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The Theory of Direct Mail:
4. The envelope - it is the first thing you see - does it make any difference?
So you know the situation the recipient is in, and you know the personality profile the recipient is likely to have. So now you send them something. The first thing they see is the envelope, so it is worth contemplating what you ought to be doing about the envelope. Here are some interesting questions:
I'll try to answer all of them from within the framework of the general theory.
Our theory is all about the way in which the recipient sees and reacts to the mail. So the answer is simple - if the recipient is likely to be turned on by seeing your name, put it on; if not leave it off. If I see American Express on the envelope I throw it away, because I don't want one thank you. If I see Arsenal Football Club, I do read it because that is my team of choice, and I am a member. So you think - what does my name say? If you are writing to people who have never ever bought from you before, despite the fact that you have written to them 20 times, I would suggest it might be a good idea to remove the name. For your regular customers, put it on.
Most of us don't know the address of people that we don't deal with - so it is unlikely that your non-buyers are going to recognise you from address alone. On the other hand the benefit of putting your address on the envelope is that the delivery company will return any gone-aways to you, so you can clean up your mailing list.
We are still talking about first impacts here. There are a dozen firms that sell office furniture and equipment, who mail me. They all use polythene, and I can see through the polythene what they are selling. Since I don't buy any of this stuff, it all goes in the bin without being opened. Now the argument could be that whether they used paper or polythene I would throw it all in the bin, because I don't handle this area of purchase. But supposing you could write something that would entice me in - something that would make me read the catalogue despite myself. In that case the debate opens up again.- I think I have no interest in office equipment, but now that they point out to me that this new office executive chair is so comfortable and impressive, well, maybe I will have a look. Remember, we are still on opening perceptions. If you have got the front of your catalogue to look so good that everyone has to read it, then why not use polythene? It is cheaper, after all, and just as recyclable as paper. You can play all sorts of tricks here. For example, you might not want to mess around with your catalogue, but you could put on the top of it a covering letter with a terrific headline, which can be seen through the polythene. An approach like this can mean that people who are regular buyers get one letter, those who never buy get another, those who are very occasional buyers get another... each tempts the reader in, in a different way. But this doesn't mean paper has no use. Paper is great for adding extra rigidity to packs with not much in them - for example a single sheet of A4 is best sent in a C5 paper envelope and folded in half. Of course it is true that some of your recipients might well be prejudiced against paper or polythene - which is why experiments are always worth while - but generally speaking, the answer is use polythene if you can but make sure what is seen through the polythene is highly exciting and enticing. For lightweight items use paper.
You might want to do your own research on this, but for what it is worth, here's the result of my research. Starting, as the theory demands, with the issue of how the reader perceives the mailing, all the evidence I see is that 70% of items of direct mail that are sent are opened. Those that aren't are not opened because of one of these reasons
So most of the mail gets through without having nice designs or special features on the pack. Which raises the question, how many more people are you going to get to read your material by having a nicer envelope? Of the four groups above (a to d) only two of the groups (b and d) might be influenced by the envelope. So yes you might get a few more people to open - but only a few. And when compared with the extra cost of a colourful envelope this might not be worth it. There is another problem as well - and that is the grabby image. I deal with this later in the theory, but for now, in brief it works like this. You want to tell the recipient about X. But you think X is a bit boring - or might be perceived as that. So you use A to grab attention. A might be a picture, a fancy envelope, a spring loaded box that pops up at you, a really funny headline.... anything. The problem with grabby images is that unless they are in some way related to what you are selling, they can actually reduce your sale rate. The how and why and wherefore of this are in later sections - but do beware of grabby images - they are not all they might be. So my answer is obviously swinging towards "no - don't put something special on your envelope". But I have to say that each time I say this in a message on one of the mailing groups or at a conference or a seminar, there are always one or two people who say to me, "I have done it, and I doubled my response rate." What this can only mean is that in some circumstances doing something special with the envelope really does work in the sense of drawing together the envelope and what is inside. So a staggeringly beautiful picture of polar bears and icecaps on the envelope could work if inside you had something about global warming. But if you were selling chocolate, perhaps not.
