As a Deliver® reader, you probably know that the effects of direct response advertising can be measured right down to cost-per-sale. Moreover, split-copy tests can tease out the effectiveness of individual elements such as slogans. (The ability to do split-copy tests, all but gone from magazines and newspapers, is still a major advantage of the direct mail medium.) By contrast, branding ads tend to be evaluated by indirect, inferential methods, such as recall, recognition and awareness scores, making it harder to link individual ad elements to specific results. So my underlying assumption was that if slogans help move products, brand marketers might know, but direct marketers would surely know — and use them.

Would you care to guess what percentage of branding ads versus direct response ads in my study featured slogans?

Every branding ad sported at least one slogan, some sported two, and one sported three. I suppose that last case doesn’t say much for the advertiser’s confidence in the first two slogans. As for the direct response ads, zero percent had slogans. I did not round the number down, meaning that not one direct response ad had a slogan. To paraphrase a famous, fierce direct response advocate: Between branders and direct marketers, who do you suppose knows more about what sells?

No law says your ad needs a slogan. History is full of successful, slogan-less advertising. But if you cannot restrain yourself, at least avoid the kind of self-serving drivel that impresses no one but the board of directors. Come up with a line that’s relevant, credible and compelling — from the market’s point of view.

Or, you could spare yourself the trouble, and spend your time applying already-proven direct mail tactics instead.

Steve Cuno — “More than just a bald guy with a beard™” — heads the RESPONSE Agency in Salt Lake City. He is the author of the book Prove It Before You Promote It: How to Take the Guesswork Out of Marketing and is a popular convention speaker for the Direct Marketing Association, the American Marketing Association, the James Randi Educational Foundation and others. He can be reached at steve@responseagency.com.

By Pamela Oldham

A marketer always wants to say that his brand’s product is better than a competitor’s — but what does a CMO do when his rival’s product is so bad that it sours consumers on that product category altogether?

PureSpectrum, a Georgia lighting company, faced just such a dilemma recently as it sought to convince customers to try its new 20-watt dimmable compact fluorescent lamp (CFL). “There are other dimmable CFLs out on the market today, but they’ve left consumers feeling cheated,” says Nick Peragine, one of the company’s product sales managers. “They don’t work very well and they’re very expensive.”

Despite what Peragine says is the superiority of the PureSpectrum bulbs, bad experiences with dimmable bulbs from other brands had left many prospective customers skeptical about whether any dimmable compact fluorescent lamp was worth the money.

Still, given increasing concerns over energy conservation, PureSpectrum believes there could be high demand for the energy-efficient lamps — if the manufacturer could prove they worked well before customers made purchases. So that’s just what PureSpectrum set out to do.

Enlightening prospects

The company determined that the most effective way to achieve acceptance of its product was to mail samples to a key target audience — more than 900 rural electrical co-ops across the United States. “In our industry sampling is crucial, but it’s everything in our case because we’re a young company with a new slant on a technology that hasn’t necessarily proven itself in the past,” says Peragine. “We came to the decision to use direct mail primarily because it was the easiest way to introduce our products to a large number of potential constituents over a broad area.”

The mailing went out in late 2009 and, in addition to the sample, included a product endorsement letter from a nationwide distributor of products and services to energy cooperatives. The rural electrical co-ops represent millions of commercial and residential energy customers across a large number of U.S. counties. Co-ops typically stress affordability and encourage wise use of energy. Ownership is generally held by local customers of the utility.

“Co-ops are always trying to find ways to help their customers save energy,” says Peragine. “We wanted to get our CFLs into their hands, with the potential that they’ll do the right thing as a rural electrical utility and get them into the hands of their customers. One of the hopes is that if a consumer gets our CFL from their utility company, there’s going to be brand recognition and demand for our product, and that will build interest from the retail and distribution channels.”

Results of the campaign are still pending, but Peragine says that the mailer has generated an influx of purchase orders, product sales and requests for quotes. Over the coming weeks and months, the company’s sales team will continue follow-up efforts, including outbound calls and other activities.

And although Peragine anticipates the mailer will ultimately achieve a response rate of 20 percent, he says he isn’t focused on traditional direct mail measurements to gauge success: “We wanted to get actual samples of our product in their hands, for them to test and say, ‘Wow, this really does work.’”

By Steve Cuno

As one who is all for instant gratification, I love the Internet. I can preview anything, on the spot. If I like the preview, I can download the real thing and revel in it then and there.

Provided, that is, that I never want to download anything besides pictures, video, sound or text. A non-media product—say, that new deodorant my friends are so eager for me to try—is another matter. Outside of sci-fi movies, no computer can download a deodorant preview, much less an entire 3.5-ounce container. Not even sniffing the monitor or rubbing it in an underarm produces the desired result. (Never mind how I know.)

Don’t despair. There is a way to download non-media products at home. With apologies to self-help gurus, this is one time to think inside the box — more specifically, the mailbox.

For instance, a sport jacket recently called out to me from a well-respected mail-order clothier’s Web site. By some miracle, I had lived 55 years without it. Yet I hesitated. I couldn’t quite judge the fabric quality from the photo. Nor was I sure about the color, for, as anyone who has gone on a press check knows, monitors know no universal color code. But, next to the product photo, this savvy merchant had placed a “Request swatch” button. Request I did, and the merchant promptly downloaded the swatch to my mailbox. The day it arrived, I downloaded the rest of the sport jacket.

