SEO Isn’t For Dummies

July 16, 2008

Direct marketing guru Denny Hatch writes here on search engine optimization.

Even the term scares me! But in essence … how does Google (most importantly) find your website’s most precious content? Another way of putting it … if Google can’t find you (your web content, that is), do you exist?!

Denny’s advice: don’t leave SEO to amateurs … it’s too complex, too fast-changing, and too critical to your online success.

If you get professional advice on mailing list selection, then you’re probably operating at a level where you should get expert help on SEO … in both direct mail and online media, it all starts with understanding your audience. But executing against that knowledge is considerably more technically complex in the internet universe.

Frankly, I’m counting on Roger to "get" this for The Agitator!

Tom

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Bringing Your Donors “Inside”

March 13, 2008

Direct marketing guru Denny Hatch offers his analysis of the Obama online fundraising phenom. As usual, an entertaining and insightful read. And you get his critique of Clinton’s "ringing phone" TV ad as a bonus.

His key point … the cacophany of email messages he has received from the Obama campaign indeed work because they share one over-riding attribute … they bring you inside the campaign.

As Denny puts it: "The smell of stale coffee and pizza dinners along with crazed deadlines and late, late nights practically leaps from your computer."

It doesn’t matter whether you’re raising money online or in the mail or on the phone, if your communications can really deliver that same sense of bringing the donor or prospect inside your organization’s programmatic work or advocacy, you’re on the way to a successful appeal. 

Tom

P.S. Denny claims he hasn’t made his presidential choice yet.

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WARNING: Here Comes the Direct Mail Temperance Union

September 14, 2007

No sooner had we filed yesterday's post reporting that online fundraising may account for only 1% to 5% of total non-profit contributions than our inbox revealed the latest attack on a major fundraising workhorse — Direct Mail.

On top of our stack was a piece by Laura Novak in the New York Times titled “For-Profit Crusade Against Junk Mail” outlining the ambitious plans of one Pankaj Shah to rid the world of “millions of tons of unwanted mail” through his new organization GreenDimes.

GreenDimes, which wants your $15 in return for keeping the Junk Mail Wolf away from your mailbox, is but one of several recent hustles promising to save the environment and us silly consumers from ourselves by cutting off or dramatically reducing the volume junk mail.

Let me clear. I'm prejudiced. Apart from the fact that junk mail helped pay two kids' way through college, in the past 35 years I've helped send hundreds of millions of pieces of cause-related mail into American mailboxes. Direct mail that helped win equal rights for women…clean up America's rivers and streams…free political prisoners…build poverty housing…fight hunger… teach the illiterate to read… warn folks about AIDS and help those who have it…and elect lots of politicians — some of whom even did some good while in office.

So, when I read the Times piece and then checked out the sanctimoniou goals and statements of GreenDimes I felt professionally assaulted. And so should any of you reading this who do your level best each day make the world a better place by practicing the craft of direct mail.

Ahhhh, but then to the rescue… my Hero of Direct Marketing, the Constructive Curmudgeon Denny Hatch with a piece in his Business Common Sense e-newsletter debunking the nonsensical mission and fatuous purpose of GreenDimes.

This is must reading for anyone interested in the history of the anti-junk mail crusaders, the reasons why they inevitably fail, and the sheer hypocrisy (Denny cites Oprah Winfrey,a fan of GreenDimes, who mails lots of junk mail promoting her magazine!) that always guarantees their failure.

Take a look at Denny's marvelous history lesson and rant. You'll quickly come to appreciate why junk mail — direct mail — is the aristocrat of advertising and part of the royal family of fundraising.

As for GreenDimes, according to their website as I write this, they've now had a grand total of 9,556 folks sign their petition asking Congress to pass “Do Not Mail” legislation–including a whopping 28 here in my enviro-friendly home state of Massachusetts.

That's probably the approximate number of lapsed direct mail donors in Fargo, North Dakota.

Go get 'em, GreenDimes.

Roger Craver

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Lessons In Copywriting

August 22, 2007

Beginning with a critique of email spam from the standpoint of effective copywriting, direct mail wiz Denny Hatch winds up reminding us of the most fundamental principles of the copywriting craft.

For example:

  • The letter is all about “You” copy — it's a highly emotional, personal message from the writer to the reader that translates the action sought into benefits for you the reader.
  • Flattery is one of the most proven copy drivers there is — according to one expert, flattery was the key to 42% of all the persisting controls in his mail archives.
    [You've gotten them: “You are one of a special group of brilliant, caring visionaries to receive …” I fell for one in 1970. Written by, you guessed it … Roger Craver. It got me to join Common Cause, who subsequently gave me my first job. See, it pays to read junk mail!]
  • The other key drivers are fear, greed, guilt, anger, exclusivity, and salvation.
  • Always tell a story — since before writing was invented, humans were hard-wired to listen to stories.

