Fascinating Authors

Direct Marketing with Stories

Two seconds, maybe three. That’s about all the time you have to convince someone to read your promotional email or snail mail. According to direct-mail stats, about ninety-eight to ninety-nine percent of the time, people hit delete or toss the item. To be read-worthy, your message must be clear and targeted specifically for the recipient. Customer stories are one tactic to get your direct marketing noticed.

Telling Small Tales

Direct marketing delivers promotional messages straight to potential customers on an individual basis–right to their mailboxes or email accounts. Again, here is another opportunity where a customer story can get readers to notice your communication and linger longer. If you apply the “like me” factor of stories to direct marketing, by featuring customers who are like recipients of your mailings, readers can more readily identify with the message and become intrigued to learn more about this person or organization facing and solving similar challenges.

But in direct marketing–a medium with a notoriously short attention span–telling stories requires restraint or you risk turning off the reader. We’ve all received direct-mail letters with stories, appeals, or product pitches that extend three or four pages. That is almost always too much, especially if you haven’t built much of a relationship with the recipient. For instance, I’m more apt to read a long letter featuring a story from the Humane Society, of which I’ve been a member for years, because I know, like, and trust them already. But if I receive a three- or four-page letter from a national nonprofit I’ve never heard of, from halfway across the country, I’d see all the text and stop before even getting into the first paragraph. In direct marketing, less is often more. Get the reader’s interest and then give him links or ways to explore further.

Snail Mail that Works

Design That Works (www.designthatworks.com), an Atlanta-based marketing and creative firm, does this so well that people have actually called with their address changes–to ensure they keep receiving the firm’s mailings, which include postcards featuring satisfied customers. The firm’s use of success stories began in the late ‘90s, when owner Linda McCulloch sought a way to differentiate Design That Works and show the value of its services to prospects. With a name like Design That Works, the firm wanted to show it works, but felt a little uncomfortable talking itself up. “The marketing communications business can be so full of smoke and mirrors, and you’re always telling everyone how great you are,” McCulloch says. “I don’t like to blow my own horn excessively, so I felt that if I could get my clients to blow my horn for me that that would be more convincing to potential clients.”

The customer “horn-blowing” began with the firm collecting testimonial letters from clients, eventually growing to a two-inch thick binder. But Design That Works wanted to take that rich success-story content beyond just sharing letters with prospects or running a few quotes on its Web site. The success-story postcard series was born. Though initially hesitant about asking customers to be featured in mass mailings, McCullough found they were thrilled to share their results–and to benefit from the exposure of being “stars” in the campaigns.

The 5½” x 8½” postcards feature specific client projects, with static copy about the firm running down the left-hand side. Three client-focused sections tell the story: The Challenge, The Result, The Quote (client testimonial), each about one paragraph. They also include small images of the project’s output, such as a Web site screen shot, marketing collateral, or trade-show signage. Though it isn’t much copy, it still tells a story of the client, its goals, and how the business achieved success (see a sample at www.StoriesThatSellGuide.com).

Each mailing, about three times a year, showcases a different client’s challenges and results. The goal: stay top of mind with clients and prospects. And it’s worked. The postcards stand out among all the mail clients and prospects receive, and show audiences the specific results that other companies have experienced with the help of Design That Works.

While the postcards are one of many marketing tactics Design That Works employs, the postcard is, at times, the piece that finally motivates folks to make a move. “I’ve gotten really good feedback on the postcards over the years,” McCulloch says. “They’re to the point, easy to read, and colorful so people remember them. For what it costs to print and mail them, they’re a great way of staying in front of people.”

Continuously expanding the success-story concept, Design That Works ditched its traditional company brochure and replaced it with a success-stories booklet that pulls all the postcard content into one collateral piece. With nine client projects included, the booklet tells a complete story of the firm’s capabilities and results. Likewise, McCulloch brings in client stories anecdotally in meetings with prospects. In one case, that got the decision-maker engaged and interested, turning into a sale. “There’s nothing better than saying, ‘Let me just tell you a story about how we helped a client differentiate themselves,’” she says.

Design That Works also encourages clients to use their own testimonials and success stories in telling their stories. “It works for just about any company if the story is compelling, has a ring of truth, and is spoken with passion,” she adds.

A Winning Campaign

Success-story-based direct marketing has also worked exceptionally well for a large company campaign, Sage Software’s “Sage 360” (www.sage360.com)–actually topping all other media used in the broadly executed campaign in terms of results. Dennis Frahmann, Executive Vice President of Marketing for the Business Management Division, attributes the results largely to the personalization of each direct-mail piece. However, the focus on real customers helps increase reader interest to look further at the materials.

The 360 campaign has a number of direct-marketing variations. It features customers on postcards, in emails, and in more elaborate direct-mail pieces. Each one highlights a different customer’s success story. Postcards, 11¼ x 6 inches, capture the 360-degree customer photos on one side with brief summaries of the customer’s experience with Sage Software on the other side. Sent to current customers, the postcards encourage them to learn more about other Sage Software solutions by attending one of several upcoming free live webcasts about the software. The email campaigns follow a similar approach. Each direct-marketing piece includes a personalized Web address, where customers can go online to learn more about the specific solutions that may be most applicable to them, based on Sage Software’s existing knowledge of those customers.  The high response rates come from that powerful combination of a featured customer, with an issue similar to one the recipient is facing, and an easy way for customers to learn more.

Tips for Direct-Mail Storytelling

Both companies—one small, one large—seem to be beating the direct-marketing odds and getting noticed by featuring real customers. Both used postcards, a highly effective option because readers don’t have to decide whether to open it first. The images and messages are simply right there in front of them. But your direct marketing featuring customer stories can take a number of other forms: sales letters, flyers/self-mailers, article reprints on your company, articles on a topic of interest to the recipient, complete printed customer stories, white papers, newsletters, event invitations, and research reports. In any of these formats, you can weave in a customer story.

If you plan to integrate direct marketing featuring customer successes into your own efforts, keep in mind the following tips:

Clearly state customer results

Don’t stop with just a customer testimonial, for testimonials don’t tell a story. Help the reader empathize with and get to know the featured customer by briefly touching on his challenge, the solution that was applied, and then the benefits/results the featured customer has experienced. Use clear, easy-to-understand language, instead of industry jargon the reader might not understand.

Tailor for the audience

Just featuring a customer’s story is not enough. The message must still match up with the recipient’s demographic profile or his possible needs/challenges. Or, talk about a message or challenge that might be universally appealing to a broad swath of customers, such as an issue all small, growing businesses face.

Use graphics well

As with any marketing communications, don’t let it go out the door without professional-looking design and copywriting. Perhaps use a customer photo, as Sage Software does. Among a stack of mail or the recipient’s inbox, nice graphics, photos, and headlines increase your direct-mail open rate (the percentage of people who open the communication).

Include a call to action

Encourage readers to take some action now. That might be a special, limited offer; an invitation to an upcoming event or webinar; an encouragement to read the rest of the featured company’s story online; or an offer of a free report that the prospect or customer can download from your Web site. Always give them some next step to take.

Follow email rules

If email is part of your direct marketing campaign, learn and follow spam rules. Find details on the guidelines in the Direct Marketing Association’s Guidelines for Ethical Business Practice (www.the-dma.org/guidelines/EthicsGuidelines.pdf). Use the “Find” feature on your computer to search for the relevant terms such as “e-mail” and “online,” as this topic is covered in several sections of the document.

For more information about direct-marketing best practices, visit the Direct Marketing Association at www.the-dma.org.

Clearly, direct marketing rooted in reality can help mailings stand out in the pile.