now pounce on them with an offer they can’t refuse.
Direct and digital marketing strategies is a combination of words and pictures and ideas. A great idea without compelling words often goes unnoticed. Great words without the ability to attract the consumer’s attention often doom those glorious words to oblivion. Great visual images without substantive words and ideas often diminish the outcome. For example:
- Give me a ring regarding our new pricing for prospects. Not!
- Would you like me to add your email to our customer care weekly email? Never!
- Visuals attract and make the reader pause long enough to see if it’s worth their time. Great!
- The weekly business after hours is a great place to meet and network with people looking to sell and buy. Could be.
At times, your reader may not understand the connection with a visual. Create another pause visual, such as color or all capitalized type to slow or stop the reader to check it out. Make sure your post or article opens in another page so the trip back for the visitor returns to the original page. Also, this is a good way to aid in the definition of a word or phrase, such as:
“Now, why didn’t I think of that?” Or, “the competitor’s new product will kill us.”
Do you know who your audience is, direct or indirectly?
Each is important but coming up with “grabbers” work well in any communication channel today.
For example, in direct mail, a good grabber is the design. The design is the attraction. Make sure it’s the proper blend of color, shape, size, illustrations, photographs, and typography.
A good headline accentuated with a photo or a sign is called “a double whammy.” Bright colors and bold graphics will set your work apart and create the STOP you were looking for. Illustrations are easily editable to fit your brand, and at times, even be more universal than photography. Let the “vector images” help your next project pack a powerful punch.
The “how-to” or “why” or a “number series” is a great idea for adding value. Use a bit of entertainment in the form of a photograph, vector image, or even a short video or GIF, is a positive stopper.
What you learn in Direct Mail 101, is that the how-to is a very powerful word combo as it engages the prospect on a deeper psychological level. It’s self-centered and most of us pay more attention when we hear “how-to and whatever follows after it.”
Using a catchy relevant headline in the email subject for you’re an increase in the open rate. Here are a few examples to give you some ideas to try in your next ad campaign
Headline example: “How to Reach a Qualified Target Audience… and motivate them to seek you out!”
Photo examples. The word momentum by definition, is not only a powerful force, it can keep your readers brain in motion with various ideas. Eventually, when focused on a segment of your contacts, such as prospects for example, will teach you a few ways on how to qualify them and may keep them coming back.
Is the copywriting and the photo strong enough to draw the reader in to your copy? Tie the copywriting to an appeal of a human emotion.
Ask a question in the headline: What marketing communication channel delivers over 700 million messages each day?
Curiosity will draw many reasons to find an answer. A good copywriter will add more subtle information. Such as, in a subhead. Hint. Something you do outside the box?
The answer is 700 million of letters and parcels are delivered daily by the United States Postal Service. When you decide to use the US Mail channel, it’s a pretty good guess the contact will get what you sent, in his or her hand, and open it.
Thinking of using direct mail?
If you want to learn more about, design, compelling copy and direct mail, please call us. Direct mail always gets your message delivered. Give us a call and to discuss your ideas and answer any questions.
© 2007-2018 by the Marketing Communications Group, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this publication may be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or reproduced in any way, including but not limited to digital copying and printing without the prior agreement and written permission of the publisher. Photographs are purchased from such companies as:
I-Stock, Windows Clip Art, HubSpot, PhotoPin, Deposit Photos, Solid Stock, Unsplash, Stencil or John Deuerling. All original content on each article is fingerprinted and certified by Digiprove
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