8 ms·

Why I Stopped Throwing Out Junk Mail

109 points by byrneseyeview 17y ago

tptacek 17y ago
Nicely done. What is it about magazine renewals that seem so effective to you?
- endlessvoid94 17y ago
  They work well.
ryanelkins 17y ago
This is a good approach. I do wonder how much of it translates over (from junk mail to a website or email) but that's something that can be tested. At the very least it provides a good starting foundation to work off of for those unsure of their copywriting abilities.
- mahmud 17y ago
  The entire premise is that junk mail is compelling and should be emulated. I wholeheartedly agree, but only if you're producing something junk-mail flavored. Membership drive for an online game is not the same thing as a call for papers for an academic conference, and one of them benefits from emulating junk-mail copy. FWIW, I found the article refreshingly unique and "outside the box".
  - byrneseyeview 17y ago
    Reading junk mail has changed the way I write other things, like blog posts, instant messages, and even personal emails. I'm more likely to use numbers, bullet points, and shorter paragraphs, and much more likely to close with a call to action. Your call for papers probably shouldn't end with "Operators are standing by!" but it wouldn't hurt to establish urgency some other way. ("If your paper is ready, submit it now--although the deadline is in X weeks, we'll only be able to thoroughly review papers we get in the next Y weeks.")
billybob 17y ago
The "junk mail" approach to persuasion is only one approach, and it tends to be urgent-sounding. When I think about the businesses I like the most, one common factor is that they have a much more honest-sounding tone. Maybe the question is not "which technique works best," but "which technique works best on my target audience."
- ezy 17y ago
  I was wondering about this. It seems to me that the 10% conversion rate for junk mail is based on selling to a credulous consumer. Hence the urgent tone. Most people (the other 90%?) toss the shit out because they know even if the copy sounds vaguely interesting, you're most likely not going to get something for nothing. Everything from the 4 (bright) color ad to the fake christmas card goes in the recycling immediately from the mailbox because you know you're going to be manipulated. Are people more or less credulous on the web? I dunno, that has to depend on the category. In some ways, it's harder to avoid reading the copy -- but for experienced users there is a degree of resentment when you realize you've been "SEO"ed by an interesting sounding google link into a page of marketing bullshit.
  - byrneseyeview 17y ago
    Direct mail (not so "junk"-y) works for some higher-end products. I know American Express has launched some of their more expensive cards through direct mail; luxury car companies use similar tactics; and insurance companies invest a lot in direct mail, as well. (And direct marketing companies eat their own dogfood, too. Ogilvy & Mather sent sales letters to lots of Fortune 500 executives, in order to get them to pay O&M to send similar letters to other people. It's a great way to bootstrap your own sales pitch: if your pitch is persuasive, it deserves to be.)
vinhboy 17y ago
I don't buy it. Can you show me some statistics to prove that this (junk mail) works? I have always thought of junk mail as a last ditch effort. You have no other means to reach your customer, so you do the "throw it against the wall and see what sticks" approach.
- jack7890 17y ago
  I think his whole point is that junk mail's mere existence means that it works. Junk mailers pay real hard currency for every letter they send, so they've can't afford to use ineffective copy. Online, there is no cost to to sending an email, publishing a blog post, etc., so it's more difficult to determine what copy actually works.
  - Semiapies 17y ago
    "there is no cost to to sending an email" Only if you're not paying for the servers or the copy-writers, etc. "so it's more difficult to determine what copy actually works." That doesn't follow. Any sort of tracking, A/B testing, etc. that you could do with junk mail, you can do with spam or more accepted email marketing - and probably more cheaply.
  - gnosis 17y ago
    Or it could be that the old adage that "there's a sucker born every minute" applies not only to the consumers of junk mail, but to its purveyors as well.
    - jamiequint 17y ago
      You could say the same thing about online advertising though. Sure, some people waste money, but the bulk of people get value for the money they are spending or it would not continue to exist.
      - gnosis 17y ago
        I don't know why people think businesses are immune from spending money on products and services they don't need or which are ineffective. They may well continue to make money regardless, or for some other reason than the money they spend on direct marketing (or on online advertising, for that matter). What we need are some serious studies published in peer reviewed journals that prove that direct marketing works, not claims that if it didn't work businesses wouldn't spend money on it.
tbgvi 17y ago
Agree for the most part - direct mailers were doing A/B testing before the internet existed to maximize their ROI. There's definitely some carry over between what works in print and on the internet. That being said, its important to know why the junk mail is presented like it is, it may not always work for your users.
wmeredith 17y ago
Working in Search marketing for a few years has taught me something similar about writing PPC ad-copy; if you want to see masters at work search for something like "Home Refinancing" and check out the ad-copy on the sponsored results. (These guys are paying $50+ per click. You can bet they know what they're doing; that is, they must if they're going to be doing it for any amount of time.)
- nearestneighbor 17y ago
  > These guys are paying $50+ per click. Google no longer has to be pissed at me for using their service without paying and never clicking any links.
- rms 17y ago
  Probably the most power of instant arbitrary financial transfer any member of the proletariat has is to search for asbestos or mesothelioma and click on every ad.
  - rms 17y ago
    Did anyone do it in response to this post? You could reply with a new name if you don't want to admit it. I'm curious how many thousands of dollars were just arbitrarily shifted around.
- dabent 17y ago
  The same goes for affiliate marketers. The good ones work their copy, do A/B testing and really hone in on results. Ask yourself this: Where would Tim (4-hour Workweek) Ferriss be without killer copy? He even tested to find the title for his book.
- Confusion 17y ago
  These guys are paying $50+ per click. Do you have a source for that assertion? I know of loans and mortgages making $100+ per score, but not per click.
  - byrneseyeview 17y ago
csmeder 17y ago
