Using direct mail and the telephone

There is an assumption that if you send out a mail shot you then follow it up with a phone call in order to get the sale. The notion is that the mail shot warms the potential customer up, and the phone call secures the sale.

This can work - particularly if the person you are writing too is an old customer, or highly committed to your cause.   But in mailings to cold lists it often does not give you a good return on investment.

The problem with the process is that it does not take into account the way in which most people read direct mail.  If we go back to the 70% theory we note that 70% of people look at direct mail, and then throw it away after five seconds.

One of the side effects of this behaviour is that the message in the direct mail that is thrown away so quickly only enters the short-term memory of the brain. The message does not then make the transition to the long term memory of the brain (at which point it is changed from being a literal repetition of the words you have written and instead becomes a meaning).

That in turn suggests that when you phone up two days later and ask if the recipient remembers the piece, he or she is likely to say no.  The assumption from this could be that the mailshot never arrived, and so the response is, "I will send you another", but in reality the original probably did arrive, but simply did not get noticed enough to drop into the long term memory.

To see this in action, without doing any preparation, try to remember the advert on page 2 or 3 of the newspaper from two days ago.  Or think of the last movie or drama you watched on TV, and then recall the adverts within it.   You might be able to do it, but most of us, most of the time, cannot.

Indeed, even when told to look out specifically for adverts in the post or on TV most of us find it hard - because we are distracted by everything else going on around us.  As pointed out elsewhere on this website, most of us now experience getting on for over 3000 advertisements and promotional notices a day (ranging from TV ads to shop fronts, from a sponsor's name on a racing car to a google link to a website).   We are now so expert at scanning them out that even when we are asked to watch out for something, we miss it.

Thus the key premise of the mail plus phone approach is based on the flawed premise that the reader will actually remember the mailshot.  It assumes we read mailshots for long enough to put them in our long term memory - and all the evidence from psychology is against this.

As I mentioned at the start, this can work however if the reader really does know you and is utterly committed to you.   But in this case "utterly committed" means just that.  In my case it would mean a letter about a Bob Dylan concert or an Arsenal football match - not much more than that.

Of course if the promotion is well-written, well-designed, and about something else I am interested in, I might well read it through - I might fall into that final 10% who do hold on to direct mail for a bit longer than the first five seconds.  So a letter from New Scientist - a magazine I read most weeks - might well be read by me, and might be set aside for me to act on later.  The phone call could then work to stimulate me into action.

But for this to work you really do have to have a mailing list of hot prospects - and goodness knows how New Scientist are going to get a list of people like me who buy the magazine on news stands most weeks, but do not subscribe and don't fill in questionnaires.

Finally there are the issues of cost and time.  It will cost you around £400 per thousand to send out a direct mail shot (assuming it is not a huge catalogue).  Telephoning these people will cost around £1200 per thousand - rising to £2000 per thousand if they generally need several calls to catch them.   So your campaign is now costing you £1600 or more per thousand people reached.   You need a 2% response rate making £80 profit per sale just to break even on the campaign - and that is often hard to achieve.

On the issue of time, you can send out as many direct mail shots at once as you wish.  But it is harder to recruit enough telephone sales people to do the follow up - which of course has to be done within a few days.  As a result campaigns tend to be reduced in size - but still don't improve on the return on investment.   At £400 per thousand, the price of a direct mail campaign, you can break even at 0.5% response rate making £80 profit a sale - which certainly looks more achievable than 2%.

Free analysis of your mailshot

This article is written by Tony Attwood, Chairman of Hamilton House Mailings Ltd.  If you would like to discuss the writing or design of your mailing campaign, or indeed a single mailshot, with Tony, without cost or obligation, just call 01536 399 000, or email Creative@hamilton-house.com   You can also send Tony a copy of your latest advert and he will call you back with his thoughts on how your response rate could be raised - again without cost or obligation.