So here’s a thought. If your marketing strategy depends on letting people kick the tires, so to speak, before making a purchase, maybe you should offer to download a bit of tire to their mailbox.

People who request samples generally make for more qualified prospects, but you needn’t always await a request. Some products lend themselves to a surprise mailbox download. One late advertising guru was known to opine that he wouldn’t consider launching a detergent without sampling to consumers.

Back to that deodorant. You know what the ubiquitous “they” say about old habits. You’ll have a hard time getting brand-loyal people to entrust the well-being of their pits to a new product, no matter how free from underarm angst the sexy people in your ads appear. But if your brand is superior enough to win them over with a trial, sending samples to carefully selected mailboxes might just change those old habits, plus spur word of mouth.

Tracking and cost accounting are important. Distributing samples is about creating customers, not about creating impressions. Include a coupon with each sample. Though not all converted customers will use the coupon, you may be able to extrapolate the number of recipients who later bought your brand from the redeemed coupons.

When you identify a promising target, divide it into three geographic groups. Mail samples to one. Send the same materials, minus the sample, to another. Mail nothing at all to the third. Be sure to target all three areas at the same time to eliminate timing as a factor. (You can account for geographic differences in subsequent testing.) Then, track and compare purchases—in-store, by mail and online—in each geographic region. If sales in the region that received samples outstrip sales in the other two, you’ll have a strong indicator that your sampling program is working.

Weigh the cost of your program against the combined lifetime value (LTV) of acquired customers. If the LTV is higher, chances are your program will be profitable. If the LTV is lower, refine your strategy.

Careful targeting is Rule 1 when it comes to direct mail. Adding the cost of samples to your mailing makes targeting even more crucial. Work with a mailing list broker who can help you avoid sending coffee samples to people whose religion forbids coffee consumption, car polish samples to non–car owners, and beef jerky samples to vegans. Better yet, find one who can help you identify coffee connoisseurs, muscle car buffs and jerky lovers.

People are good at tuning out what’s under their noses. For most of us, a reminder note on the bathroom mirror might as well not even be there after a few days. Amid the dazzle of our high-tech world, it’s important not to overlook a rock-solid resource simply because it has been around for a couple of hundred years. I am often surprised at the solutions a mailbox still provides. We would do well to think inside the box more often.

Steve Cuno heads the RESPONSE Agency in Salt Lake City. He is a popular speaker and is the author of the book Prove It Before You Promote It: How to Take the Guesswork Out of Marketing (John Wiley & Sons). E-mail Steve at steve@responseagency.com. You can read Steve’s blog here.

By Steve Cuno

We rarely hear about the fourth law of thermodynamics. In brief, it states that whenever a server says, “Careful, this plate is extremely hot,” an invisible force compels the customer to touch the plate. The compulsion grows as the cube of the number of decibels with which the server pronounces the word extremely.

It seems that, given a choice between heeding a voice of experience and sabotaging ourselves, many people do not just opt for, but positively execute, a mad dash for the latter. This can be as true of marketers as it is of other human-like creatures. So, for those who prefer wasting time and money, I offer the following personally witnessed, surefire shortcuts to screwing up your marketing. (I should add that narrowing it down to 12 wasn’t easy.)

Sabotage Tip 1: Don’t set firm objectives. You’re much safer stating that your goal is to “get your name out there” or to advertise because the competition does. That way, even if sales tank, you can sit back and say, “I did my job.”

Sabotage Tip 2: Put the goal where the ball lands. With a little practice, anyone can learn to retrofit objectives to results. Soon after a VP of marketing proudly showed me a new sales video, it became apparent that the video appealed to employees, but offended customers. No problem. The VP promptly claimed that the video was never intended for sales, but for training. George Orwell would have been proud.

Sabotage Tip 3: Write and design for internal approval. Authorize as many people as possible to revise or, better yet, outright veto creative work. This will ensure that creative people avoid trying to connect with the market. Instead, they will focus on creating what is sure to fly internally.

Sabotage Tip 4: It’s all about what YOU want. A major coffeehouse chain lost customers for years by refusing to fill the demand for lattes made with nonfat milk. Why did they resist? Because the CEO liked coffee the way it was made in Italy, and Italian baristas don’t use nonfat milk. Darned customers. What makes them think they should have a say in what they want in their coffee?

Sabotage Tip 5: Misuse research. Herd a bunch of people into a focus group and ask them to evaluate your campaign. Treat their comments, especially the ones you like, as if they’re statistically valid. You can also phone 5,000 people and ask them what they do, don’t, would and wouldn’t buy, and why. Assume they know.

Sabotage Tip 6: Don’t listen to your salespeople. The only thing that salespeople do is interact face-to-face, every day, with real customers who use your products. What would they know about marketing?

Sabotage Tip 7: If it’s wild and creative, go with it. If you have a killer concept that’s destined to take top honors at the next awards show, it would be a sin not to back it with your budget. Who cares whether it’s effective? It deserves to be shared!