"You can look at the results of a hundred years of careful analysis, big bets, and bad investments—and you can coast on the results." Agreed
noodle 17y ago
i both agree and disagree. i disagree with the premise that years and years and billions of dollars have been spent, so it must be the best way. times are changing, people are changing. i've been trained to throw away every piece of junk mail, and so have most of my friends. junk mail is being actively read by a shrinking demographic. just because something has worked does not mean it will continue to do so, or that the statistics are representative. it might not be a good plan to hitch your line to a sinking ship. i agree in the sense that there are some effective design patterns with respect to effective copywriting, and that some people are forgoing them for something else, perhaps something more aesthetically pleasing when aesthetics don't necessarily get the job done.
- Semiapies 17y ago
  "years and years and billions of dollars have been spent, so it must be the best way" That way lies cargo cult capitalism.
  - byrneseyeview 17y ago
    In the short run, yeah. But if everyone is flinging money at junk mail, eventually the ones who are doing it wrong will be broke.
- dkokelley 17y ago
  "When I want to know how to write a transactional email, I wait for a magazine renewal letter. When I want to know what the “Pro” Account’s page should say, I wait for a membership drive letter to arrive (my home address has been cheerfully sold to a bunch of political committees, so I get a lot of these). And if I want to sell something and I can’t possibly relate to whoever would want to buy it—I keep an eye out for the envelope marked “You’re pre-approved!”" I think the point was to re-purpose the techniques from direct-mail advertising to match the next generation of direct response marketing (like emails and sales landing pages). Use the tools from the mailers in your emails or sales pages instead. You can't really 'throw away' a sales landing page the same way you would an unsolicited credit card offer, especially since you navigated to it in the first place.
george_morgan 17y ago
I think it was David Ogilvy who said anyone who wanted to write advertising copy should spend a year working in direct response marketing. Same principle.
- byrneseyeview 17y ago
  Yes. Here's a short video on the subject, from Ogilvy: "We Sell or Else." (Transcript below.) http://www.infomarketingblog.com/direct-response-vs-general-advertising/ http://www.infomarketingblog.com/direct-response-vs-general-...
cedsav 17y ago
While I find junk mail material sometime entertaining, I can't help to think that it's designed to sell to a certain category of people. Especially long copy. It's often for questionable products, dubious benefits or almost scams. And while I don't doubt it works for them, I'm not sure at all it would work for my target demographic. I think a good version of 'long copy' is something like this: http://highrisehq.com http://highrisehq.com where a lot of info is packed on a single page, and it's very far from "junk mail" copy.
dpatru 17y ago
I just had a series of thoughts: 1. You should learn from others' mistakes because it's cheaper than learning from your own. (approximation of a famous quote) 2. You should learn from other's successes, because it's cheaper than discovering what works by yourself. (simple variation) 3. Applying mutuality principle: how can we mutually benefit from our mistakes? 4. Why not conduct A/B testing and ad word campaigns together so that lessons learned can benefit the maximum number? 5. How to do this? a) The easiest way is just to blog about your own findings and read others' blogs. This suffers from the free-rider problem: you end up doing research for others. b) Another alternative is to form a club where each member spends a certain amount per month on ads, and they share their results. c) Another way is to simply do a lot of Google searches (automatically?) and see what ads are displayed. You're letting Google and the free market do your work for you. This is the e-version of collecting junk mail. You're not being a free rider in this case because your results are being used by others too.
pbhjpbhj 17y ago
I thought he was going to say he was turning the junk mail into paper logs to burn - free fuel.
jsackmann 17y ago
Maybe this is obvious, but in case it's not: For those interested in really studying direct mail tactics, there are lots of books on the subject by experienced practitioners. I read several of them a few years ago; wish I could highlight one or two as a recommendation, but I don't remember. As noted in some of the other comments, these folks test everything, right down to the color of the envelope and the size of the signature at the bottom of the letter. It's also fascinating to read war stories. IIRC, there's a direct mail letter for Reader's Digest (or some similar publication) that was most effective for decades. They kept testing it against other contenders, but that same letter kept getting results.
moron4hire 17y ago
In my personal lexicon, I call this the "Waffle House Method". WH values efficiency above all else. They are all-cash stores, with an occasional ATM machine in the store. Every single element of the store has an efficiency study behind it. But the single biggest efficiency point they cover is complete failure to do any market research. Instead, they just build a store on the same block as a McDonald's. If McDonald's did the market research to say that this location was good, then it's good enough for WH too. I use the WH Method for my choices on fashion (when I bother to care about fashion): I pick a celebrity who looks rather well put together and similar to me in build, reason that celebrities are required to spend an inordinate amount of attention on fashion in order to maintain their marketability, and then wear/style however they do. It works out rather well. I've also used the WH Method for doing basic site design in a documentation-happy environment. "Look, every other site with a similar purpose outside your market does their site design like this. You should have those elements as well, or users will be confused."
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
mikasissonen 17y ago
I took a direct marketing copywriting course six or seven years ago that suggested the same, and I've been pinching examples from my junk mail ever since. In fact, it looks like the course is still running - and even taught by the same instructor I had (John Friesen). If you're in the Vancouver area, I'd recommend it: http://www.sfu.ca/wp/dmc.htm http://www.sfu.ca/wp/dmc.htm The mail he valued most was the stuff he'd get repeatedly, year after year, month after month - since presumably it performed the best. If he only saw one example of something, he figured it was a test that didn't pull well.
chris123 17y ago
Beside junk mail and expensive PPC ads, magazine covers and headlines can be great sources of inspiration, depending on what demographic you're targeting.

