Amid the ongoing debate about whether direct mail or e-mail or social media is the best method to market to customers and prospects, very little is being said about the one thing that is crucial to the success of each – the message. Unless the message is relevant to the audience and persuasively presented, it doesn’t matter how it is delivered. So while the discussion about the delivery method continues, focus on developing good content and honing your writing skills.
Category Archives: Copywriting
Direct Mail Design… The Roles of Form & Function
If you are like most of our customers, you have a lot of questions about designing an effective direct mail marketing piece. Should you use a post card, a self-mailer, or an envelope? Use lots of copy or lots of white space? Announce who the mail is from or build the reader’s curiosity? With so many variables to consider, where does one begin to seek the right answers?
To help sort through the maze of interlocking decisions, remember that there are two ways to judge how well a direct mail piece has been designed. One set of standards comes from the discipline of good graphic design; the other comes from what makes mail move efficiently through the mail stream. We believe both are important, and that a good strategy is to thoroughly understand each set.
Salesmanship in Print… Communications that Sell
The term marketing communications describes messages used to communicate with a market. Marketing communications focus on the products or services of a business or organization, rather than on the company or organization itself, and are used to create demand or position a company’s product or service.
The task of generating marketing communications often is the responsibility of the business owner, sales manager, or development professional. Once written, this information can be used to create a variety of sales collateral material – flyers and brochures, direct mail marketing packages, newsletters, press releases – and can also be used on company web pages and emails.
Think of marketing communications as salesmanship in print. And just as you carefully prepare and plan for a sales call, prepare and plan for salesmanship in print.
Editing Copy Written by Others
It can be a tricky situation – editing copy written by others. Whether your task is to compile and edit the company newsletter, review the boss’s PowerPoint presentation, or prepare the company marketing material, the job of copy editor requires diplomacy and discipline. The diplomacy is necessary to avoid alienating the writer (and losing your editorship); the discipline is required to impose standards and create consistency.
To help with this delicate balancing act, it is useful to have an editor’s toolkit – measuring devices that transform your editing from subjective to objective. Here are our favorites.
How to Write an Effective Newsletter
A newsletter is a popular and effective way to keep in touch with customers, members, and employees. It helps create top of mind awareness – having your company come to mind whenever a customer needs your product or service. It provides a way to talk about the benefits of new services, products, or equipment. It allows you to showcase your expertise and become a source of useful information or valuable advice. And it definitely can help you find new customers or members.
To be truly effective, a newsletter must be:
- published regularly, whether monthly, bimonthly, or quarterly;
- well designed, eye catching, content-rich; and
- written to keep the audience’s interest.
Each of these elements – regular publication, good design, and good writing – contributes equally to the effectiveness of a newsletter.
Renew, Refresh, Rejuvenate…Redesigning Your Ads
When is it time to consider a redesign of your company’s advertising material? Some may answer, “when its effectiveness drops,” or “when the competition does,” or “when we hire a new marketing director.” We agree that these are good reasons, but we also would add that periodic redesign should be part of your regular advertising cycle. A good redesign will refresh your ads and renew them for your loyal customers and your prospects alike.
Signs That a Redesign May be Needed
Your company’s advertising material may need a redesign if any of these conditions exist:
- It has been more than five years since you first developed the advertising material.
- Your company today is much different than it was when the advertising material was developed.
- The target audience for your product or service has changed since the advertising material was developed.
Your advertising material may also show signs of aging in the selection of typeface, the layout, or the color palette.
The Importance of Grammar, Punctuation, Spelling, & Capitalization
An interesting and perhaps unanticipated result of the growth in social media for marketing is an increased need for good writing skills. Blogs, drip marketing, opt-in electronic newsletters, and other “new media” require both useful content and good writing to attract and keep readers.
The elements of good writing are simple: grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. By mastering the rules and conventions, you will make your writing easier to understand and more enjoyable to your readers.
The Elements of Direct Mail That Lead to Marketing Success
If you’ve been reading our most recent newsletters, you’ll notice a theme – that traditional direct mail, email, and social media work best together. All have their places in a marketer’s tool kit, they do not cancel the need for the others, and they may even work symbiotically as when a post card is sent offering a premium if the recipient provides an e-mail address or likes a social media site.
Some Audiences Prefer Traditional Direct Mail
While we acknowledge the growing importance of email and web-based communication to reach customers and prospects, computers and mobile wireless devices like smartphones cannot by themselves reach everyone in a business or organization’s target market. That could change as the use of mobile wireless devices spreads (which is happening rapidly), but until that time, traditional direct mail still has a valuable place as a marketing tool.
Traditional direct mail is a good choice for some audiences (such as an older demographic whose adoption of web-based communications may be lagging younger audiences) and for anyone who clearly states a preference for direct mail.
Traditional direct mail is also a good choice for businesses and organizations whose target audience is local. Sustaining membership campaigns, fundraisers, and financial support appeals by community-based non-profits are good examples where outreach by traditional direct mail to the homes of donors is likely to outperform email or web-based appeal.
Anticipating the addition of, or even the switch to web-based communication, businesses and organizations are collecting e-mail addresses and starting permission-based newsletters and blogs. But until that task is complete, traditional direct mail could be the only way to reach a customer or prospect.
Expand Your Outreach with Print Newsletters
“Print is still the most portable medium for most people, and it’s the preferred way to read large documents (three or four pages and up). Print also gives you total control over the look and feel of your message, which is extremely important when image is a critical component of your program.” Don Sadler / BrainTrust
One of the oldest and most effective ways to stay in touch with your existing customers, prospects, and members is with printed newsletters. Arriving by snail mail, they contain valuable, information-rich content and are an effective complement to online promotions. They also serve niche markets where print is a preferred format. Due to the decrease in postal mail, print newsletters stand out, unlike online newsletters that tend to get lost in email boxes.
Many businesses understand the value of direct mail as a marketing tool. But have you ever considered the value of a newsletter as a sales-related publication? A newsletter can help your business or non-profit organization generate new business or increase membership, cultivate customer and member loyalty, increase repeat sales or continued giving, and boost referrals.
How can a newsletter accomplish all these objectives? By communicating useful information in an easy-tounderstand format. And when we say useful information, we mean not only facts, tips, and expert advice, but also new product or service information.
Professional Writing Fundamentals
The time to begin an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.
Mark Twain
The ability to write effective copy is an important skill to acquire if you are part of your company or organization’s marketing team. In this issue we will discuss the characteristics of effective copy and reveal some techniques to improve your skills.
Effective marketing copy has an accepted form which is in three parts:
- a headline or attention-grabbing first sentence
- the development of the sales pitch
- a call to action
Whether you are writing a sales letter, ad copy, a brochure, or a direct mail marketing piece, the same three parts will always be present.