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When you consider Europe's 45 countries and 20 official languages — not to mention numerous cultural, legal and taxation issues — special care must be given when deciding whether to market across borders. Your company could find that it's spending too much and getting very little in return.

Unlike in the United States, where most people speak English and share a common business etiquette, in Europe each country has different communication standards. And so, the number of countries targeted in a direct mail campaign can quickly and easily multiply costs. Adaptation is critical to the success of any marketing effort if a company wants to maximize the resources and money it spends to achieve the kind of results sales and management require to justify expansion into Europe.

Adaptation requires more than just “repurposing” materials.

Can the campaign's content be localized to address cultural differences? Are the visuals offensive? How are direct mailings typically done in the country? How does your company's audience prefer to respond to a direct offer? What about the landing page that leads to your Web site — are you using the country-specific address format for your online forms?

You'll find that a U.S. self-mailer with bold colors and design may perform better in Europe if it's formatted as a business letter and provides detailed information on the offering. In some countries, a fax-back sheet may be more effective than a business reply card.

A great example of effective adaptation is VeriSign's recent Muscleman campaign, which successfully generated leads for its SSL certificate, a Web site security product that encrypts credit card and other customer information. Before doing anything, VeriSign determined whether the visuals were appropriate for each market and then localized the text for each country.

If your company wants to ensure a successful campaign, the mailing must appear to originate from a local business. European customers trust firms located in their country, and show more interest if a business expanding into Europe is truly operating there rather than, say, in the United States. In fact, a U.S. address can actually deter business. Learn to incorporate the local address, phone numbers and currencies into marketing content — and make sure customer cover letters are signed by the local general manager rather than a U.S.-based executive.

Here are a few tips to help your company squeeze the most out of its available resources:

• Use a template to generate copy. By starting with a template, you can localize for each country or region. A good design layout should accommodate text variables so you don't incur new setup costs for each country. For example, German text runs about 30% longer than English.

• When sending a mailer, use an in-country sender address on the envelope, preferably your local company office. The return address gives a firm more control in measuring the quality of the mailing addresses it's purchased. (An added benefit: Your company may even get a refund from address brokers when too many mailings are returned undelivered.)

• When a business provides a URL for additional information, it should use the country-specific Web domain (e.g. TekkSoft.co.uk) and include local address formats on any online forms that users may need to fill out.

• Indicate prices in local currency such as Euros and pounds, not dollars. I was recently unimpressed when I received a German IT newsletter that included a U.S. hardware company's time-sensitive rebate in dollars instead of Euros.

• Understand postal standards for size, weight and printing envelopes. You'll find these differ from those in the United States and in some cases from one country to the next. And don't overlook bulk mailing options. Mailing to three countries within Europe via bulk may be a firm's most cost-effective option.

• Pay for a high-quality mailing list, and prepare to get your lists from in-country brokers. Researching the source will pay off because European privacy regulations limit the ubiquity of this information to a greater extent than in the United States. Be sure to find out if there is a limit on the number and type of contacts your company can make. For instance: Can you repeat a mailing if necessary? Can customers be contacted by phone?

• Consider printing costs. Even with a weak U.S. dollar it may cost less to print in Europe, where production costs can be as much as 20% lower.

With a little advance planning and by attending to the necessary modifications, direct mailing costs can be contained without compromising their impact. By tailoring efforts to individual markets, you can save up to a third of the expenses associated with creating custom campaigns. You'll also use fewer internal and external resources to get the job done.

Best of all, because adaptation delivers results comparable to custom promotions, you're more likely to find the high-quality leads that management and sales depend upon.

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Susanne Khawand (sk@macs-us.com) is vice president of U.S. operations at MaCS Inc., San Francisco.