109 points by byrneseyeview 17y ago

tptacek 17y ago

Nicely done. What is it about magazine renewals that seem so effective to you?

endlessvoid94 17y ago
They work well.

ryanelkins 17y ago

This is a good approach. I do wonder how much of it translates over (from junk mail to a website or email) but that's something that can be tested. At the very least it provides a good starting foundation to work off of for those unsure of their copywriting abilities.

mahmud 17y ago
The entire premise is that junk mail is compelling and should be emulated. I wholeheartedly agree, but only if you're producing something junk-mail flavored. Membership drive for an online game is not the same thing as a call for papers for an academic conference, and one of them benefits from emulating junk-mail copy. FWIW, I found the article refreshingly unique and "outside the box".
- byrneseyeview 17y ago
  Reading junk mail has changed the way I write other things, like blog posts, instant messages, and even personal emails. I'm more likely to use numbers, bullet points, and shorter paragraphs, and much more likely to close with a call to action. Your call for papers probably shouldn't end with "Operators are standing by!" but it wouldn't hurt to establish urgency some other way. ("If your paper is ready, submit it now--although the deadline is in X weeks, we'll only be able to thoroughly review papers we get in the next Y weeks.")

billybob 17y ago

The "junk mail" approach to persuasion is only one approach, and it tends to be urgent-sounding. When I think about the businesses I like the most, one common factor is that they have a much more honest-sounding tone. Maybe the question is not "which technique works best," but "which technique works best on my target audience."

ezy 17y ago
I was wondering about this. It seems to me that the 10% conversion rate for junk mail is based on selling to a credulous consumer. Hence the urgent tone. Most people (the other 90%?) toss the shit out because they know even if the copy sounds vaguely interesting, you're most likely not going to get something for nothing. Everything from the 4 (bright) color ad to the fake christmas card goes in the recycling immediately from the mailbox because you know you're going to be manipulated. Are people more or less credulous on the web? I dunno, that has to depend on the category. In some ways, it's harder to avoid reading the copy -- but for experienced users there is a degree of resentment when you realize you've been "SEO"ed by an interesting sounding google link into a page of marketing bullshit.
- byrneseyeview 17y ago
  Direct mail (not so "junk"-y) works for some higher-end products. I know American Express has launched some of their more expensive cards through direct mail; luxury car companies use similar tactics; and insurance companies invest a lot in direct mail, as well. (And direct marketing companies eat their own dogfood, too. Ogilvy & Mather sent sales letters to lots of Fortune 500 executives, in order to get them to pay O&M to send similar letters to other people. It's a great way to bootstrap your own sales pitch: if your pitch is persuasive, it deserves to be.)