It's entertaining — and educational — to see Denny pick apart his spam because it's so poorly written.

Tom

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Know Thy Customer (Donor, Member, Activist)

March 12, 2007

If there's any principle more fundamental to marketing success, The Agitator sure can't think of it. Suggestions welcome!

Knowing your customer means more than operating on gut instinct, wishful thinking or the perhaps dated presumptions of your nonprofit's founding fathers and mothers. It means …

  • First, collecting pertinent data on individual customer characteristics and behavior, as well as research data on attitudes and perceptions.
  • Second, aggregating all the relevant customer data in one unified database. [Not simple, as blogger & nonprofit marketer Katya Andresen is pointing out here in a useful series of posts on the thankless task!]
  • Third, acting on the customer knowledge you develop.

We believe in research. But too many nonprofits sit on piles of data and “insight” they never act upon.

Confess … how many times has your nonprofit gone out and “re-discovered” that you direct mail donors are old, your online donors are young, nobody reads the newsletter, hardly anyone giving you less than a thousand bucks a year can articulate a “brand attribute” of your organization. You probably do this as frequently as you change membership directors, executive directors, and/or direct mail agencies!

And then what?!

One of our favorite direct marketers, Denny Hatch, offers some great advice on figuring out who your customers are, and then acting on that information. Denny believes that catalog marketers are the best in the biz at knowing their customers and optimizing their value … and shows us why. We think he's right.

Roger & Tom

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Your Direct Mail Letter Is A Person

February 23, 2007

In yet another wonderful piece, “What Orson Welles Can Teach Us About Direct Marketing,” Denny Hatch talks almost wistfully about the intimate power of the (well-crafted) direct mail letter.

He quotes at length from freelancer Malcolm Decker. Here's a passage for every direct mail fundraiser to remember …

“The Direct Mail Letter
With the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 and the National Do Not Call Registry, once again direct mail is riding high—the workhorse of direct marketing.

And the linchpin of direct mail is the letter, that emotional and intimate message from one writer to one reader that talks benefits, benefits, benefits.

In the words of freelancer Malcolm Decker:

The letter is itself is the pen-and-ink embodiment of a salesperson who is speaking personally and directly to the prospect on a one-to-one basis.
The letter is the most powerful and persuasive selling force in direct marketing, once the product, price and offer are set. The writer creates the salesman, usually from whole cloth, and you must be certain that this sales representative is truly representative of your product or service as well as of your company.

The letter is likely to be the only “person” your market will ever meet—at least on the front end of the sale—do don’t make him highbrow if your market is lowbrow and vice versa.

Make sure he speaks your prospect’s language. If he’s a Tiffany salesman, he writes in one style; if he’s a grapefruit or pecan farmer or a beef grower, he writes differently. (‘cause he talks diffrunt.) I develop as clear a profile of my prospect as the available research offers and then try to match it up with someone I know and “put him in a chair” across from me. Then I write to him more or less conversationally.

The salesperson in the letter is doing the job he obviously loves and is good at. He knows the product inside and out and is totally confident in and at ease with its values and benefits—even its inconsequential shortcomings—and wants to get his prospect in on a good thing. Here is someone with a sense of rhythm, timing, dramatic effect and possibly even humor—getting attention … piquing curiosity … holding interest … engaging rationally … anticipating and assuaging doubts … and ultimate winning the confidence (and the signature on the order) of the prospect.

The great direct marketers of old knew that they were not writing to dots and blips, but rather to a warm, breathing, feeling person.”

But to get the full flavor of what Denny is getting at, including how Orson Welles fits in, be sure to read the whole piece.

Roger & Tom

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7 Words To Remember

February 14, 2007

According to direct marketer Denny Hatch, these are the seven emotional hot buttons that cause people to act:

    • Fear - the most powerful of all
    • Greed
    • Guilt
    • Anger
    • Exclusivity
    • Salvation
    • Flattery

In a disturbing article about fear, Denny talks about Merck's use of fear in its marketing of a vaccine for cervical cancer … efforts that include pushing laws to make vaccination of pre-teen girls mandatory.

Gee, isn't marketing cool!?

Denny concludes: “If you can scare the wits out of people and then offer salvation, you are on your way to a successful promotional effort.”

In a post awhile back, What Is the Fear Quotient in Your Message?, The Agitator ruminated on the issue of marketing to fear. We hope you agree with us.