Sabotage Tip 8: Avoid valid evidence. Proper testing and analysis let you reliably predict a direct mail strategy’s outcome before risking big bucks. But if nature had intended for us to conduct valid, predictive tests, we wouldn’t have hips to shoot from. Showing the concept to coworkers, friends, family and people in a mall, though not predictive, is faster and easier. And, only in the short run, cheaper.

Sabotage Tip 9: Don’t trust your agency. Your agency may have experts on staff, but you can still hobble them by overruling their expertise with your intuition. You can also focus on minutiae. For instance, make the art director change a border on that mail piece from black to dark blue.

Sabotage Tip 10: Trust your agency. Not trusting experts is self-sabotage, but so is trusting non-experts. Many agencies, figuring they can affix stamps as well as anyone, list “direct response marketing” as a core capability. If you are firmly committed to failure, this is no time for due diligence. Just hand them the checkbook.

Sabotage Tip 11: Mistake a slogan for a brand. Imagine a person who is fast losing friends. This person might do well to take an honest look, figure out what alienates people and make changes. But substance is such a bother. Surely this person could more easily regain friends by learning to say something like, “Hi, I’m Alex—where coolness is Number One.”

Sabotage Tip 12: Disdain proven techniques. For nearly two centuries, direct response marketers have amassed information on what works in the marketplace. Moreover, experience shows that what worked yesterday works today. But learning all that stuff is tedious, and using it might hamper your creativity. Mustn’t let that happen.

There are many ways to sabotage marketing, but this should give you a good start. If you fail to implement these recommendations, don’t come whining to me if your marketing succeeds.

Steve Cuno heads the RESPONSE Agency in Salt Lake City. He is the author of the book Prove It Before You Promote It: How to Take the Guesswork Out of Marketing and is a popular convention speaker for the Direct Marketing Association, the American Marketing Association, the James Randi Educational Foundation and others. He can be reached at Steve@ResponseAgency.com.

By Steve Cuno

The publisher of a respected advertising magazine called recently. It seems that the president of her bank sent her a personal note, just to check up and make sure the bank was treating her well. Since the bank is my client, she thought I’d like to know. Wasn’t that cool of the bank president?

I hated telling her, but thousands of the bank’s highest-balance customers received that letter. I should know. I wrote it, and my agency mailed it.

Actually, I didn’t hate telling her at all. I positively gloated. But after shoving my ego back under the veneer of feigned humility where I usually try to hide it, I realized something: Thanks — ironically — to e-mail and the Internet, direct mail may now pack a mightier punch than ever.

Time for a disclaimer before I proceed. I’m not attacking e-mail marketing. I shall contrast it with direct mail only to bring out some of the latter’s advantages. E-mail has advantages, too, but that’s another column for another day.

A number of unique factors work in direct mail’s favor. One is what your English literature teacher called “willing suspension of disbelief,” our ability to set aside reality and lose ourselves in a story. When a direct mail letter shows up in a personally addressed, stamped envelope, part of us wants to believe that someone took a moment to compose, print, address and post it, just for us. All the better if the letter calls us by name and bears a signature in fountain pen–evoking blue. A good writer can make an e-mail blast sound personal, but there is no electronic substitute for the look and feel of a signed letter in a stamped, addressed envelope.

Willing suspension of disbelief knows no demographic limitations. Consider my publisher friend. A technologically savvy marketing insider, she knows my shop, understands digital printing, publishes my articles and, on occasion, pops for lunch. Had she paused to analyze, she would easily have seen that the letter in her hand was direct mail. But — and this is the point — she chose not to pause and analyze. Nor did other recipients. Remember, these were high-balance customers, not exactly the intellectual dregs of society. Of those who replied, 80 percent willingly suspended their disbelief and thanked the bank president for writing them.

Whether or not your direct mail includes an envelope or sales letter, it appears that the public would rather receive advertising mail in a mailbox than on a computer. Higher response rates provide one indicator. The near-overnight appearance of spam laws and filters provides another. No sooner had e-mail blasts arrived than the public demanded laws restricting them, servers blocking them, and junk filters dispatching them.

By contrast, laws governing physical mail are far less restrictive, despite more than 200 years of opportunity to enact them — and for good reason. While it remains disturbingly fashionable for legislators to tilt against direct mail windmills, Congress was quick to recognize spam as a real dragon and take immediate action.

Besides indicating a market preference, the absence of such controls offers a practical advantage. Everyone must look through their physical mail in order to decide what to read and what to chuck. Not so with e-mail. There, one click can do you in forever. Your next test might have proved a winner — had you not been banned in perpetuity.

Let’s not overlook that people have always looked forward to getting their mail, and still do. Most people can tell you what time their mail arrives. Most bring it in daily and eagerly dig through it. News flash: They’re not looking for bills. They’re looking for letters — and, increasingly, relevant advertising mail.

I suspect this is why our shop and others find that intelligent, well-targeted direct mail continues to perform as well as, and often better than, ever. But note my use of qualifiers like relevant, intelligent and well-targeted. Let’s admit that too many marketing campaigns are poorly targeted, ineptly presented or both. So much the better for the genuine direct mail pro. Yours can be the offer that people willingly open, read — and act upon.

E-mail and other online media are useful and powerful in their own right. To wit, you may have noticed that you’re reading this column online. (I appreciate it.) But when planning a direct response media mix, it’s important to remember that there are some things that a mailbox can deliver that a monitor just can’t.