vinhboy 17y ago

I don't buy it. Can you show me some statistics to prove that this (junk mail) works? I have always thought of junk mail as a last ditch effort. You have no other means to reach your customer, so you do the "throw it against the wall and see what sticks" approach.

jack7890 17y ago
I think his whole point is that junk mail's mere existence means that it works. Junk mailers pay real hard currency for every letter they send, so they've can't afford to use ineffective copy. Online, there is no cost to to sending an email, publishing a blog post, etc., so it's more difficult to determine what copy actually works.
- Semiapies 17y ago
  "there is no cost to to sending an email" Only if you're not paying for the servers or the copy-writers, etc. "so it's more difficult to determine what copy actually works." That doesn't follow. Any sort of tracking, A/B testing, etc. that you could do with junk mail, you can do with spam or more accepted email marketing - and probably more cheaply.
- gnosis 17y ago
  Or it could be that the old adage that "there's a sucker born every minute" applies not only to the consumers of junk mail, but to its purveyors as well.
  - jamiequint 17y ago
    You could say the same thing about online advertising though. Sure, some people waste money, but the bulk of people get value for the money they are spending or it would not continue to exist.
    - gnosis 17y ago
      I don't know why people think businesses are immune from spending money on products and services they don't need or which are ineffective. They may well continue to make money regardless, or for some other reason than the money they spend on direct marketing (or on online advertising, for that matter). What we need are some serious studies published in peer reviewed journals that prove that direct marketing works, not claims that if it didn't work businesses wouldn't spend money on it.

tbgvi 17y ago

Agree for the most part - direct mailers were doing A/B testing before the internet existed to maximize their ROI. There's definitely some carry over between what works in print and on the internet. That being said, its important to know why the junk mail is presented like it is, it may not always work for your users.

wmeredith 17y ago

Working in Search marketing for a few years has taught me something similar about writing PPC ad-copy; if you want to see masters at work search for something like "Home Refinancing" and check out the ad-copy on the sponsored results. (These guys are paying $50+ per click. You can bet they know what they're doing; that is, they must if they're going to be doing it for any amount of time.)

nearestneighbor 17y ago
> These guys are paying $50+ per click. Google no longer has to be pissed at me for using their service without paying and never clicking any links.
rms 17y ago
Probably the most power of instant arbitrary financial transfer any member of the proletariat has is to search for asbestos or mesothelioma and click on every ad.
- rms 17y ago
  Did anyone do it in response to this post? You could reply with a new name if you don't want to admit it. I'm curious how many thousands of dollars were just arbitrarily shifted around.
dabent 17y ago
The same goes for affiliate marketers. The good ones work their copy, do A/B testing and really hone in on results. Ask yourself this: Where would Tim (4-hour Workweek) Ferriss be without killer copy? He even tested to find the title for his book.
Confusion 17y ago
These guys are paying $50+ per click. Do you have a source for that assertion? I know of loans and mortgages making $100+ per score, but not per click.
- byrneseyeview 17y ago

csmeder 17y ago

"You can look at the results of a hundred years of careful analysis, big bets, and bad investments—and you can coast on the results." Agreed

noodle 17y ago

i both agree and disagree. i disagree with the premise that years and years and billions of dollars have been spent, so it must be the best way. times are changing, people are changing. i've been trained to throw away every piece of junk mail, and so have most of my friends. junk mail is being actively read by a shrinking demographic. just because something has worked does not mean it will continue to do so, or that the statistics are representative. it might not be a good plan to hitch your line to a sinking ship. i agree in the sense that there are some effective design patterns with respect to effective copywriting, and that some people are forgoing them for something else, perhaps something more aesthetically pleasing when aesthetics don't necessarily get the job done.

