June 10th, 2010
Picture it: an administrative assistant, who is responsible for sorting the postal mail, brings the daily delivery to her desk for opening and distribution. As she shuffles through the pile of promotional mailings, invoices, payments, and correspondence from customers (she can recognize most types of mail by the envelopes that they’re in), she comes upon something peculiar.
It’s not flat; there’s no way that it could have traveled seamlessly through a postage meter. It contains more than paper. It’s got depth! She tries to determine what’s inside by squeezing the envelope in the area of the biggest bulge. With that, she hears the unmistakable sound of a duck, “Quack!” What in the world?…
Of course, the office employee opens the lumpy envelope first. In it, she finds a cute-as-a-button rubber duck that quacks every time she squeezes him. The letter that accompanies the duck is from an insurance company that is conducting a promotion for new customers. The little quacking duck is a perfect likeness of the insurance company’s mascot.
The woman gives the duck a prominent place on her desk. He makes her smile. She makes him quack when coworkers walk past, making them smile. When she knocks him over with a paperweight or telephone receiver, she sees the name and phone number of the insurance company on his bottom. And most importantly (for the insurance company), she remembers their business name every time she glances at the duck, prompting her to not only recommend the insurance company to her boss, but to her company’s own clients.
The power of lumpy mail is two-fold:
• First, lumpy mail begs to be opened. Can you imagine yourself throwing away a piece of lumpy mail? Surely, you’d be wondering what was in there, and might even resort to fishing it back out of the trash to satisfy your curiosity.
• Secondly, the item in the envelope that’s responsible for its lumpiness will stay with your target for as long as they choose, effectively giving your company’s name a front seat in that target’s mind.
Many times, business owners focus on the letter that’s enclosed in their direct mail envelopes; when, in fact, their focus would be better placed on actually getting that envelope opened. And it doesn’t matter who opens it…even if a gatekeeper at a large corporation is intrigued enough to set to it with a letter opener, your correspondence has a greater chance of completing its voyage to the decision maker’s desk.
Emails cost nothing to send. But with direct mail, you’re paying for paper, envelopes, ink, and postage. Unless people are opening those direct mailings, your spending is in vain. Even with a conservative mailing list, you can spend hundreds, or thousands, of dollars in the blink of an eye.
Because you’re investing so much more in direct mail, high response rates are more than desirable. Direct mail experts site 1 or 2 percent response rates to direct mailings as satisfactory, even impressive. But if you want extraordinary response rates to your direct mailings, a lumpy mail endeavor could result in response rates as high as 25 percent. That means that, even if your budget is so tight that you can only afford to send out 10 pieces of lumpy mail, you can expect a response from 2 or 3 of your recipients.
So lump it up! Mix up the mail bag. Make mail interesting again. Maybe you haven’t the budget for big bulk mailing…but there’s nothing stopping an honest shot at some lucrative lumpiness.
Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com
Tweet
Posted in 
Tags:
Really excellent advice and a very nicely written article.
I started my marketing career in direct mail in the 1980s and so was well and truly entrenched in the power of lumpy mail. Recently I got a 65% response (yes truly!) to a targeted mailshot in which we included a pantone shade mug (the ones that the presenters drink out of on GMTV) the intended recipients were designers so it was a perfect match. Another low-cost campaign yielded an 8% response and a 25% uplift in sales – we included a coaster with the selling message emblazoned on it. Our recipients were great tea drinkers!
It is important even with the compelling power of lumpy mail to remember the power of three – mail out (perhaps a teaser message), then mail with the big piece and follow up by telephone. You will increase your responses sevenfold if you use the power of three and of course if you are using clean and up-to-the-minute data.
I recently had a client that brought in a 35.2% response rate from an PURL email campaign using Purlem. It was very simple and effective. I can forward you some details on the campaign if your interested.