Steve Cuno heads the RESPONSE Agency in Salt Lake City. He is the author of the book Prove It Before You Promote It: How to Take the Guesswork Out of Marketing and is a popular convention speaker for the Direct Marketing Association, the American Marketing Association, the James Randi Educational Foundation and others. He can be reached at Steve@ResponseAgency.com.

By Steve Cuno

Not long ago, a company could launch an advertising campaign solely because an entity known as “Corporate” had set aside a budget for it — and many companies did just this. As for objectives? Pish-posh. As long as people remembered the ads or the board of directors liked them or the viral video was downloaded like crazy, everyone assumed the campaign was working.

Alas, the good old days of such ego-indulgent marketing are endangered to the point of near-extinction. (As you undoubtedly have heard, we are in the midst of a recession.) Now, more than ever, your marketing has to justify itself.

It’s certainly no secret that, in a recession, that dreaded group of executives known collectively as Those Who Allocate Budgets (or TWABs) turn a skeptical eye on programs that consume money without demonstrating a direct contribution to the bottom line. This leaves traditional brand advertising particularly vulnerable, since the link between recall scores, likeability, downloads and awards is, at best, inferred. Even claims that sales increased during a campaign are not immune from skepticism, since surges can result from other factors.

If you work in a branding agency, the word for this development might be “disconcerting.” But if you happen to be a direct marketer or the client of one, that word should be “opportunity.”

DIRECT IS ITS OWN BEST DEFENSE

Direct response is, after all, the only form of advertising with built-in, empirical proof of its contribution to the bottom line. Good direct marketers need never resort to inferential rhetoric to justify their existence. At any given moment, they can plop under the noses of the most penurious TWABs a spreadsheet that shows if a direct marketing program is earning its keep, and by how much. There is no wiggle room, no weaseling. No other advertising discipline can do that. In an economy in which every dime counts, direct response is the dream of obsessive-compulsive TWABs everywhere.

But, to paraphrase Shakespeare, here’s the rub: We cannot assume that all TWABs understand the advantages of direct response marketing. These days, there is a real danger that your friendly neighborhood CFO will decide that all marketing and advertising, direct response included, is the proverbial bathwater — and, worse, that there never really was a baby in the first place. Thus we may find ourselves summarily discarded without having so much as stuck a tentative toe in the tub.

We may be in part to blame. Half of the direct marketer’s historical challenge has been to get clients to consider that maybe, just maybe, awards, popularity and recall scores are not all they’re cracked up to be. Since there’s nothing quite like a shortage of funds to make clients figure out such things for themselves, the economy may have taken over that fight for us. It’s just as well. A recent study cited by the New England Skeptical Society shows that, a few weeks after the fact, most people erringly recall a debunked myth as having been confirmed. If so, it’s possible that in trying to debunk advertising myths, we have in fact been reinforcing them.

GOING WITH WHAT WORKS

I shudder to think. Especially since we could have put that effort into the other half of our challenge — namely, that of establishing direct response as the desirable, profitable alternative that actually works. Even here, it is ironic how often direct marketers ignore their own advice by selling the features of direct response rather than its benefits. To wit: We brag that direct response is built on tested and proven methods, yet we often stop short of saying what tested and proven methods do for the client (produce revenue); we say that direct response is accountable, but fail to drive home what that accountability demonstrates (that we’re producing revenue); we say that direct response allows for ongoing adjustment and improvement, but forget to point out what ongoing adjustment and improvement do for the client (produce ever-increasing revenue).

But right now we have a renewed chance to sell direct response in glowing, positive terms. Business decision makers know that besides cutting expenses, they must also find new ways to produce revenue. Given that that is exactly what direct response marketing does, this is our opportunity. It’s not too late to seize it by doing a more effective job of selling direct response marketing. And since the economy has largely relieved us of having to point out the drawbacks of traditional advertising, we can devote more copy than ever to the positive aspects of our craft.

These times do not demand doing away with marketing. They demand marketing that pays its way. Only direct response can demonstrate that it does. If anyone should have the moxie to convince clients (and TWABs) of this, it should be direct marketers.

After all, how good are we?

Steve Cuno heads the RESPONSE Agency in Salt Lake City. He is the author of the book Prove It Before You Promote It: How to Take the Guesswork Out of Marketing and is a popular convention speaker for the Direct Marketing Association, the American Marketing Association, the James Randi Educational Foundation and others. He can be reached at Steve@ResponseAgency.com.

Printer manufacturer blends in-depth messaging tools to stay on top during flat economy

By BRUCE BRITT

Since its 2007 launch, the Canon imagePRESS® C7000VP digital press has earned raves and awards from printing professionals worldwide. But in the shadows of fierce competition and a historic economic downturn, Canon USA knew it had to get more assertive to compete against scrappy rivals.

So with an eye towards winning over new converts to the C7000VP, Canon put on the full court press — or, to be exact, the full color press. To stoke more interest in the equipment, the company’s U.S. marketing team selected Magicomm LLC, a marketing agency focused on creating cross-media campaigns, to work with them to develop a free B-to-B webinar series centered around the printer dubbed “The Value of Print.” The campaign used direct mail both to promote the webinars and to show off the high image quality of the C7000VP.

