The XZ Theory of Direct Mail seeks to explain how companies can happily spend millions of pounds a year on direct mail that either doesn't work at all, or works very badly.  How can it be that they are not all clambering for a theory of direct mail?

On the surface it would seem that there should not be much bad direct mail sent out at all.   After all direct mail is the most responsive of all advertising.  You post 100 letters and you get some sales.  If you get fewer than you need there is something wrong, and you need to go back change the copy or the mailing list or the time of year and try again.  It’s dead simple.

And yet many people don’t seem to do this at all.  They produce rubbish, and then produce more.   If it doesn’t work they blame direct mail, rather than the copy.  It is as if they have taken Einstein’s view ("doing something that fails and then doing it again and again is a sure sign of madness"), as being a blueprint for how to behave rather than a way of spotting people who need psychiatric help.

Our hypothesis is that most direct mail advertisers can be placed on what we call the XZ Axis of Direct Mail.  Someone at the X end of the axis is totally concerned with their response rate against cost.  They would do anything, make any change, undertake any experiment, if it could lead to higher response rates without higher costs.  This is the commercial end of the spectrum with no holds barred.  At the extreme end the advertiser cares nothing for the Advertising Standards Authority, Trading Standards, morality, decency or anything else.

Of course few people exist at the very extreme X end.  But there are quite a few who tend towards the X end while still retaining a slightly more balanced approach to life.  Such people…

• Differentiate themselves from their work – thus a criticism of their advertising is not taken as a criticism of themselves or their product – and so discussions about their adverts tend to be open and frank even when critical.
• Are not only open to change but make time for change and recognize the need to change.  
• Hold a belief that others can offer insights and that outsiders are indeed willing to be helpful without necessarily having some dastardly underhand motive.  (That is to say, they don’t say things like, “If this idea was any good he/she wouldn’t be telling me about it.”)

At the Z end of the continuum there are people for whom the key issue is not primarily the response rate at all, but it is instead their own integrity, their own self-esteem.   They identify closely with the product and feel criticism of the product and its adverts as being criticisms of themselves – criticisms they find hard to take.  If it is a choice between sales and their reputation they will defend their reputation every time.  These people…

• Identify their work with themselves, such that a criticism of their advertising or their product is taken as a personal attack, and has to be rebutted rather than accepted.
• Are distrustful of change.  Of course all of us accept change at some level but Z people often find ways of deflecting change by appearing to accept it but then not engaging in it.  Sometimes they reject the need for this change in particular (while saying, “of course no one welcomes change more than I do”), or express doubts about whether this change has been thought through well enough.    
• Hold a belief that others have no right or ability to offer insights and that anyone offering critical insight has some sort of ulterior motive.
• Distrust almost everyone.   Thus they will reject the option of asking another to review their advertising on the grounds that “as soon as he sees it he will steal the idea and do it himself.”

Between the X and Z extremes there lies a continuum which represents people’s views of the process of marketing and of the people involved in that business.  Those in the middle are, as you will have guessed, at the Y position – they balance their views of themselves and their need for higher sales, their willingness to take a risk with their desire to stick with the known, and so on.   

In short, at one end of the spectrum are people for whom business and the psyche are separated, such that one can say, “your advert is awful” and the individual will reply, “please tell me how and why – I would love to put it to rights and make more money”.    While at the other end of the spectrum are people who will never willingly submit an advert for review, and if they find someone doing a critique they will issue statements such as “what gives you the right to say that?” and “what you are saying is slanderous.”

People with a high sense of commerce and a high level of self-esteem tend towards the X end of the axis, but they will often move along the axis when faced with moral, political or religious issues that they feel to be relevant.  The response, “That form of advertising might make us more money, but I just feel very uncomfortable with this approach,” reveals a person moving along from the X end (the commercial/co-operative view) towards the Y position, half way along.  Indeed as I have suggested there is a good argument to say that we should be cautious of X people – for they would appear to have no access to any over-arching reference system – no moral, religious or political beliefs that might temper the excesses of their advertising.  For what it is worth I feel that somewhere between X and Y there is a position which brings in high response rates without entering into a rather repulsive amoral world of the X extreme, nor the no-risk, no change, trust no-one approach that you tend to bump into towards the Z extreme. 

