Why I Stopped Throwing Out Junk Mail

http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/why-i-stopped-throwing-out-junk-mail/

by byrneseyeview • 17 years ago

109 48 17 years ago

byrnehobart.com

tptacek• 17 years ago

Nicely done. What is it about magazine renewals that seem so effective to you?

endlessvoid94• 17 years ago

They work well.

ryanelkins• 17 years ago

This is a good approach. I do wonder how much of it translates over (from junk mail to a website or email) but that's something that can be tested. At the very least it provides a good starting foundation to work off of for those unsure of their copywriting abilities.

mahmud• 17 years ago

The entire premise is that junk mail is compelling and should be emulated. I wholeheartedly agree, but only if you're producing something junk-mail flavored. Membership drive for an online game is not the same thing as a call for papers for an academic conference, and one of them benefits from emulating junk-mail copy.

FWIW, I found the article refreshingly unique and "outside the box".

byrneseyeview5• 17 years ago

Reading junk mail has changed the way I write other things, like blog posts, instant messages, and even personal emails. I'm more likely to use numbers, bullet points, and shorter paragraphs, and much more likely to close with a call to action.

Your call for papers probably shouldn't end with "Operators are standing by!" but it wouldn't hurt to establish urgency some other way. ("If your paper is ready, submit it now--although the deadline is in X weeks, we'll only be able to thoroughly review papers we get in the next Y weeks.")

billybob• 17 years ago

The "junk mail" approach to persuasion is only one approach, and it tends to be urgent-sounding. When I think about the businesses I like the most, one common factor is that they have a much more honest-sounding tone.

Maybe the question is not "which technique works best," but "which technique works best on my target audience."

ezy• 17 years ago

I was wondering about this. It seems to me that the 10% conversion rate for junk mail is based on selling to a credulous consumer. Hence the urgent tone. Most people (the other 90%?) toss the shit out because they know even if the copy sounds vaguely interesting, you're most likely not going to get something for nothing. Everything from the 4 (bright) color ad to the fake christmas card goes in the recycling immediately from the mailbox because you know you're going to be manipulated.

Are people more or less credulous on the web? I dunno, that has to depend on the category. In some ways, it's harder to avoid reading the copy -- but for experienced users there is a degree of resentment when you realize you've been "SEO"ed by an interesting sounding google link into a page of marketing bullshit.

byrneseyeview5• 17 years ago

Direct mail (not so "junk"-y) works for some higher-end products. I know American Express has launched some of their more expensive cards through direct mail; luxury car companies use similar tactics; and insurance companies invest a lot in direct mail, as well.

(And direct marketing companies eat their own dogfood, too. Ogilvy & Mather sent sales letters to lots of Fortune 500 executives, in order to get them to pay O&M to send similar letters to other people. It's a great way to bootstrap your own sales pitch: if your pitch is persuasive, it deserves to be.)

vinhboy• 17 years ago

I don't buy it. Can you show me some statistics to prove that this (junk mail) works? I have always thought of junk mail as a last ditch effort. You have no other means to reach your customer, so you do the "throw it against the wall and see what sticks" approach.

jack7890• 17 years ago

I think his whole point is that junk mail's mere existence means that it works.

Junk mailers pay real hard currency for every letter they send, so they've can't afford to use ineffective copy. Online, there is no cost to to sending an email, publishing a blog post, etc., so it's more difficult to determine what copy actually works.

Semiapies2• 17 years ago

"there is no cost to to sending an email"

Only if you're not paying for the servers or the copy-writers, etc.

"so it's more difficult to determine what copy actually works."

That doesn't follow. Any sort of tracking, A/B testing, etc. that you could do with junk mail, you can do with spam or more accepted email marketing - and probably more cheaply.

gnosis6• 17 years ago

Or it could be that the old adage that "there's a sucker born every minute" applies not only to the consumers of junk mail, but to its purveyors as well.

psnj• 17 years ago

> Can you show me some statistics to prove that this > (junk mail) works?

One could argue that it must be effective, as it's expensive to print and post mail, yet marketers have been doing it for decades. Its results are also generally more measurable than those of mass market advertising.

> You have no other means to reach your customer

On the contrary, (addressed) direct mail is generally sent to as targeted a market as possible. If you know your market, you're generally better off putting a lot of resources into a well-qualified set of prospects, than taking a more "shotgun" approach.

m_eiman• 17 years ago

Well, just keep saving what you get and see which companies keep sending more junk - they're the ones that work.

adammichaelc2• 17 years ago

He's referring to those super long letters that are sent out, & they do work. The trick is not just in the copy, but also in the list. A good marketer will choose 10 lists or so, each targeting a slightly different demographic. To these lists the marketer will A/B test and see what the conversion rates are. After finding the best conversion rate, the rest of the campaign will go to the list that performs the best. After years and years of iterating through hundreds of demographic segments & lists, different copy/headlines, & even minute details like whether to have a hand-written note inside, whether to have a "P.S." message, whether to use the word "Guarantee" or "No-Risk", etc. (These little details actually make a repeatable difference in conversion rates)

After all this, a particular company will know exactly the demographic that buys, exactly the headline that grabs attention, the copy that gets people to keep turning the page, the post-script message that increases conversions, etc.