Roger & Tom

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The Holy Grail Of Direct Mail

January 10, 2007

Direct mail guru Denny Hatch has written another marvelous piece, this time celebrating two direct mail letters he regards as the best of all time.

All we'll tell you here (link below) is that one was written in the 12th Century, and the other survived as a control from 1974 to 2003, accounting for one billion dollars of revenue for its happy beneficiary. As is his custom, in the course of telling his story Denny includes a bouquet of wise tips for effective copywriting.

Denny's article inspires us to launch an initiative to compile and publish here on The Agitator a library of “Best Ever” direct mail fundraising letters. But we need your help.

We invite you to submit any mail package you or your organization have used or created that you regard as a “Best Ever.” It can be a retired package or something in current use. We're also inviting a few dozen leading direct mail fundraising agencies and freelancers to submit their best performing packages.

E-mail us (editors@theagitator.net) a PDF along with the context or performance results that qualify the package. If you want to share hard data - e.g., dollars raised and or shelf life - terrific. If you prefer instead to say something like “no prospecting piece has ever performed better for our organization” that's cool too. Our readers can judge for themselves.

The Agitator doesn't intend to screen, rank, make awards or critique the submissions. We simply pledge to publish them as we receive them over the coming months. Our goal is simple: provide an easily accessible reference and inspirational library of the best nonprofit fundraising copywriting out there.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Meantime, by all means click here for Denny's story.

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Dumb Luck?

December 13, 2006

Can you “make” luck, or must you be content with waiting for it to happen? And why does this matter to nonprofit marketers and managers?

Let me start with the latter. Most of the biggest marketing breakthroughs are just that … breakthroughs. They happen because someone applies gut instinct against the grain. Not shooting from the hip, but often relying on imperfect information. They gamble and get lucky. No guts, no glory.

I'm firmly in the camp that believes luck “happens” much more to those who stack the deck in their favor. How do they do it? Mostly it boils down to adopting three habits:

1. Lift your head up — if you keep your head buried in the weeds all the time, opportunities — good fortune shall we say? — will pass you by. Make time to take in the bigger picture. Imagine the longer term.

2. Broaden your horizon — head up is good, but not enough. You also need to expose yourself to entirely “foreign” ideas, patterns, perspectives from which you can import fresh insights and provoke new questions. Pursue an interest or two that require markedly different mental approaches and pools of information.

3. Just do it — luck and flux are joined at the hip. You need to set things in motion, not stand by and wait. After all, luck is an interruption of the status quo.

You don't need to buy this counsel from me (though I'll stack my luck up against anybody's). Here's the advice of two guys who've been extremely “lucky” over and over (at least judging by their remarkable standing in the marketing & organizational consulting worlds).

From perhaps the biggest name in management consulting, Tom Peters, here are no less than fifty strategies for finding luck. Three of my favorites: “Ready. Fire. Aim!” And: “Avoid moderation in all things.” And yes: “Race yaks.”

From direct marketer extraordinaire, Denny Hatch, this riff called Tunnel Visionaries on fostering “serendipity” (luck's twin). Denny cites this observation: “Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and discovering a farmer's daughter.”

He calls that “serendipity” … I call it “getting lucky.”

PS: Don't forget to take our “Transparency vs. Privacy” survey. Just go to the Survey box at top right of blog, or click here. Just takes 3 minutes!

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The Decline and Fall of Direct Mail Creativity

August 9, 2006

“The letters are lousy, with the content dictated by lawyers and then created by Neanderthals who don’t have a clue what they’re doing and who are psychologically incapable of making an emotional connection with the reader.”

Hmmm. Just what I was thinking as I leafed through a random pile of direct mail packages that had arrived in my mailbox.

These are the words of Guest Agitator Denny Hatch, a skilled and proven copywriter of some 40 years and a professional voyeur and perceptive critic of the direct mail world. For nearly two decades since he and partner Peggy launched “Who’s Mailing What!” Denny’s been rattling cages – for all the right reasons.

In his “must read” Denny Hatch’s Business Common Sense he tears into the copywriting skills of the credit card industry (lousy!) which last year mailed 6 billion offers and is getting a lousy response.

Frankly, I could care less about the financial services business, but I urge you to take the time to read Denny’s analysis and the case study he offers– a perfect analogy for what’s also happening in the world of non-profit direct mail.

In brief, judging from my mailbox, the Neanderthals are winning. The sector has grown lazy and formulaic—the creative equivalent of the inmates taking over the asylum.

Read Denny’s piece and weep. Better yet, read it and wake up!

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