In marketing the webinars, which featured user testimonials and product pitches from company executives, Canon mailed thousands of personalized invitations to commercial and corporate printing facilities nationwide. The glossy mailers promoted the webinars as part of Canon’s “strength-building” theme and included a link to a branded Web site that featured videos, photos and other information on the C7000VP. Invitees were also given a URL where they could sign up for the webinars, which were broadcast in January and February.

Mail shows what it can do

Forrest Leighton, a Canon USA senior marketing manager for production systems, chuckles when asked why he was confident that direct mail was the ideal way to promote the webinar. “We’re selling printing equipment, right?” he asks. “The piece we sent was printed on our equipment, so we’re mailing prospects a sample that demonstrates how good it is, and what they can do with it.”

The effort illustrates a trend in multimedia marketing: As tough economic times compel marketers to reassess the power of various media, executives at major corporations like Canon are going far beyond the typical PURL or microsite as they integrate traditional media with new digital offerings. “It’s not just about doing a direct mail campaign or going on the Web,” says Leighton. “It’s about the combination — being able to see it on the Web or get it in the mail. That [integration] seems to get the best results from a direct marketing standpoint.”

The mailers began going out just ahead of the January webinar. The piece was an 11-inch by 17-inch, four-panel, accordion-fold mailer. The face of the mailer hit recipients with the teaser line “Now it’s easier than ever to pick-up digital color printing.” The mailer opened to reveal an illustration of a muscleman bench-pressing an oversized C7000VP, a play on Canon’s running theme that its products strengthen business. Another photo of the C7000VP accompanied pitch text touting the quality, flexibility and reliability of the Canon printer.

A personalized URL address was offered for webinar invitees to register online. Meanwhile, an accompanying card offered the option of registering via direct mail. The mailer also contained information about a giveaway of a Canon Digital Imaging Bundle, which included a Canon SLR camera and a desktop inkjet printer.

Canon implemented two 8,000-piece mail drops, one for the January 2009 session, the second for a February webinar. The pieces were mailed two weeks prior to the respective events. “Originally we thought we were cutting it a little bit close — but it’s not like people are getting on planes,” Leighton says. “We think two weeks is probably the right frame to hit our targets, at the same time making sure everything online is up and running. If it’s a month out, you’re probably a little too far away time-wise to drive attendance.”

Leveraging social networks

To spur even more interest, Canon promoted the webinars on social networks. Magicomm created a “Value of Print” account and utilized groups and followers on LinkedIn and Facebook, while also posting on industry Web sites. The company’s communications also provided links to the “Value of Print” URL, bios of webinar speakers and customers, and answers to discussion questions about the “Value of Print” campaign. “It was a combination, from the social media piece to posting on industry sites like whattheythink.com to the actual direct mail piece,” Leighton explains. “The level of activity we got was tremendous.”

The effort generated online exchanges that continued even during the actual webinars, with Canon and Magicomm posting messages throughout the events. “It’s relationship building,” says Canon USA marketing associate specialist Joe Schember, “just getting out in front of the customer with a different medium where they may be more active.“

Leighton puts attendance for each webinar at 100 participants. More important, participants were those executives whom Canon wanted to hear its message. “We found that the audience that responded to this was the right audience,” he says. “We ended up with a lot of interested prospects in the pipeline.”

Global repositioning system

The multimedia educational push reflects Canon’s approach to marketing in a flat global economy, Leighton says. He says the company wants to offer value and position itself as an “advisor” to companies during tough times. To that end, the company is preparing new marketing efforts that will focus on how customers can thrive in a down economy, including advice on the best practices and what Canon can do to help them. “Same as anyone in this economy, people are looking for help,” Leighton says. “We feel our role is to help our customers know what they can do to continue to be profitable.”

In the course of developing the “Value of Print” campaign, Leighton says, Canon officials themselves were also reminded of the power of printed pieces. “I’m a proponent that mail is a really important piece of the marketing equation,” he says. “Campaigns don’t live and breathe as well without that mail piece. Mail helps us educate our customers about how to use our product to better market themselves, and how to use direct mail themselves.”

By Steve Cuno

There’s nothing quite like a box or bulging padded envelope in the mail. It makes your inner child hop up and down, tug your sleeve and ask — nay, nag: “What’s inside? Huh? HUH? WHAT’S INSIDE?” This happens even when the package contains something you ordered. The effect is multiplied when it’s something you didn’t order.

An eager, inner child dwells within us all. Even hard-to-reach corporate curmudgeons, who take pride in chucking unopened direct mail or delegating the task to administrative assistants, harbor such a child. And that is precisely why well-executed lumpy mail works. It has the uncanny ability to find its way to the curmudgeon’s hands — and heart. It even charms their administrative assistants, some of whom, rumor has it, also once had hearts.

If you want to reach business decision-makers, lumpy mail is your secret weapon. (I could use the more common term, “three-dimensional direct mail.” But my own inner child, who likes saying “lumpy,” begs your indulgence.)

How powerful is lumpy mail? Consider a credit card provider seeking face-to-face meetings with bank CEOs. Our agency mailed each CEO a box containing a sales letter and a First-Class Mail® reply card. I should also mention that the box was five feet long, to accommodate the pair of stilts that we enclosed. The sales letter promised to help banks compete with “the big guys.” Our client set appointments with 40 percent of the mailing list and booked more than $65 million in business the first year alone.

