Where, oh where, is the USP?
June 1, 2006: Vol. 2, Issue No. 43
IN THE MAIL
Denny, we invite you to take the
Vermillion Digital Test Drive
Seeing is believing. Simply upload any file you've always printed
Offset and we'll deliver a digital version for you to compare. FREE.
Plus ... enter to win a FREE Sirius Satellite Radio and one year subscription.
—Vermillion Self-mailer, May 30, 2006
Thirty years ago I attended a luncheon of the Direct Mail Writers Guild in New York. The speaker was Dorothy Kerr, circulation direct of U.S. News & World Report. Her talk changed our lives, Peggy's and mine.
Kerr said:
The way to be successful in direct mail is to look at watch your mail and see who's mailing what. Look for those pieces that keep coming in over and over. These are the controls—the mailings that are working and making big profits for the mailer. Then steal smart.
"To make mailings without studying other people's mail," said the great direct marketing guru, Axel Andersson, "is like expecting a brain surgeon to operate without ever having studied brains."
On Monday I received a self-mailer from Vermillion, a firm I had never heard of.
In 40 years of studying direct mail—literally tens of thousands of envelope efforts, postcards, catalogs and self-mailers—I have never seen a piece that breaks so many rules.
Whoever created it is not a student of direct mail or marketing psychology.
After reading this, you may want to take a look at what your organization is sending out.
The Vermillion Self-mailer
The 6" x 9" piece arrived in my post office box in glorious full color.
The front of the piece is an automobile dashboard with the headline:
Fast. Affordable. And High Performance?
Ah ha! A car, I thought.
The back of the piece contains the copy you see in the "IN THE MAIL" section that begins this edition of Denny Hatch's Business Common Sense, illustrated with a car key and a Sirius satellite radio logo.
Ah ha! A car with a free Satellite Radio, I thought as I scanned the headline.
The inside spread shows a nifty, bright red sports car with "Denny" printed on the front license plate and a huge headline telling me to "Take the Vermillion Digital Test Drive."
I never heard of a Vermillion. Looks sort of like a Corvette. Neat little thing.
When Colin Powell spoke in Aspen last summer at Donnelley Marketing's Privacy Summit, he mentioned that when he resigned as Secretary of State he decided to buy himself a toy. That toy was a Corvette. Having written a cover story for Catalog Success on Mike Yager of Mid-America Motors and owner of 50 Corvettes, I could relate to Colin Powell.
Then I started reading the self-mailer's copy.
This entire automobile-centric mailing is really a lead generation piece to introduce direct marketers to the digital color printing capabilities of Vermillion, headquartered in Derry, N.H.
The mailing has absolutely nothing to do with automobiles or taking a test drive. The clever copy includes auto-related lines such as:
* At Vermillion we're steering more customers to digital all the time
* We bet you'll be shifting gears soon.
"Confuse 'em, ya lose 'em," says consultant Paul Goldberg.
"Direct mail is an impulse medium," said guru Lew Smith. "If it is not acted upon at once, chances are your mailing will be laid aside, in which case you've lost the order." (Exception: catalogs, which can be set aside and perused at leisure.)
I was so confused, I laid the piece aside.
Then I picked it up to analyze it.
About Digital Printing
As readers of this e-zine know, I am a gung-ho believer in digital printing. For example books—all their pages and covers—can be stored in a computer and can be profitable when printed in tiny quantities, even one at a time, which means no huge investment in inventory and warehousing.
Digital printing has revolutionized book publishing, although many mainstream publishers have not yet figured it out.
The Features and Benefits of Digital Printing for Promotion Pieces
* Efficient, with little waste: This is Print on Demand (POD). If a few more brochures are needed, they can be printed economically in small quantities.
* Eases cash flow: Since this is Print on Demand, a lot of money is not being tied up in large print runs in order to amortize the expensive and time-consuming set-up and to keep the cost per unit down. With print on demand, no press set-up is needed.
* Fast, fast turnaround. With no press set-up time, the computer simply spits out instructions to the digital printing machine and the pieces are printed. Say you are a fundraiser and you want to cash in on a major disaster, such as Hurricane Katrina. You can wait to see devastation and download early photos. Drop these images into already designed pieces, and you be in the mail within hours. Send your effort to your major donors via UPS or FedEx, and your appeal is in their hands at the same time they are watching the grim aftermath on television.
* Breakthrough in testing: Because the cost of printing color brochures by offset is so expensive—especially the set-up time—only the richest mailers can test different brochures for a mailing. For the rest of us, we have to settle on one generic brochure to mail across all tests and then versionalize the envelope, letter, order card and lift pieces. With digital printing, mailers now have the extraordinary luxury of testing two, three, four or more brochures in small quantities without breaking the bank.
* Dazzle the recipient: Printing that is computer driven means each piece can be personalized on the fly with the recipient's name, address or any other pertinent, unique information. For example, my name (Denny) appears four times in the Vermillion piece, including on the license plate of the car. This is sexy. People love to see their names in print.
* Dazzle the recipient again: Digital print quality is now just about on a par with offset. An expert with many years printing experience might be able to tell the difference using a glass magnifier lupe, but to the average person, digital looks just fine. This Vermillion piece is a beauty, yet, amazingly, nowhere does it say that it is digitally printed—a sample of Vermillion's excellence.
The Offer
The late, great guru Ed Mayer suggested that success in direct mail depends on the following formula: 40 percent lists, 40 percent offer and 20 percent everything else.
Vermillion's offer is terrific: Upload any brochure that you are currently using that is printed via offset. Vermillion will download it, print it digitally and send it to you in hard copy so that you can compare it with what you are currently sending out.
Absolutely FREE.
Simple, elegant, quick. Easy to respond.
It is the perfect lead-gen offer in that it gives the prospect absolutely no reason to say no.
What's more, it has a kicker. If you respond to this offer you are entered in a drawing for a neat Sirius satellite radio and a one-year subscription.
Any direct marketer should jump at the chance see how his piece would look digitally printed—with all the benefits of digital printing described above.
Yet the offer—that 40 percent of the success formula—is buried in the body copy and totally overshadowed by the fatuous automobile conceit.
Takeaway Points to Consider
* Turn features into benefits. Inexperienced copywriters—and often product managers who should know better—do not understand the difference between a feature and a benefit. A feature is a fact about the product or service you are selling. A benefit is what that feature will do for YOU—make you rich or desirable or happy or enable you to sleep at night.
* One marketing technique is to make a list of all the features of the product or service being sold. Then turn those features into benefits.
* People buy for three reasons and three reasons only: Price and/or Service and/or Exclusivity. If all things are equal and your price is lowest, you will get the order. If you service is terrific, your sales people warm and knowledgeable, your guarantee of satisfaction ironclad, people will buy. Or if you are the only game in town (e.g., Rolls-Royce, Segway, Picasso), you will make the sale.
* The key to direct marketing success is the Unique Selling Proposition (USP)—the one thing that makes a product or service stand out and be different from the competition. It might be price. It might be service. It might be exclusivity. It might be something else. One way to determine the USP is to list all the benefits of the product or service and then rank them in importance. The top benefit becomes your USP.
* Cleverness and humor have no place in direct marketing. If the reader says "My, isn't this clever" or "Oh, how funny!." the thread of the argument is lost and so is the sale.
Web Site Related to Today's Edition
Vermillion
http://www.vermillion-inc.com/