This kind of marketing has been perfected, as the author says. A good direct-mail marketer will get a conversion rate of 5%-10%. There are some books you can read to get at specific numbers of different campaigns... This is one of them http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Everything-You-Can-Youve/dp/03....

gnosis6• 17 years ago

Everything you've just said are claims about the effectiveness of direct marketing. They are not proof that it works.

It would be nice to see some studies in credible peer-reviewed journals about the efficacy of direct marketing at getting consumers to buy their products.

Though, from the quantity of junk mail that I've received, I personally have no doubt as to the efficacy of direct marketers at getting businesses to hire them. But that's a different thing from being effective at getting consumers to buy whatever it is they're selling.

teej• 17 years ago

> Can you show me some statistics to prove that this (junk mail) works?

Here are statistics that show that people respond to direct mail. This data is old (2003) but it's quite comprehensive.

http://www.the-dma.org/cgi/disppressrelease?article=519

gnosis6• 17 years ago

A study put out by the Direct Marketing Association claiming direct marketing works? They're not exactly the most disinterested source.

How about something published in a respectable peer-reviewed journal?

wildwood• 17 years ago

It's widely accepted that the "two men" letter has made huge amounts of money for the Wall Street Journal. Here's some numbers, and the letter:

http://dennyhatch.com/billion/

jamiequint3• 17 years ago

Direct mail is far from "throw it against the wall and see what sticks", and of course it works. Marketeers aren't generally inclined to waste money. They generally do trial mailings and if they don't see results (measured financially vs. cost of mailing) they stop doing mailings.

Certain things are bulk mailed to an extremely large group of people, but this isn't always true. Targeting also does not have to be nonexistent. For example, you could go buy this list at ListSource (http://www.listsource.com/) for about $50:

All the people that live in the Bay Area that live in and own a 3 bedroom condo in a building that has more than 20 units that cost above $500,000 and was refinanced in the last 3 years.

You just can't get that with online targeting, and sometimes when search volume is low or CPCs are high this method becomes much more effective than online advertising.

tbgvi• 17 years ago

Agree for the most part - direct mailers were doing A/B testing before the internet existed to maximize their ROI. There's definitely some carry over between what works in print and on the internet.

That being said, its important to know why the junk mail is presented like it is, it may not always work for your users.

wmeredith• 17 years ago

Working in Search marketing for a few years has taught me something similar about writing PPC ad-copy; if you want to see masters at work search for something like "Home Refinancing" and check out the ad-copy on the sponsored results. (These guys are paying $50+ per click. You can bet they know what they're doing; that is, they must if they're going to be doing it for any amount of time.)

rms2• 17 years ago

Probably the most power of instant arbitrary financial transfer any member of the proletariat has is to search for asbestos or mesothelioma and click on every ad.

rms2• 17 years ago

Did anyone do it in response to this post? You could reply with a new name if you don't want to admit it. I'm curious how many thousands of dollars were just arbitrarily shifted around.

nearestneighbor• 17 years ago

> These guys are paying $50+ per click.

Google no longer has to be pissed at me for using their service without paying and never clicking any links.

dabent• 17 years ago

The same goes for affiliate marketers. The good ones work their copy, do A/B testing and really hone in on results.

Ask yourself this: Where would Tim (4-hour Workweek) Ferriss be without killer copy? He even tested to find the title for his book.

Confusion• 17 years ago

These guys are paying $50+ per click.

Do you have a source for that assertion? I know of loans and mortgages making $100+ per score, but not per click.

byrneseyeview5• 17 years ago

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

noodle• 17 years ago

i both agree and disagree.

i disagree with the premise that years and years and billions of dollars have been spent, so it must be the best way. times are changing, people are changing. i've been trained to throw away every piece of junk mail, and so have most of my friends. junk mail is being actively read by a shrinking demographic. just because something has worked does not mean it will continue to do so, or that the statistics are representative. it might not be a good plan to hitch your line to a sinking ship.

i agree in the sense that there are some effective design patterns with respect to effective copywriting, and that some people are forgoing them for something else, perhaps something more aesthetically pleasing when aesthetics don't necessarily get the job done.