Not that lumpy mail must be so elaborate. For a client with a tiny budget, we mailed a letter, reply card — and fake mustache — in a Number 10 envelope. The envelope headline read, “Clever disguise enclosed.” The pitch? That retailing our client’s product would be immensely profitable. The mustache? To hide from long-lost friends showing up for a handout. The package pulled a 25-percent response.

Then there was the air horn we mailed for a community bank (36-percent response), the kazoo for a business service (25 percent), the Lone Ranger mask for a half-million-dollar software product (25 percent), the beanbag elephant for a regional bank (56 percent), the two-headed coin for a transit company (47 percent) …

I’ll resist the temptation to keep raving. Let’s move on to what makes lumpy mail work from a strategic standpoint. Here are six musts:

1. Mail something of value. Junk doesn’t impress. Neither does a pen or mug with your logo. Note that “of value” needn’t mean “expensive.” The mustache cost our client less than a buck. Recipients kept it because it was fun. Many donned it and paraded around the office.

2. Mail something with “head-scratcher” value. The last thing you need is for recipients to know what you plan to say before you say it. Make them scratch their head and wonder, “Why did XYZ Company send me a hockey puck?” (The hockey puck mailing, by the way, pulled an 8-percent response.) To find out, they will have to read.

3. Write a darned good sales letter. The lumpy enclosure charms, grabs attention and makes people read, but the letter sells. Do not enclose — and for heaven’s sake do not substitute — a flyer. Not even a really cool one. It will drive response down.

4. Don’t tell too much. Too much information relieves prospects of having to meet with you. Tell enough to create curiosity. Then invite the reader to contact you to learn more. Keep the letter to a page, and add no literature other than a reply card.

5. Be relevant. “Now that I have your attention …” isn’t strategic; it’s juvenile. Your lumpy enclosure must underscore a salient point. When we mailed high-end wooden puzzles to hospital-based pathologists, we likened the puzzle to laboratory management challenges. Recipients could receive the puzzle’s solution by meeting with a sales rep. (15-percent response.)

6. Follow up by phone. In every case cited here resulting in meetings with more than 25 percent of recipients, there was telephone follow-up. Lumpy mail generates inquiries on its own, but you’ll double or triple results by calling every name on the list. Try opening with, “I’m the one who sent you the [life preserver].” (Yes, we mailed those, too. 40 percent.) Then ask for an appointment. (Hint: Limit mailing quantities to what you can realistically follow up.)

A rare stick-in-the mud may say, “If you must do this to get my attention, you can’t be any good.” Should that happen, congratulations. You’ve just identified someone you don’t want for a customer. Move on to the next name.

Lumpy mailings are powerful, effective and a blast. Right now, we’re preparing to mail deodorant soap for a high-end audio products manufacturer. Next, we’re mailing volleyballs for a law firm.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Steve Cuno heads the RESPONSE Agency in Salt Lake City. He is a popular speaker and the author of the book Prove It Before You Promote It: How to Take the Guesswork Out of Marketing (John Wiley & Sons). E-mail him at Steve@ResponseAgency.com. Read his blog at http://www.responseagency.com/blog/index.php.

By Steve Cuno

By the time I finished college, I had worked for three major department store chains. Each claimed to have originated the policy “Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back.” They also alleged that naysayers shook their heads at the then-new policy, predicting that widespread public abuse was sure to bankrupt the store in no time. But — cue orchestra and choir — these courageous retail pioneers damned the torpedoes and moved ahead at full speed.

If the folklore is true, history vindicated the fearless pioneers. Today, a satisfaction guarantee is standard for nearly all mail-order marketers and most retail chains. Abuses happen, but resultant increased sales more than compensate. It seems that when stores trust customers, customers trust stores, become loyal and show it by purchasing more.

If the guarantee’s positive outcome surprised naysayers, one thing is clear: Naysayers in those days didn’t spend much time with vampire bats. If they had, they would have learned some valuable lessons about loyalty.

Nature’s rewards programs

As many animal lovers know, vampire bats often feed upon sleeping cattle or other blissfully unaware snoozers. (Incidentally, they don’t drain their victims Dracula-style; they make tiny puncture wounds and lap what seeps out.) They then regroup at headquarters, regurgitate their spoils and share equally. But even bats are subject to greed. Should a successful hunter hoard instead of share, the others notice. Next time that bat experiences a bad hunt, it is excluded from the sharing.

You and I might call the bat behavior a primitive version of “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours; if you don’t scratch my back, I’ll be damned if I’ll scratch yours.” Evolutionary psychologists call it reciprocal altruism, which is shorter and sounds way more intellectual. The trait shows up in most creatures that live in social groups, from wolves to dolphins to chimpanzees. In all of these species, compliance to the “rules” leads to rewards, whereas flouting them can incur penalties. (Vampire bats go easy on miscreants. Chimp punishment sometimes entails biting off parts most creatures prefer to keep.)

Are consumers hard-wired for fairness?

Whatever you want to call this inborn code, it has important implications for marketers hoping to win loyalty from another social animal: humans. If a sense of fairness is innate in so-called lower creatures, then what about people? Is it possible that our own sense of justice runs deeper than what society instills?

