Go Figure: Unlikely Methods for Direct Marketing Success

Recency rules

I've heard marketers say they're giving their recent responders a rest on the theory that these customers have already bought what they need, or they've made their donation, and we shouldn't hit them again for a while. Sounds logical.

But ask nonprofit mailers and they'll tell you it's the donors who just sent in their checks who're the most likely to respond right now to another appeal. And a mail order merchant will generate his highest response rates from a recency select.

It's the darndest thing. But as KnowledgeBase Marketing's vice president/solutions architect Arthur Hughes explains, it's like the corner grocer who knows that the customer who came in yesterday is much more likely to come in today than someone who hasn't stopped by the shop in ages.

A similar thought relating to lists: You'd think a target audience with high affinity is ideal. So if you're selling memberships in a cookbook club, wouldn't a list of cooking school attendees be great prospects? Nope.

I learned this lesson at my first DM job, managing member acquisition for the Cooking & Crafts Club. I was shocked to find that buyers from a women's apparel catalog performed better than cooking school grads. The willingness to shop by mail was more important than an interest in cooking. There's just no logic to it.

Catching the eye is different than selling

It goes without saying that you understand the importance of grabbing customer attention before you can make a sale. But once you've successfully motivated people to read your copy and hear your sales pitch, it's best to lay off the attention-getting tactics.

At that point in the process it's all about your ability to communicate clearly. So, if you look at the principles of typography proposed by Colin Wheildon in his masterful book “Type & Layout,” you'll find all kinds of counterintuitive nuggets:

• Bold type is less legible than standard type. Doesn't make sense (bold is bold, right?), but it's true.

• Red type (or any color other than black) is harder to read in body copy. Hmmm. But red is so dramatic. Who'd have thought?

• Old-fashioned serif type (the kind with little “feet”) is easier to read than clean, modern sans-serif typefaces. To the great disappointment of designers.

I've been fascinated that some of these principles have found their way into academic literature, resulting in books like “Predictably Irrational,” by Duke behavioral economist Dan Ariely, and “Gut Feelings,” by German psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer, which confirm through experimentation many of the counterintuitive ways consumers behave.

As I said, direct marketing may not make much sense. But it certainly keeps us interested.

Have some counterintuitive DM favorites of your own? Please drop me a note at ruth@ruthstevens.com.

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RUTH P. STEVENS (ruth@ruthstevens.com) consults on customer acquisition and retention, and teaches marketing to graduate students at Columbia Business School. She is the author of “The DMA Lead Generation Handbook” and “Trade Show and Event Marketing.”