One version allowed the recipient to press a button to activate a message from the marketer’s CEO, and another contained a self-starting card. “I know CEOs and their gatekeepers, [and] if you ask them to push a button, that’s [going] too far,” DeCastro noted. “If you have it so that you pop the end of the tube off, and the first thing that falls out is the card and it opens and it starts talking, then [they think], ‘Wow, what is this?’ And it engages them. [W]e did telesales follow-up on that ... and we tracked who remembered the mailer more, and ... the self-talker [was more memorable]. We actually had people say, ‘You know, the card didn’t work.’ It was a big red button that said, ‘Press here.’ It’s because they didn’t read it, and they didn’t connect the dots.”
Customizing Success
Marketers identify winning mailer designs