3. Keeping attention even if the recipient only reads bits and pieces
6. Knowing what response you want.
Most direct mail fails at the start. You have to say something that really does grab attention. It could be offering something free, or it might be asking a really interesting question, or offering a big benefit.
It could even be funny - although these are hard to make work - or it could be emotional. The headline
"Do you believe in love at first sight"
grabs attention far more than "Our lowest prices ever!"
Once you have got attention you have to hold it - readers will drift away within a second or two if you don't say something really exciting at this point.
Let's imagine you used "Do you believe in love at first sight" as a way of selling a car. If you then said
"That's how it seems when customers walk into our showroom and see the new VX9 for the first time."
then the impact of the opening is lost. This is dull and unexciting.
But if you said instead,
"Of all the questions that divide the world - this one probably gives more insight into what sort of person you are, than any other. Which one are you - and what does it mean for the rest of your life?"
then you would keep the readership - because you are writing about the reader, not writing about yourself and your product.
3. Keeping attention even if the recipient only reads bits and pieces
This is often the mark of the professional. Most people, on getting direct mail, only read bits and pieces. They look at the sales letter and then slip onto something else.
Maybe they read the headline, and the first line, and then start skipping. You have to deal with this.
The professional will include one or two items part way down the page that will get the reader back again. Some suggest sub-headlines, but we've never found this works - and rather suspect it is one of those old tales that someone once saw in a £3 Exchange and Mart book on how to write direct mail, and everyone has been repeating ever since.
Instead, what we like to do is add the one line paragraph and a PS that really throws the reader back into the piece. Loads of readers skip to the PS - and the temptation is to add a "Give me a call on" as the PS - which is uninspiring. Try to make the PS something that forces the reader back in.
Our best attempt ever at a PS that just made everyone talk about the letter because of the PS alone - phoning us up, writing emails... :
PS: No horseman will call.
Probably the most productive four words (in terms of forcing people to pick up the phone and eventually get to a sale) that we have ever written.
There is a temptation in all advertising to try to grab the reader's attention with a really exciting image (it can be text or it can be a photo, a design... anything).
That is fine - as long as you avoid one huge problem.
If the image has nothing much to do with the product you are selling then it is quite possible that the person seeing the advert will drift away from the advert, without ever actually seeing what you are advertising. The grabby image is remembered, the product is forgotten.
Now you can overcome this in various ways. The most popular ways are to:
In the first example you might decide that you want to associate the clock you make with elegance. So you always have a character "Lady Fortescue Smythe" associated with your advertisements - she "writes" the sales letters, appears in the cinema commercials and so on, always saying how important to her accuracy and elegance are. The danger of the character being remembered ahead of the product, or people just seeing the character and then not even making the link to the product, are overcome by endless repeats.
In the second example you might decide you want to associate your car with the image of the James Bond type mythical spy. So you send out a letter which suggests that you are part of MI6, recruiting spies for the future, and that you will be using your car (insert make and model), and when the reader sees you, he/she should follow. When recruitment and training is complete the reader will of course also get one of these cars.
Here, since we all know spies use smooth cars, everyone sees the link - doubled because the individual being written to is brought into the story.
It is extraordinary just how many designers ignore the psychology of perception - treating the page as if the brain does not have its own way of dealing.
Volumes can be written on this - but here is one hint. Give 99% of the population who read English (ie left to right text) a sheet of A4 with text on it, and they will look for something about 25% of the way down the page to read. So put your headline there. Why designers put headlines anywhere else is a mystery.
And always be quite clear where you want the reader to go. Where do you want me to start looking? Now - will my eye automatically go there, or am I being pulled somewhere else?
90% of leaflets designed as DL (ie a sheet of A4 folded in 3) ignore this so that one is never clear which order the pages go in.).
There is quite a bit more on the psychology of perception on our email website but if you don't want to read all the theory ask your designer what he/she knows about it. If the answer is not a lot, take care.
6. Knowing what response you want.
Before you start, ask yourself - what do I want to get out of this?
If the answer is any of these, ask yourself which one you would like most of all. Then make sure everything you do in your advert pushes the reader towards that. If alternative responses are ok, that is fine - you can mention them at the end with the order form.