Tool Box
Issue No. 18 - August/September 2004
Talking Direct
by John Semba
Alan Rosenspan is one of the world’s pre-eminent Direct Marketers.
Recently he visited Adelaide and during his visit he demonstrated the relative importance of the three main components of any Direct Marketing campaign by printing them like this:
1.List 2.Offer 3. Creative
I couldn’t agree more…. when it comes to influencing the outcome of any Direct Marketing campaign the quality of your data carries far more weight than any other part of your campaign. However, I’d like to take it one step further and suggest that the order in which you prepare your campaign should also be as per the numbers above.
You should start out by knowing exactly which segment of your house list, or which rented list, or which delivery method you are actually going to need to use. That way you are able to develop your offers to speak most powerfully to your audience and adjust your creative to maximise their willingness to read it.
It stands to reason, doesn’t it? You could spend a fortune on a great offer and brilliant creative but if you’ve done all that before you’ve finalised your list or delivery method you’ve missed your chance to maximise it’s impact to that particular group. You could even end up being forced to send your brilliant package to the wrong people entirely.
So why is it that so many businesses leave this critical element till last? Beats me!!
Your target audience (the data) des...