Semiapies 17y ago
"years and years and billions of dollars have been spent, so it must be the best way" That way lies cargo cult capitalism.
- byrneseyeview 17y ago
  In the short run, yeah. But if everyone is flinging money at junk mail, eventually the ones who are doing it wrong will be broke.
dkokelley 17y ago
"When I want to know how to write a transactional email, I wait for a magazine renewal letter. When I want to know what the “Pro” Account’s page should say, I wait for a membership drive letter to arrive (my home address has been cheerfully sold to a bunch of political committees, so I get a lot of these). And if I want to sell something and I can’t possibly relate to whoever would want to buy it—I keep an eye out for the envelope marked “You’re pre-approved!”" I think the point was to re-purpose the techniques from direct-mail advertising to match the next generation of direct response marketing (like emails and sales landing pages). Use the tools from the mailers in your emails or sales pages instead. You can't really 'throw away' a sales landing page the same way you would an unsolicited credit card offer, especially since you navigated to it in the first place.

george_morgan 17y ago

I think it was David Ogilvy who said anyone who wanted to write advertising copy should spend a year working in direct response marketing. Same principle.

byrneseyeview 17y ago
Yes. Here's a short video on the subject, from Ogilvy: "We Sell or Else." (Transcript below.) http://www.infomarketingblog.com/direct-response-vs-general-advertising/ http://www.infomarketingblog.com/direct-response-vs-general-...

cedsav 17y ago

While I find junk mail material sometime entertaining, I can't help to think that it's designed to sell to a certain category of people. Especially long copy. It's often for questionable products, dubious benefits or almost scams. And while I don't doubt it works for them, I'm not sure at all it would work for my target demographic. I think a good version of 'long copy' is something like this: http://highrisehq.com http://highrisehq.com where a lot of info is packed on a single page, and it's very far from "junk mail" copy.

dpatru 17y ago

I just had a series of thoughts: 1. You should learn from others' mistakes because it's cheaper than learning from your own. (approximation of a famous quote) 2. You should learn from other's successes, because it's cheaper than discovering what works by yourself. (simple variation) 3. Applying mutuality principle: how can we mutually benefit from our mistakes? 4. Why not conduct A/B testing and ad word campaigns together so that lessons learned can benefit the maximum number? 5. How to do this? a) The easiest way is just to blog about your own findings and read others' blogs. This suffers from the free-rider problem: you end up doing research for others. b) Another alternative is to form a club where each member spends a certain amount per month on ads, and they share their results. c) Another way is to simply do a lot of Google searches (automatically?) and see what ads are displayed. You're letting Google and the free market do your work for you. This is the e-version of collecting junk mail. You're not being a free rider in this case because your results are being used by others too.

pbhjpbhj 17y ago

I thought he was going to say he was turning the junk mail into paper logs to burn - free fuel.

jsackmann 17y ago

Maybe this is obvious, but in case it's not: For those interested in really studying direct mail tactics, there are lots of books on the subject by experienced practitioners. I read several of them a few years ago; wish I could highlight one or two as a recommendation, but I don't remember. As noted in some of the other comments, these folks test everything, right down to the color of the envelope and the size of the signature at the bottom of the letter. It's also fascinating to read war stories. IIRC, there's a direct mail letter for Reader's Digest (or some similar publication) that was most effective for decades. They kept testing it against other contenders, but that same letter kept getting results.

moron4hire 17y ago

In my personal lexicon, I call this the "Waffle House Method". WH values efficiency above all else. They are all-cash stores, with an occasional ATM machine in the store. Every single element of the store has an efficiency study behind it. But the single biggest efficiency point they cover is complete failure to do any market research. Instead, they just build a store on the same block as a McDonald's. If McDonald's did the market research to say that this location was good, then it's good enough for WH too. I use the WH Method for my choices on fashion (when I bother to care about fashion): I pick a celebrity who looks rather well put together and similar to me in build, reason that celebrities are required to spend an inordinate amount of attention on fashion in order to maintain their marketability, and then wear/style however they do. It works out rather well. I've also used the WH Method for doing basic site design in a documentation-happy environment. "Look, every other site with a similar purpose outside your market does their site design like this. You should have those elements as well, or users will be confused."

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

mikasissonen 17y ago

I took a direct marketing copywriting course six or seven years ago that suggested the same, and I've been pinching examples from my junk mail ever since. In fact, it looks like the course is still running - and even taught by the same instructor I had (John Friesen). If you're in the Vancouver area, I'd recommend it: http://www.sfu.ca/wp/dmc.htm http://www.sfu.ca/wp/dmc.htm The mail he valued most was the stuff he'd get repeatedly, year after year, month after month - since presumably it performed the best. If he only saw one example of something, he figured it was a test that didn't pull well.

chris123 17y ago

Beside junk mail and expensive PPC ads, magazine covers and headlines can be great sources of inspiration, depending on what demographic you're targeting.