New to writing copy? Seven top tips to guarantee responses to your direct marketing.

How to increase your response rates – whether it’s in relation to recruiting members, donors, event delegates or customers.

1 Headlines

This is probably the most important piece of text in your direct mail letter or advert.
It will grab the reader’s attention and encourage them to read the rest of your copy. Fail to interest or connect with your reader here and all the hard work you have put into your lovely body copy could be wasted. Don’t just state the name of your product or name of your event. Promote a benefit. Ask an open question. Deliver news. Include all three if you can. But don’t mislead in the hope of getting more people to read your letter. It will only serve to annoy them. Be useful, be specific, promise a benefit and the ‘right’ people will read your mail. (More on how to write an effective headline)

An example of good a benefit headline is: “Free funding publication reveals how to increase your income by 50%”.

 2 What’s in it for me? 

The letter is not about you or your organisation but needs to focus on the benefit to the reader. Starting with your headline and throughout your body copy, you need to state the benefits of your service or product for your reader and not just the features. The reader will constantly be wondering ‘What’s in it for me?’, and if this is not explicit, they will switch off.

For example: Benefit = Become an expert copywriter in just six months by learning from the top 50 marketers in the UK with our free marketing magazine.
Feature = Free marketing magazine subscription.

Present a time-limited offer. Again, these will outperform those letters with no offer or with no time deadline. For example, offer a free publication for all orders received before a certain date. You want to install a sense of urgency into your reader to act now, not tomorrow when their attention will have moved on to something else.

3 Copy length

People are busy. Daily we are inundated with information from emails, direct mail, television, the web – you name it.  Don’t make it hard for your readers to understand what you are selling or communicating. Spell it out for them. Write clear, short sentences. You should try and aim for a maximum of 16 words per sentence or your reader will trail off. Mix up your sentence length.

In terms of how long your copy should be, marketing experts like Drayton Bird point out that long copy almost always outperforms short copy. It’s not how much you say but the quality of what you say and how you say it being the important thing.

4 Language

Avoid jargon – it puts people off. Spell out in full any acronyms or abbreviations. In the voluntary sector, we have so many acronyms that reading a new press release or letter can sometimes feel like completing a hard puzzle – without the fun!  Don’t assume your reader is aware of them. Again, your reader doesn’t want to spend time figuring out what you are trying to say and will probably just give up.

Use plain English. ‘Buy’ instead of ‘purchase’. ‘Before’ instead of ‘prior to.’ ‘Get’ instead of ‘obtain’. Avoid flowery language and get straight to the point, leaving out needless words. Read through your copy and if a word doesn’t add value to your letter, delete it.

5 Tone

Write your letters as you would if you were communicating verbally. Read your letter out loud. Does it sound like something you would say? If not, change it.
Claude Hopkins, the original authoritative figure on marketing, said advertising is just ‘salesmanship in print’. How would you describe your product or service to someone you just met? This is what you should write in your direct mail letter.

Use a friendly, personal tone. You have addressed them personally in the letter (hopefully), so write as though you are addressing your reader one-to-one throughout.Avoid talking in the third person, and instead use ‘we’ and ‘you’ throughout the communication. For example, instead of writing ‘NCVO can help people with their marketing skills,” write “We can help you improve your marketing skills”

6 Call to action

What do you want your readers to do? Book onto an event, sign up to your newsletter mailing list or join your membership scheme? Spell it out to your reader, clearly and simply. “Book your place [online now]”, “call [this telephone number] to book your place”, “send your booking form to [this address]”.Have you included an order form leaflet with your letter? Tell them to complete it and return it – state the obvious (which may not be so obvious to your busy reader) and repeat it a few times.

For instance, some highly engaged readers may not need to read your whole letter to be sold to. Give them a call to action in the first few paragraphs, rather than just stating it at the end of your letter.

7 And finally…

Remember the only aim of your communication is to elicit a response, to drive people to your website or whatever your call to action may be. It’s not all about the page looking visually pleasing, it’s about selling. Measure the return on investment. Does it work? If not, why not? And crucially test, refine, test and keep on testing.

What do you think?

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