Amidst the mayhem of new media such as YouTube, iPods and blogging, using one advertising medium is rarely satisfactory. With consumers wading through an informational glut meant to provide ultimate personalization, marketers must pull out the big guns to ensure their messages are heard. E-mail, direct mail, television and website promotions are only a few of the ways to encourage an audience’s response to a campaign. It’s a delicate balancing act of maintaining enough presence to be seen, heard and responded to, without bombarding a potential audience into annoyance. In the case of direct mail, the most successful campaign is the one that nestles safely into consumers’ homes or businesses’ in-boxes.
Netflix, the DVD online rental service based in Los Gatos, Calif., is well-known for revolutionizing rental services featuring a mail-in shipping system, not to mention its signature reusable envelope. However, Netflix engages far more than the mail to remain front-of-mind with its customer base. The company, which launched in 1997, employs every advertising avenue available to it, including “network advertising, radio advertising, newspaper freestanding inserts, public relations, events [and] promotions,” explained director of corporate communications Steve Swasey.
Netflix created and refined the efficiency of its service by developing a reusable, bar-coded, postage-paid shipping package for the return of rented DVDs through the mail. Save for its website’s relatively new online viewing option, the company’s efficiency is built on the success of its shipping processes.
“Our largest partner is [the United States Postal Service] shipping force,” Swasey said. “Every day, [Netflix mails] about 1.6 million DVDs outward, returning about 1.6 million DVDs, [totalling] 3.2 million pieces of mail [sent] on a typical day [via] first class mail. ... The volumes haven’t always been that high, but the point is, we’ve worked very closely with the postal service from the very beginning to design a mailer that is functional, useful and goes through their equipment.” Swasey then explained how the mailer both protects the delicacy of the DVD, and withstands the automation the mailer tolerates on both the postal service’s end and at Netflix’s distribution centers.
Through rain, sleet and snow, Netflix also embarks on direct mail campaigns. “We have window envelopes that have a personalized letter from our vice president of marketing addressed to the individual, and that includes flyers with pictures of recent titles,” Swasey explained. “It’s a nice, three-page, very comprehensive direct mail piece. We also use a card-stock piece that is in the form of a DVD envelope, a Netflix envelope with a DVD slipping out. ... We use different [mailers] at different times, of course, because one is a little more comprehensive than the other.”
Conversely, the political sector relies heavily on direct mail. Winning Directions, a progressive political direct mail firm headquartered in San Francisco, utilizes direct mail for 99 percent of its clients’ communications. “[Direct mail] is the most effective use of a campaign’s dollar,” noted the firm’s senior vice president and COO Peter J. Moran. “When you consider you are putting the right communication in the right person’s hand, it is tough to beat. TV and radio, at best, [provide] pretty random coverage when compared to mail.
“Everybody checks their mailbox, and with a voter’s history, we’re targeting and reaching out to people who act on a message ... crafted just for them,” he stated.
Even with something as ubiquitous as Netflix’s reusable envelope, or the finely honed direct marketing of the political sector, no single mailer design is a guaranteed success, said Michael DeCastro, president of marketing consulting firm Imagination in San Francisco. After launching it as a “high-tech direct” marketing firm, Imagination became what DeCastro described as a “full-on agency” in 1980. Since the late ’90s, though, DeCastro has worked as a marketing strategist focusing on the technology, financial and entertainment sectors, handling business-to-business, and business-to-consumer campaigns.
“I do whatever works,” DeCastro said. “I can tell you that in 30 years in this business, I have never done an A/B split test between a self-mailer and an envelope package where the self-mailer has beat the envelope package on a direct A/B split. ... Does that make an envelope package always the best package? No, of course not, because I’ve run campaigns where I don’t even test an envelope against a self-mailer because the envelope package is just total overkill; it’s inappropriate.”
In fact, both Moran and DeCastro identified a successful design as “the one that works.” But, a mailer’s success depends on end-users and their measures of success. It also obviously hinges on the design being able to generate profit without exorbitant costs. Unfortunately for print sales teams, there is no magic design for capturing marketer attention—and therefore, no surefire formula ensuring a manufacturer’s success with its clients.
“Size and shape only carry the visual and written message, but they inherently provide a different experience,” said Moran. “For example, a brochure has a slower pace than a postcard. You look at a postcard, then flip it over and maybe back again. [With] a brochure, you see the back, and the cover, and then open it, depending on the number of folds start opening panels, et cetera.”
Innovative designs don’t always work either, DeCastro warned. Then again, instant engagement can be crucial to a challenging response. For a campaign aimed at high-level executives, DeCastro resorted to a talking plastic tube. “It was a big tube, about a foot long [and] about four inches in diameter, and we had a poster ... inside, something that rolls up and folds and then opens out into a large poster format, [along with] the talking card and some other inserts,” he described.
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.”
Certainly, not every mailer can include talking gadgets, nor can every client afford such a promotion. DeCastro did mention a general rule of thumb. “Bigger is better,” he advised. “When you’re looking at self-mailers, it costs you the same 22 cents to mail something that’s 6x11" as it does to mail something that’s 6x9". Go with 6x11"—it’ll always get better results. [It requires] a little extra paper, a little extra press time. … It’s essentially the same cost, [the] same postage, [the] same everything, but [a client’s] response rate’s going to be significantly higher.”
When it comes to direct mail, all involved aim for winning customization. Understanding the balance of a marketer’s needs, as well as those of the manufacturer and distributor, can personalize everyone’s level of success.