Frazer Howard: Why Direct Mail is a Great Teacher

You know, on the whole, there aren’t that many things I’d change about my career. Except maybe turning down that job as a Disney Imagineer 15 years ago. (Seriously, what was I thinking?)

But the biggest break I think I’ve ever had was right at the start. And, in particular, the kind of work I cut my teeth on as a rookie copywriter at Brann in the mid-90s;

And it was writing direct mail for charities. 

OK, so it’s hardly going to give The Wolf of Wall Street a run for his money resumé-wise. And in an industry that’s driven by code and tech innovation, it probably also comes across as pretty archaic. Irrelevant, even.

But the truth is this: I know it taught me everything I know about what it takes to create a brilliant campaign – whether that’s offline, online, in social, experiential… whatever. The joy of the last few years – with the advances in data and tracking – is that you can now take those lessons and push them in ways that you could only dream about 20 years ago. 

For a start – and arguably most importantly – putting together those mailpacks completely focussed the mind on making every sentence, every image, every call-to-action as effective as possible. Not just because you’re raising money to treat a child with malaria instead of, say, persuading people to buy a new hatchback (although, let’s be honest, that’s a pretty compelling argument on its own).

No, the main difference is that, more than any other sector I’ve worked in, you end up knowing exactly how effective your work’s been. To the last penny. Because at the end of every campaign, we’d get Excel spreadsheets showing how much money we’d raised, what our ROI was and, crucially, whether we’d hit our target. There was nowhere to hide. It was brutal. But, Jeez Louise, you couldn’t get a stronger grounding in the link between cause and effect.  

Until now, of course. Back then you could do limited testing, but you had to wait until weeks after the campaign had ended to discover the results. And then another few weeks to take whatever you’d learnt and apply them to the new, improved mailpacks. But today we can tweak and test emails and websites on the fly and find out in realtime which versions are working, then roll out the changes in a matter of hours. Cool.

Speaking of versions, that was another great thing about writing those letters: it taught you the value of personalising your comms. Not least because they’d all start “Dear Mr Sample,” so you were already thinking about the recipient from the word go. It also taught you about segmentation – admittedly, in those days, limited to four or five, but still…

Today, of course, we’re able to be so much smarter with our data that – to take our Tesco Clubcard mailings, for example – we’re able to send out over 12 million versions to Clubcard holders, shaped by their buying history.

But it’s some of the work that we’ve done with Wateraid in the last few years that’s left the biggest impression on me. One of the great things about them is that they’ll go far beyond the ‘one-off donor/regular donor/high value donor’ basic segmentation, Wateraid never miss a trick in populating their letters with details like the exact amount the donor gives to the charity, how often, when they started giving – and all the time, linking details like that back to the positive impact their donations have on the charity.

The result, of course, is that rather than thinking their donation is an insignificant, anonymous drop in the water, Wateraid supporters feel that they’re more than just a number, that their contribution is valued and that they have a real relationship with the charity. All of which means they’re less likely to lapse giving. And all down to a really smart, intelligent use of data. Now compare that to level of personalisation you get on your average bank letter. Yeah. Exactly.

And that’s not even bringing other forms of data into the picture. One of the nicest uses of that I’ve seen in a direct mailpack was a piece created in 2013 by CP Proximity from Barcelona for Comunimals, a new online community for pets and owners developed by pet food brand Affinity.

With a brief to target journalists and bloggers, the agency tracked down those who they found had cats or dogs, then tracked down their pets’ names and used both bits of data to create a press release made from pet food and designed to be eaten by the journalist or bloggers’ pets. The result? Articles in 190 general media outlets and on 80 blogs, equating to around €250,000 of media space from a €25,000 investment.

Then there’s storification. I’ve seen more articles in the last 18 months on why brands should be turning content into brand narratives than just about any other topic. But again, ask anyone who’s written fundraising copy and they’ll tell you that without a great case study - a story with a beginning, a middle and an end – you’ve got nothing.

And of course, you’re not just creating a passive relationship between the reader and the story, you’re offering them the chance to become part of it, to help solve a problem and create a happier ending through their donation. And what’s that, other than exactly the same kind of relationship that immersive social campaigns try to create - like Pereira & O’Dell’s multi-Cannes Lions winning The Beauty Inside?

I could go on. And as my EHS colleagues will testify, I usually do. But if I was going to give one piece of advice to a grad coming into the industry today, it would be this: alongside your Vine campaign for Mountain Dew, find some space in your Behance portfolio for an RSPCA mailpack or a Salvation Army doordrop.

Oh, and lose the beard. Seriously.