The effect of the X Y Z continuum

The hypothesis is that advertisers who have failed to grasp the findings of teams such as those at Bangor University and University College London tend to bunch towards the Z end of the spectrum.  These people are often producing advertising that doesn’t work very well, and they drift into Advertiser Denial.   Since they identify directly with their own advertising and with their own products, they take criticism personally and are resistant to significant levels of change – which reinforces the need for the denial.   They could change and adopt different approaches, but their personalities lead them elsewhere.  

This fact has two interesting effects.  One is that as competitors to you they are doing you a great favour, for quite obviously they are doing themselves down all the time.  If you are in competition with someone who exists towards the Z end of the axis, and you are lurking around the XY midpoint, you can rest assured that your rival will go on putting out poor adverts, while you can change and change again until you find exactly the right sort of advertising to overcome your competitor.

The second is that because Z type advertisers are flooding the advertising channels with endless amounts of junk, they are making recipients less and less likely to read your advertising – because they become less likely to read all advertising.  It’s not your fault – it’s their fault – but you have to live with the consequences – which is why the work cited at the start of this review is so important.  You need to find a way to overcome the Advertising Overload.

The advantage of being an XY Type

Midpoint XY-Type companies, like XY people have a number of characteristics that most of us find rather alluring.  They tend to be warm, open, giving, kind, supportive, helpful, personable, friendly, outward-looking, lively, fun, and understanding.  By and large most of us like such people – what we don’t like are people and companies who show the opposite characteristics. 

Which leads to a couple of obvious conclusions – in your advertising you have to show people that yours is a midpoint XY type company and you are a midpoint XY person.  Above everything else you have to differentiate yourself from the Z Type opposition and make it utterly clear that you are not like them.

This also means that if you ever feel that your company has the wrong sort of image among its potential customers, the easiest way to deal with this is to slide yourself along the XYZ continuum until you occupy a place closer to the XY midpoint.

Raising your response rates as a midpoint XY company

Midpoint XY companies do four things to raise their response rates.

1. They set up systems that constantly review their own advertising, both internally and externally, taking note of current research into how people view advertising.
2. They study what their competitors are doing and ensure that their advertising instantly stands out from their rivals.
3. They accept that most direct advertising is awful, and that their advertising has to be seen through the haze and fog of rubbish that their rivals are putting out – as predicted by the Overload Theory.
4. They work out where they currently stand on the XYZ continuum and draw up plans for ways of moving themselves across to the XY midpoint.  Just to make sure this is clear – Y is the midpoint between the X (amoral, lets make a profit no matter what) and Z (my advertising is wonderful and no one is going to tell me it’s not) extremes.  Our view is that the ideal position is half way between this Y point and the X extreme.

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The full set of pages covering The Theory of Direct Mail are shown below.  If you want to move to the next page, just click here

Below is a list of the factors that make up The Total Theory of Direct Mail:

1. Why most firms ignore the theory and produce direct mail that fails.
2. When and where the mailing is received - what the recipient is doing at the moment of impact.
3. The personality of the individual you are mailing, and how that affects the mailing.
4. The envelope - it is the first thing you see - does it make any difference?
5. The interaction between the brain and the paper - there are issues of neurophysiology at work which must be taken into effect.
6. The mail is opened - the next five seconds are vital; so what does mailsort do at this point? 
7. Differentiation - now the customer decides, "Have I seen this sort of stuff before?"
8. The customer decides to read - but then colour can get in the way.
9. Using images to try and hold attention - the grabby image problem.
10. Skipping - no matter what you try, most recipients do it.
11. The end - as likely to effect the result as the start
12. The second page - its function and layout.
13. Subsequent page interference - so unexpected most people refuse to admit it exists - but it really does happen.
14. What do you want the reader to do next?  
15. Ordering - are you making it easy?

This article is an extract from the book "Doubling Response Rates: The Theory and Practice of Direct Mail" (c) Tony Attwood 2006