70 Steps To Getting Your Direct Marketing Right
It’s been awhile since we featured master direct marketer Denny Hatch. Search him in The Agitator archives and you won’t be disappointed. He speaks his mind and he speaks wisely.
For those who prefer lists to narrative, Denny’s latest list could well qualify as the mother of all DM lists.
Called The Direct Marketer’s Checklist, it’s simply a list of 70 boxes that any direct marketer should tick before they communicate their pitch.
OK, 35 of the boxes apply to all media employed; the balance then focus on direct mail, then space ads, then catalogs, then email/ecommerce, and finally DRTV.
Here’s just a sampling, in no particular order, to give you a sense of the breadth and detail of Denny’s advice:
- Before going live, have you handed your promotion off to a half dozen strangers—who have no skin in the game—to make sure the whole thing makes sense, tracks, and the ordering mechanism is smooth and easy?
- Does your response link to your offer take the customer to a special satellite page that directly relates to that specific offer—as opposed to your general homepage?
- Does your fulfillment material resell the product and reassure the customer that buying it from you was a really smart decision?
- Have you checked the key coding, so that you can track the order back to the original source of the name and thus determine ROI?
- Does your letter look and feel like a letter?
- Have you given the lettershop detailed instructions—and a sample dummy of the mailing—so no question exits about how every element is folded, which order it’s inserted and which side faces the envelope flap?
- Is the coupon square or rectangular as opposed to a triangle, rhomboid, circle, or some other weird and disconcerting shape?
- Have you personally dialed the 800 number in your ad (website/letter, etc) to make sure it is correct?
- Is your offer so simple an idiot can understand it?
From the sublimely — but often overlooked — obvious to the devilish detail.
Try Denny’s Direct Marketer’s Checklist and you’ll be far less likely to crash and burn for ‘Duh!’ reasons.
Tom
One response to “70 Steps To Getting Your Direct Marketing Right”
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Denny Hatch is the MAN! He’s been one of my heroes since just about forever, beginning with a now beloved, dog-eared book called Method Marketing. This post only goes to show how smart The Agitator is. 🙂 Thanks Roger and Tom!