Scientific studies of primitive and modern societies indicate that the answer is a strong “Yes!” An inner, tacit understanding of how we should relate to and treat one another appears to come as naturally to humans as talking with our hands.

If that’s true, then a positive response to a marketer who is willing to go out on a limb for customers may not be so surprising after all. Maybe it’s simply natural.

No wonder “satisfaction guaranteed” has become a must for successful direct mail marketing. When you scratch a shopper’s back, it’s natural for the shopper to scratch in return. When a high-end direct mail clothier gives you a no-hassle refund because your outfit “just didn’t look right” — even after you wore it — you’re more inclined to reward them with increased loyalty and purchases. When publishers let you examine the first volume of a continuity series with no obligation, include a gift to keep even if you decide not to purchase, and let you return any book you receive thereafter, you’re more likely to trust them with your credit card number. And when a catalog marketer rewards frequent buyers with free shipping, gifts and privileges, buyers are more likely to repeat behaviors that earn rewards.

Fostering mutual affection

Direct marketers who want to be around for the long haul do well to practice reciprocal altruism. Treating customers morally and ethically, giving them the benefit of the doubt and rewarding them is good business precisely because it resonates with evolved humanity.

The first marketers who placed trust in customers admittedly took a risk. After all, there are greedy people, just as there are greedy bats. What was to keep people from returning perfectly good products and simply claiming dissatisfaction? Or from claiming not to have received a product after the USPS indeed delivered it?

Happily, experience has shown trustworthiness to be an inherent trait in the majority of humans, most of the time.

It bodes well for direct marketing. And for humanity.

Steve Cuno heads the RESPONSE Agency in Salt Lake City. He is the author of the book Prove It Before You Promote It: How to Take the Guesswork Out of Marketing and is a popular convention speaker for the Direct Marketing Association, the American Marketing Association, the James Randi Educational Foundation and others. He can be reached at Steve@ResponseAgency.com.

By Steve Cuno

Never invite me to a cocktail party. Since a customary icebreaker is to feign interest in what the person you just met does for a living, you would place each of your guests at risk of having to hear me rhapsodize, ad infinitum, about the virtues of direct mail as a medium for selling.

But today I’m going to rhapsodize about another, lesser-known way to profit from direct mail. Besides being useful for selling goods and services, direct mail is a powerful instrument for peering deep inside the mind of a customer.

Too often, researchers assume that asking people questions is a good way to find out how they’ll act. Nonsense. People cannot predict how they’ll react to your marketing, but that doesn’t keep them from giving you their best guess, and meaning it. Well-meaning respondents have assured researchers that they would buy yogurt named after a chic magazine, frozen meals named after a toothpaste, underwear named after a disposable pen logo, children’s clothing named after a hamburger chain and aspirin named after a menthol salve. Each of these products flopped.

And just as human reactions can be unpredictable, human behavior changes when people know someone is watching. If you don’t believe me, consider any personal habit you indulge in private that you wouldn’t in public. (If you won’t own up to one, consider the habits of someone you don’t like.)

As a research tool, direct response mail eliminates both problems. Respondents don’t try to predict their behavior; they simply act. And since results are privately tallied from afar, no one is influenced by the idea that someone is “watching.”

You needn’t limit direct mail testing to the mail order business, particularly in stressful economic times when you need to get the most from your marketing investment. You can use direct mail to address larger strategic questions. Here are three examples:

• Defining a point-of-purchase strategy. For years, a popular monthly digest that depended on point-of-purchase sales featured only a table of contents on its cover, with a few titles in large type at the top. Featuring the right titles was crucial to point-of-purchase sales. How did the publication know which titles to showcase? Here’s the secret. By mail, it offered to send respondents any three articles from an offering of 20, free. Then it would feature the three most-requested articles on the next cover.

• Gauging brand strength. One of my agency’s clients, a national brand in its own right, had been acquired by a larger national brand. A debate soon emerged: Should the smaller brand retain its identity or take on the identity of the parent company? We divided a representative sample of the market into three groups. Over a few months, we sent each group a series of direct mail offers. One group’s mail featured the larger company’s brand, another group’s featured the smaller company’s brand, and, as a control, the final group’s featured a local company’s brand. Otherwise, the direct mail for all groups was identical. When we counted resultant sales, we found that changing the offer impacted response a good deal, but that changing the brand made no difference. At this point, both sides of the debate had to face the unhappy — but important — possibility that their brand wasn’t as powerful as they’d supposed. (Note: This was not a test of brand power in general. But if you dare, a test like this can provide a valuable reality check.)

• Finding the most compelling claim. One late, great marketing expert related the story of how he was working on a newspaper campaign to promote a food product. He had narrowed his choices to two overall claims: One had to do with providing good nutrition for the family; the other with receiving praise for serving a tasty meal. In focus groups, moms (the target in those days) overwhelming endorsed the nutrition theme. Ever wary, the marketer ran a direct mail test. The theme focusing on praise produced far more orders. The marketing dumped the nutrition idea and successfully rolled out the campaign based on winning praise.

Try it yourself. Even if — heaven forbid — direct mail doesn’t figure into your regular media plan, perhaps you should make room for it in your research plan.

