Lately I have been discussing some of my favorite direct response marketing digital tools and their test results. Direct mail also has some unique tools including magalogs, bookalogs, catalogs, and reportalogs – all are truly new disruptive formats.
Digital marketers can learn a lot from these direct mail tests.
Human behavior online and offline is the same.
These unique direct mail formats are great for promoting your product or service. They showcase the item in a magazine layout, which generates interest in leads and sales among consumers or business prospects who would otherwise ignore the marketer’s traditional direct mail.
When we create one of these formats, we usually test the cover. It has the greatest impact on results.
What we learn from the direct mail test also applies to our own digital marketing campaign in our integrated and multichannel advertising strategy.
Let’s take a look at the results of two magalog test covers I created for one of my clients, an alternative health marketer.
The magalog test was aimed at consumers who were interested in alternative medicine.
Both magalog covers contained the same information inside and both featured a picture of twin doctors standing back-to-back on the cover. The only difference between the two magalogs was the copy on the cover.
Test: Cover A read: “22 natural remedies and space age discoveries even your doctor doesn’t know about!” Below the copy, 9 arrowed bullets each point to a medical condition, printed in bold. Next to the highlighted condition, there is a short explanation of how the product can help, along with the page number where the reader can find more information. For example:
- The treatment protocol on page 6 could make insulin shots a thing of the past.
Cover B read: “22 natural remedies and space age discoveries that could change your life.” Underneath this it read, “Our most far-reaching discovery could help you…” followed by five diamond-shaped bullets that highlighted key benefits. For example, the first bullet read:
- Potentially shorten the duration and severity of a wide range of illnesses.
Take a guess at which cover generated a higher response.
Result: Cover A was a clear winner with 42% higher response than cover B.
This result enabled us to increase response with the direct mail and digital efforts to try another test to beat it.
And it gives guidance to our digital campaign.
With this direction, we were able to…
- Increase response to our integrated multichannel
- Increase response to our look-a-like multichannel audience
If you’d like help developing your marketing and copy strategy, give us a call at 615-933-4647 or email Craig at [email protected]
