In the previous section I wrote about the situation in which the individual recipient opens the mailshot and gave three examples - the elderly person at home, the businessperson at the desk, the teacher in the staff room.

Each has a unique situation and you must consider that.

But you must also consider something else - the personality of the person to whom you are writing.

Of course you might say this is daft - you are about to send out 5,000 letters to physiotherapists.  You've done your research and you know you have identified how and when they most commonly open the post.   But now you are being asked to think about their personalities???  Surely each has his/her own personality.

Up to a point, but only up to a point.  In fact if you talk to people in the medical profession and ask them about physiotherapists you will find that there is a view about physios and their approach to life.

The same is true if you talk to orchestral musicians.  Ask them what they think of the trombonists.

The fact is, of course, that we can only generalise, but we must generalise within the group of people we are going to write to.  You cannot address GPs without thinking about who and what GPs are - people who earn salaries that most of the population would find very acceptable indeed.   People who by and large are held in high regard by those whom they serve.  People who suffer a high level of stress and a high level of suicide.

Or we could think about people aged 50 to 60 in social class B and C1.  We might see here people who now in their lives have a fair amount of spare income - children left home, mortgage paid.  But there is an uncertainty as to what to spend it on.  Another cruise?  A week in the Seychelles?   And their interests - increasingly we observe they are physically active.  No longer the carpet slipper generation they are out and about, at the theatre, at the rugby, dancing, at the gym - yes even at the gym. So you can see that if this analysis of mine is correct it is hardly going to be a good move to write to these people nearing retirement with a text that talks about "now that you have more time on your hands..." when that is exactly the opposite of their situation.

We can try the same analysis on anyone - florists, window cleaners, owners of race horses, people who went to the last Bob Dylan tour...  The longer we spend on each analysis the better will be the result.  We might think of teachers for example and recognise a situation in which they value their professional status, but feel it is undermined by parents who charge into school and demand that "something is done about..."   They might well feel that they work hard at making their lessons both highly educational and interesting - in which case writing the phrase "putting the fun back into education" is going to be an absolute killer - exactly the phrase the teacher does not want to read.

So, in short, know the personality profile of the group you are writing to.  It won't fit all of them, but you have to work in general terms.

And a short comment to end with - in my estimation 99% of direct mailers don't get anywhere near doing this.

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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