The overwhelming view in the direct mail industry is that a mailing list addressed to businesses will be much more effective if it is addressed to the appropriate individual by name - as opposed to addressing recipients by their titles such as The Finance Director, the Personnel Manager etc. Unfortunately this is a theory that is always repeated but rarely tested - and when it is the results are not as expected, although such findings are fully in keeping with the general theory. Here's the reason why. Let's imagine that you want to write to the Personnel Director or Manager in companies in a certain industry. We'll say, for the sake of argument, there are 10,000 firms that meet your selection criteria, and you expect all of them to have Personnel Directors or Managers. The problem is that no mailing list will have all 10,000 Personnel Directors by name. In some companies there will be a policy of not filling in name forms, giving names on the phone, etc, etc. Some lists try a different approach, having people who are recipients of magazines, while others might list members of an association. But not only will these lists of themselves be incomplete, they will also need to exclude all those people who have ticked the box saying, "no mailing from other companies". And that number is growing all the time. It is hard to be exact, but it is probably not far out to suggest that on average only about 20% of eligible people are included in each named business list. Not the same 20% of course - some finance directors might be named through subscribing to a magazine, another group through having answered to telephone research. But even so the percentage rate doesn't go up much. The negative effect of belief Now we have to add in the fact that 90% of people who mail companies of this nature believe that mailing named people is so much better than mailing generic titles that this is all they do. Everyone - well almost everyone - mails named people. So what we have is a situation in which 80% of the people who could be mailed are never mailed. These people, in other words, get precious little direct mail - which means they are ideal people to mail. Their desks are much clearer than those of the people whose names appear on lists. But the only way to reach these people who get little mail is by mailing generic titles. In an equal world... Now it is probably true that if all things were equal - if the people addressed by name and those addressed by title received an equal amount of mail - the named people's list might give a better response rate. If the names were spelled correctly they might well feel better about the names, and so pay more attention to the mailing. But life is not like this. Named lists are inaccurate. My own research (which is limited to the named mail received by half a dozen people) shows that over 50% of names are wrong - either because the person has left, or because people have changed roles or because the name has simply been entered wrongly in the computer. My name for example (Tony Attwood) is wrongly printed on hundreds of lists. Some lists pick me up from the public list of company directors (where I am Anthony Attwood - but no one ever calls me that). Some get me down as Atwood (just a mistype) some have me listed as Altwood (misheard on the phone), and one even has me listed as Asherwood. But does this matter? If you are sent a mailshot which carries your name wrongly spelled then you might not notice too much or even worry about it, but there is evidence that if that mistake is repeated on the letter via the mailmerge facility then you do notice - and response rates go down. In other words Dear Mr Asherwood really doesn't make me want to read the letter or buy the product. So, odd though it may seem, there are good reasons to mail generic titles rather than names. The exception - your customers Mailing your own customers is the exception - as long as you have an accurate database team then you should mail your customers by name - not least because you already have a relationship with them, and it is foolish to ignore this. But do you have an accurate database entry team? Everyone I ever speak to on this topic always says "our people are very good", and I say, "how do you know?" and the answer is "I get no complaints". This is a false answer, because by and large most of us don't complain about having our names spelled wrongly - it just puts us off that's all. The company that sold me the extractor hood that goes over my cooker write to me each year as "Mrs Attwood", There is no Mrs Attwood (in my family) and I find that quite offensive - but I haven't told them. I just don't buy from them. Then there's the price Named business lists are almost always more expensive than non-named lists, and often come with minimum orders - which means that even if generic title lists actually performed the same as B2B named lists they would still be more interesting since the lists are a) larger b) cheaper and c) more open to testing (because there is normally no minimum order). Overall, the great thing is that the database industry has invested so much money in researching and keeping business names that they will never give up promoting names, and so people will continue to use names, which will mean that the opportunity to pick up all those extra sales will be out there, for those who want to try.
As always we start with what the recipient sees and does. Does the recipient respond differently when you use a window envelope from when you stick on a label - or indeed when you laser the address on to the envelope? In my research, no. I can't find any difference in the response rates - and remember we are talking here only about the envelope - not about the inside (which is dealt with under mailmerge issues). Within the context of the theory this is not surprising. Why should what you stick on the front make any odds? It is not as if the person you are writing to will be fooled into thinking this is not direct mail but is a personal letter. It is not the case that as soon as people see direct mail they throw it in the bin for fear that it might give them yellow fever. The vast majority of people open the vast majority of business direct mail envelopes - so really there is no point in doing anything other than finding the lowest cost method and sticking to it. Of course if you do a trial and find that in your case the situation is different, then fine - you must follow that lead. But it would be interesting to find out why it is different. What possible mechanism is there for people to be more inclined to open direct mail that comes in window envelopes than items with labels stuck on. The theory makes a clear prediction - there will be no difference, and all my research supports that.
This idea causes a problem, because the theory doesn't really give much insight into the answer. Postcards are cheaper, they can be seen at once, no one has to open anything... so in that case the response rate should be higher. But the space is limited - you have the name and address on one side and the message on the other - it is all a bit squashed. Much depends on the message you are putting across - and this is where postcards fall down, because most postcard mailers don't have an immediate response mechanism. They are reminders or teasers, so who knows how much impact they have. If you really want to know if postcards work try doing one that actually does demand a response from the recipient. I have done it a few times and failed. The reason would appear to be that the card is easy to see and easy to throw away - so it gets thrown away at once - there is no time for me to develop my message. If I were required to do it all again, I guess I would put a really exquisite image on one side - an image related to what I was selling, and an image so nice that people would want to keep the card and frame it, or at leave put it up on the notice board. The other side would be for the address and my message - but I would really want the essence of the sale to be in that wonderful picture.
The idea is that people think that something with a stamp on it is more likely to be personal mail and so they are more likely to open it. Certainly research backs this up with mail sent to a person at home - but it is still the fact that we are dealing with tiny numbers here - most people open their direct mail anyway, so you are only going to get a few percent more opening the letters. But there are two huge disadvantages - one annoyance and the other cost. If you trick people they get annoyed. So, for example, if you succeed in getting people to open your mail in the belief that they are getting a personal letter, and then they find a mailshot, you will have done nothing other than got them to open up. The same is true when you put "private and confidential" on such a letter. And it costs more to put stamps on. A standard letter costs 2p more with a stamp on it than with a postage paid impression, and that is before there is any discount for volume. I have never seen a campaign with stamps get anything like this extra response rate back to pay for the stamps. ************************************************************* 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:
This article is an extract from the book "Doubling Response Rates: The Theory and Practice of Direct Mail" (c) Tony Attwood 2006
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