Many organisations create mailshots (or
have them created by agencies on their behalf) which take no account of the
promotions being sent out by their rivals.
Quite often I find myself asking people who
are contemplating doing a direct mailshot, “why should I buy from you, rather
than from someone else?” And although
there may well be an answer somewhere in the organisation, it is certainly not
clear from the items being mailed out.
The point I often have to make is that the
old notion of having a unique selling point is fine – as long as you really do
have a unique selling point. But most of
us don’t have unique selling points – we are offering products or services that
other people offer. Of course we like to
think that we do it better, that we offer a more friendly service, that we
really do look after our customers well, that our prices really are the best
around…. But the reality is that none of
these factors is easy to put across on a page of direct mail. You might claim to be the best – but how on
earth are you going to convince your readers?
One of the easiest ways to overcome this
problem is to consider the way in which your competitors do their direct mail,
and then do something different.
For example, it is easy to see that almost
everyone who sells into schools persists in selling features rather than
benefits. The moment you move across to
focussing on benefits in your literature you separate yourself from other firms
in your field.
To give another example, huge numbers of
firms send catalogues into schools either with no covering letter at all, or a
covering letter that says little more than “here is my catalogue, and you will
find some new and exciting things on page 92”.
Ask school managers and heads of department what they do with such items
and you will find a depressingly large number either throw them away
immediately, or put them on shelves and never look at them again.
But it doesn’t have to be like this. A covering letter that says something that
none of your rivals ever says will grab attention, and even if the covering
letter doesn’t have too much to do with your product or service, it will
encourage the recipient to see your catalogue as being different from all the
others. What’s even more exciting is
that it will work even if you are already picking up a decent response rate
from your catalogue mailing.
Tony Attwood
Direct line: 01536 399 013. Email Tony@hamilton-house.com