In many cases, you can use direct mail far more effectively, and for less cost, than other research methods to test a proposed, nondirect-response campaign. Divide a representative mailing list of your market into groups. Mail each group a different approach. Include a postpaid Business Reply Card and offer an incentive to those who mail it back. Use the same incentive in all the approaches, but discretely code the reply cards so that you’ll know which approach it accompanied. The approach that generates the most replies is most likely to succeed in the mass media.

It really is that simple. Therefore, expect your research firm to say it isn’t.

At cocktail parties, people who work for research firms avoid me the most.

Steve Cuno heads the RESPONSE Agency in Salt Lake City. He is the author of the book Prove It Before You Promote It: How to Take the Guesswork Out of Marketing and a popular convention speaker for the Direct Marketing Association, the American Marketing Association, the James Randi Educational Foundation and others. He can be reached at Steve@ResponseAgency.com.

By Steve Cuno

Quick! Name a car introduced in 1958 that was a commercial failure.

Most people, including those born years later, can answer the question without a hint. (Like, say, it was named after the company founder’s son, and it sort of rhymes with “pretzel”).

Fifty years after its ignominious withdrawal from the market, the car still enjoys top-of-mind awareness. Amazing as that may be, I find this even more stunning: Many marketers still wrongly equate top-of-mind awareness with advertising success. They have allowed the metrics of reach to usurp the metrics of sales.

Consider how many ad agencies brag about “getting your name out there,” “getting noticed,” and the “number of people who remember your product.” If such are the standards of success, then the next advertising awards competition should honor the Pretzel Automobile campaign with a medal for “lifetime achievement.”

Originally, advertising was held to the same standard as salespeople were. Indeed, advertising was invented to stand in for, or extend the reach of, salespeople. The salesperson’s job description hasn’t changed much in 200 years, but advertising’s has. Salespeople who fail to produce sales are summarily dismissed, no matter how many positive impressions they leave behind. Yet advertising is often deemed “successful” based solely on the number of people who are exposed to it or remember it.

Where the problem started

Just how, and when, did marketers become so enamored of the metrics of reach? A clue exists in the origins of advertising agencies themselves. Early ad agencies didn’t sell creative services. They were agents who brokered pages in publications. Needing a metric for pricing, publications began counting subscribers and pass-along readers, and charged advertisers by the thousand. (Later, broadcast stations would measure audience size per time segment, and Web sites would count clicks and views.) By the time agencies added creative services to their offering, number-of-persons-reached had already become an accepted standard.

The standard persists today, and in at least some cases has outlived its usefulness, as an example from early 2009 illustrates. A well-known fast food chain, knowing that sales of its fish sandwich tend to rise during Lent, wanted to boost this year’s sales in that season even higher. Its ad agency produced a video starring a plaque-mounted singing fish that had attained a modest cult following in the 1990s. The agency uploaded the video in hopes it would go viral — and it did. The spot garnered a million hits in four weeks, drew 4,000 members to an online fan site and inspired a host of parodies. The client, agency and trade press hail the video as a success. Yet amid the hoopla, there has been no mention of the video’s effect on fish sandwich sales — which happens to have been the original objective.

It is true that a video cannot generate sales without garnering viewers. Equally true, lots of viewers may lead to lots of sales. May. But to assume as much is naive. History brims with widely recognized, well-remembered campaigns that failed to sell. To name a few: a stomach remedy campaign (think spicy meatballs), a failed new cola formula, a beer that whimsically defined what was manly, an intrusive duck, a fast food spokes-Chihuahua, a lying car salesman and a white mustache. All of these campaigns, I might add, were highly decorated at advertising awards shows.

Why low awareness doesn’t always hurt

As high awareness doesn’t ensure sales success, low awareness doesn’t preclude it. While direct response marketers know that they could reach the masses via the U.S. mail, they resist the urge. Instead, they harness the power of direct mail to ferret out people who are likely to want what’s for sale. Thus, despite a lack of ubiquity on the world stage, direct mail marketers strike gold selling steaks, books, music, computers, kitchen tools, hardware, clothing, heavy equipment, pens, stationery, shoes, intimate apparel, medical supplies, coffins, appliances, motor vehicles, sports equipment, build-it-yourself kits — in fact, just about anything you can name. Not one of these marketers can tell you how many people remember their direct mail. But they can tell you how many orders the last mailing produced.

They can also provide a host of other useful, hard data generally unavailable to those who execute pure awareness marketing. This includes predictive results, cost-per-sale, profitability per individual customer, detailed customer profiles and buying patterns, most-profitable items, best mail dates, winning incentive offers, most-compelling headline, most-persuasive copy, which colors and layouts work best, effectiveness of direct mail contents by the individual piece, strategic value, and more. None of this information is inferred or theoretical. It is grounded by sales and money in the bank.

The metrics of reach have their uses, but they can also lull the unwary into a false sense of security. Top-of-mind awareness is only a success if your goal is top-of-mind awareness. If your goal is sales, perhaps you should measure that instead.

Steve Cuno heads the RESPONSE Agency in Salt Lake City. He is the author of the book Prove It Before You Promote It: How to Take the Guesswork Out of Marketing and a popular convention speaker for the Direct Marketing Association, the American Marketing Association, the James Randi Educational Foundation and others. He can be reached at Steve@ResponseAgency.com.