Content Marketing Today

Direct Marketing Lessons to Learn from a Really Bad Postcard Mailing

You can learn exactly what you should be doing by avoiding some of these colossal mistakes.

You probably receive a lot of direct mail marketing materials both at work and at home.  Certainly, some of it is terrific and much of it not so terrific.  But, I would be willing to bet that none of it is quite as bad is something I received recently.

It is a postcard sent jointly from a real estate agent and a bank mortgage specialist. To create an effective direct marketing piece, I suggest you do the opposite of each of the marketing missteps listed below:

• There is no explicit or implicit benefit to the headline: “Local Doctor Makes a Great Move.” Why would anyone care about an as yet unnamed doctor making a move.  And, would this be a professional move or literally a home move?  Benefit aside, I don’t even know what they’re getting at.
• 80% of the space on the card is taken up by a single dense paragraph of text with absolutely no image to support the marketing message. It is hard to wade through even if the headline had enticed me to start the long slog.
• That paragraph tells a long story about a doctor wanting to find a perfect house and then getting it through the help of the real estate agent and mortgage person.  Oddly, this particular mortgages available only to doctors.  I am not a doctor.  Why send this to me?
• The mortgage amount was $750,000 which is way more than the value of my own house and in any house in my neighborhood.  How wasteful to send the mailing into a neighborhood without a single practicing doctor who could actually use the services discussed!
• The physician in question is named “young Dr. Flowers.”  Do we suspect this is a made up name and not a real doctor?  After reading this phony sounding name, I’m unlikely to trust the truth of the story–even if I cared.
• That same paragraph concludes with the self-congratulatory, “Because of my savvy negotiating skills, the Flowers went home to their dream house with money in their pocket! I suppose I should be happy for them, but how does this knowledge benefit me?
• We finally get to the money moment  in a separate paragraph is at the very end, “Who do you know that is a medical doctor wanting to purchase a new residence with no money down?” Oh, I see.  You don’t care anything about me or my problems.  You are just hoping that by some quirk of fate I happen to know a doctor who happens to be looking for a no money down mortgage right now.  What are the odds of that? As the old saying goes, “Slim to none.  And Slim just left town.”
• The final ludicrous line is, “Call us so that we can help!” Help who?  You certainly have no interest in helping me.  And, having irritated me throughout a text heavy, benefit light postcard, I sure don’t have an interest in helping you (I have cropped out the names to protect the guilty).

Yikes!  This was a terrible direct marketing piece.  Its flawed content was exacerbated by the fact that it was mailed to a group of people who are unlikely to have any personal interest in taking action based on the content of the postcard.

So, as I suggested earlier.  Pretty much do the opposite of every flawed element itemized above and you may wind up with a pretty effective direct marketing campaign.