The theory of direct mail makes it clear that our focus must always be on the recipient not on the product. In taking this focus we can clearly see how the average person who gets hooked by the opening headline reads direct mail - that person skips through.

So the reader reads the headline, then the first sentence.  Then maybe the start of the next paragraph, and then skips down a bit, and eventually ends up at the PS which gets read.

Good copywriters will take account of this so that their copy not only makes sense as a complete piece on its own, but also works as a set of disjointed sentences.  Also the copywriter will try and set at least one place where the reader has to jump back in.  This is best done with a very short sentence part way down the page - a sentence which is also a paragraph.

It takes some doing to write in this way, but it is certainly worth practising for a while to get it right.   What you will often end up with is a set of fairly short paragraphs - often just two sentences long, and with a PS that has a particular effect - as we'll see in a moment.

Certainly, when you have written your script you need to make sure it makes sense both ways - as a complete piece in its own right, and as a series of short sentences.  There must be logic and structure, but it must not be so tight that you have to read everything to make sense of anything.

Sometimes writers try to overcome skipping in a different way, by writing a story which of course only makes sense if you read the whole thing.  This is a great solution providing you can write 300 word stories which hold together from start to finish, and somehow allow you to advertise your product at the same time.

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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