Try short catalogue headlines

If you want to summarise the contents of most catalogues the answer goes something like this:

• a short announcement
• a list of features 
• a price 
• a statement 
• an exclamation mark.  

Quite why this approach is ever expected to sell is utterly beyond me – and I am constantly amazed that it does work at all. The one thing that saves it is that it is the approach almost everyone adopts, and so catalogue readers are beaten into submission. What it certainly does not do is take any notice of the three fundamental factors which demand that you treat people as individuals.

Of course, each individual person can't have his or her own personally designed catalogue, but that is not to say that most catalogues adopt the same style and format whatever they are selling adn whoever they are selling it ot.

As an alternative, try this

• A short headline on each page which summarises the benefits of the products on this page.  
• A paragraph on the benefits in slightly more detail
• The abolition of exclamation marks and ludicrous statements like “highly recommended” and “special offer” or even worse, “NEW!”

Even if you don’t accept a word of this; even if you have been writing and designing catalogues for years; even if you have conducted hundreds of tests and are getting so thoroughly fed up with me  you are now ready to leave this website / newsgroup for good, tell me this.  In what way is the use of the word “new” followed by an exclamation mark, supposed to increase sales to all purchasers? This is a post-modern world.  

The whole point about the world in which we live is that retro is as interesting as new.   New is good because we haven’t seen it before.   But old is good because it reminds us of good times.    If old wasn’t good then most satellite TV channels would be off the air by now.

In short you have a choice with catalogues – you can either believe that some years ago everyone discovered exactly how they should be and it would be foolish to change them, or you can wonder just how we got into this position.

To explore this further I asked a few office administrators what they did  with a particular company’s catalogue once it arrived.

“I threw it straight in the bin,” she said.

“That’s a shame I replied – there’s some good stuff in there.”

“But I already have eight catalogues on the shelf covering virtually everything we could ever need and I never get time to go through all them comparing specs and prices.   If I can’t read those eight, what is the point of adding a ninth?”

My answer – start from the cover, think of your reader, and make it utterly different.

Huge numbers of catalogues are sent out without a covering letter each day.   Some have a letter from the chairman on page 2.   Others do send out a separate letter which says something like, “I am delighted to enclose our summer catalogue” and is full of points such as “on page 94 you will find our exclusive range of…”

Of course if your recipients are all sitting there, desperately waiting to see what is in the latest catalogue you don’t have a problem.  But that situation is unusual.  (If you really think this is true for you, and you haven’t done any research of late to prove it, get that research going now.  If 80% of your readership grab the catalogue and pore through it at once, that’s fine.   If only 10% do this, you need to think about ways of getting people to read. )

Obviously the letter inside the catalogue is pointless if people are throwing it away before they even get there.   And the problem with the list of what’s inside (and on page 94…) is that it takes us back to announcement advertising, which we know by and large doesn’t work.

No, all you can do is write a letter that grabs the reader in the headline, ensures that there is no break away due to any attentional blink, is so interesting that there can be no emotional rejection and which just makes the reader desperate to read what’s inside.  (There is more on attentional blink in the Factors section on Grabby Image.

If you can keep the same tone going within the catalogue itself, then so much the better.

Response

When I first came up with the view that a covering letter could improve response rates to catalogues I received a number of comments which denied this as an option.   Mike McKenna, for example, wrote to say,

I think these are very fair comments and Mike's point about the front and back design is particularly true.  But I would add that from the outside, as a person who is a copywriter and theoretician, not a catalogue publisher, of the very few catalogue letters that I have seen, none are vibrant, positive, exciting or enthusiastic - and none seem to get inside the soul and heart of the specific readers to whom they are aimed.   

Of course, I could be quite wrong on this, and maybe the theory breaks down at this point - but I do think that there is still some experimentation to be done here with really exciting and interesting letters which are directly focussed on the world of the individual to whom they are directed.  

I know for a fact that a well written, dramatic, exciting and enticing letter can make a huge difference when sent with a brochure with increases in sales well over 10 fold on occasion - so what is the reason that it does not work with the catalogue?.  

Is the rest of the world (which continues to produce catalogues in the same way) wrong, with only me being right?   It seems unlikely, but then one or two of the sales letters I have written have gained the reaction "I've never seen anything like this" from the customer, and then made massive differences to his response rates.

At this stage I am not prepared to concede that the theory collapses here.  The theory says that if you direct yourself to the thoughts and insights of your readers, if you really grab their attention and make them focus on you, your sales will go up.    The grabby image theory says, don't allow distractions to get in the way, and the colour theory suggests that throwing colour at everything is not always the best way forward.  All of which suggests that a letter crafted towards the readers' interests will generate extra sales.

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.