And having dealt with ordering you might have thought that was that.  But not quite so.  Because we now have to look and see if you actually did your mailing to the right people.  This isn't exactly part of the theory so I have not included it in the section that appears at the bottom of each page, but it is still of some interest if you are following this through.

I'll give two examples.

First you decide to mail all businesses that are in the motor repair trade.  You get a 1% response rate which is not really what you hoped for.   What you consider is re-writing part of the copy, changing the leaflets, altering the price, changing the offer, and so on.  There are a thousand changes you could make.  But there is another possibility.

You mailed every firm in the motor repair business.  But supposing you then analyse your response, and find that 50% of the firms you mailed had 3 staff or less, but none of the replies you had were from that group.  In other words you could have mailed half your mailing list - those with over 3 staff - and got the same number of replies.  Instantly you are up to 2%, which is much more to your liking.

Second, you mail primary schools.  You mail all 25,000 and again get a rather sad 1%.   This time we might look at the number of pupils in the school.   We find 10,000 schools have under 100 pupils, and only 5 of your orders came from that group.  Cut them out from your next mailing, and suddenly life is much more exciting.

Of course these are simple examples.  Things do happen like this, although quite often the analyses we end up with are more complex involving several factors at once.  But even so, when working with the theory to raise your response rate you should also consider the fact that some of the people you are mailing might be people who simply don't want to know, no matter what you do.  In other words, if you have a product no one wants, it is very hard to sell it.

That now is the theory - it is time to turn to the application of the theory.  Please click here to start looking at each aspect of direct mail and the way in which the theory will allow you to enhance your response rates by applying the theory to the feature.

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The full set of pages covering The Theory of Direct Mail are shown below.  To get back to the home page of this website just click here

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

1. 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 next 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