Semiapies2• 17 years ago

"years and years and billions of dollars have been spent, so it must be the best way"

That way lies cargo cult capitalism.

byrneseyeview5• 17 years ago

In the short run, yeah. But if everyone is flinging money at junk mail, eventually the ones who are doing it wrong will be broke.

dkokelley• 17 years ago

"When I want to know how to write a transactional email, I wait for a magazine renewal letter. When I want to know what the “Pro” Account’s page should say, I wait for a membership drive letter to arrive (my home address has been cheerfully sold to a bunch of political committees, so I get a lot of these). And if I want to sell something and I can’t possibly relate to whoever would want to buy it—I keep an eye out for the envelope marked “You’re pre-approved!”"

I think the point was to re-purpose the techniques from direct-mail advertising to match the next generation of direct response marketing (like emails and sales landing pages). Use the tools from the mailers in your emails or sales pages instead. You can't really 'throw away' a sales landing page the same way you would an unsolicited credit card offer, especially since you navigated to it in the first place.

george_morgan• 17 years ago

I think it was David Ogilvy who said anyone who wanted to write advertising copy should spend a year working in direct response marketing. Same principle.

byrneseyeview5• 17 years ago

Yes. Here's a short video on the subject, from Ogilvy: "We Sell or Else." (Transcript below.)

http://www.infomarketingblog.com/direct-response-vs-general-...

cedsav• 17 years ago

While I find junk mail material sometime entertaining, I can't help to think that it's designed to sell to a certain category of people. Especially long copy. It's often for questionable products, dubious benefits or almost scams. And while I don't doubt it works for them, I'm not sure at all it would work for my target demographic.

I think a good version of 'long copy' is something like this: http://highrisehq.com where a lot of info is packed on a single page, and it's very far from "junk mail" copy.

csmeder• 17 years ago

"You can look at the results of a hundred years of careful analysis, big bets, and bad investments—and you can coast on the results."

Agreed

dpatru• 17 years ago

I just had a series of thoughts:

1. You should learn from others' mistakes because it's cheaper than learning from your own. (approximation of a famous quote)

2. You should learn from other's successes, because it's cheaper than discovering what works by yourself. (simple variation)

3. Applying mutuality principle: how can we mutually benefit from our mistakes?

4. Why not conduct A/B testing and ad word campaigns together so that lessons learned can benefit the maximum number?

5. How to do this?

a) The easiest way is just to blog about your own findings and read others' blogs. This suffers from the free-rider problem: you end up doing research for others.

b) Another alternative is to form a club where each member spends a certain amount per month on ads, and they share their results.

c) Another way is to simply do a lot of Google searches (automatically?) and see what ads are displayed. You're letting Google and the free market do your work for you. This is the e-version of collecting junk mail. You're not being a free rider in this case because your results are being used by others too.

pbhjpbhj• 17 years ago

I thought he was going to say he was turning the junk mail into paper logs to burn - free fuel.

jsackmann• 17 years ago

Maybe this is obvious, but in case it's not: For those interested in really studying direct mail tactics, there are lots of books on the subject by experienced practitioners. I read several of them a few years ago; wish I could highlight one or two as a recommendation, but I don't remember.

As noted in some of the other comments, these folks test everything, right down to the color of the envelope and the size of the signature at the bottom of the letter. It's also fascinating to read war stories. IIRC, there's a direct mail letter for Reader's Digest (or some similar publication) that was most effective for decades. They kept testing it against other contenders, but that same letter kept getting results.

moron4hire• 17 years ago

In my personal lexicon, I call this the "Waffle House Method". WH values efficiency above all else. They are all-cash stores, with an occasional ATM machine in the store. Every single element of the store has an efficiency study behind it. But the single biggest efficiency point they cover is complete failure to do any market research. Instead, they just build a store on the same block as a McDonald's. If McDonald's did the market research to say that this location was good, then it's good enough for WH too.

I use the WH Method for my choices on fashion (when I bother to care about fashion): I pick a celebrity who looks rather well put together and similar to me in build, reason that celebrities are required to spend an inordinate amount of attention on fashion in order to maintain their marketability, and then wear/style however they do. It works out rather well.

I've also used the WH Method for doing basic site design in a documentation-happy environment. "Look, every other site with a similar purpose outside your market does their site design like this. You should have those elements as well, or users will be confused."

mikasissonen• 17 years ago

I took a direct marketing copywriting course six or seven years ago that suggested the same, and I've been pinching examples from my junk mail ever since.

In fact, it looks like the course is still running - and even taught by the same instructor I had (John Friesen). If you're in the Vancouver area, I'd recommend it: http://www.sfu.ca/wp/dmc.htm

The mail he valued most was the stuff he'd get repeatedly, year after year, month after month - since presumably it performed the best. If he only saw one example of something, he figured it was a test that didn't pull well.

chris123• 17 years ago

Beside junk mail and expensive PPC ads, magazine covers and headlines can be great sources of inspiration, depending on what demographic you're targeting.

Why I Stopped Throwing Out Junk Mail

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