Citi aspires to list fail

I received this email from Citi today, reminding me that I still have the opportunity to spend enough on my Hilton HHonors Reserve Visa Signature Card to achieve Diamond status in the Hilton HHonors program.  However I met the spend level. 

This Fail for List might be forgivable if I recently met the threshold.  After all, there is a lag time between when an action takes place and customer's information is updated as there is between when a list is pulled and used for direct correspondence.  However I met the spend requirement in March -- a full 5 months ago.

Lesson: Be sure your contact list is based on accurate information.






Disclosure: I used to work in Citi's Bankcard group, although I was not involved with the HHonors credit card portfolio.

Not So Free Parking at Newark Airport

Solicitation email

This email offering a free day of parking is a Fail for Creative. 

The email subject line reads “Get 1 Day Free at EWR & JFK”. The content of the email also touts enjoying “1 day of free parking at Newark Liberty & JFK airports!” It is not until the reader prints the coupon that he or she discovers that the free day has strings attached. The customer must park at the airport for 3 or 5 days to obtain the benefit of the free day.

Coupons with conditions

Ideally, the headline of the email should include the contingency of the offer, i.e., “Get 1 Day Free at EWR & JFK when you park 5 days.” If not, then the body of the email should include an adequate disclosure or at least reference the contingency of the offer, i.e., “See coupon for details and conditions,” “Minimum parking stay required,” or a similar message. But, even in the fine print, this email does not include a mention of the minimum parking requirement.

When a business sends offers where the conditions are not clearly communicated, it not only degrades customer trust and brand equity, it is often a violation of Federal Trade Commission rules.

Lesson: When presenting an offer, communicate the requirements for your customers to benefit from the offer upfront and clearly.

Fine print - no mention of minimum parking requirement

PayPal: Great for payments, Fail for mail

Blind envelopes sometimes offset lack of known brand to improve open rate

I recently received a letter in a blind outer envelope. The only hint of the mailer is the postage indicia from "LFS, Inc." The inside of the letter describes my opportunity to pay for some purchases over time with Bill Me Later® because I am a "Continental" customer. 

This letter has several Fails for Creative:

• Copy is full-justified, making it difficult to read.
• All copy is the same font size, including the 9-line disclosure. The only use of boldface is for required legal copy. This makes the letter impossible for a customer to scan.
• The entire letter is one color, with a logo that appears to be produced on a dot matrix printer.
• The call to action is difficult to comprehend. Is it to request an account as mentioned in the first paragraph, place an order with a merchant as mentioned in the third paragraph, or go to their website?
• The word "on-line" is hyphenated. While this is grammatically acceptable, it isn’t a stylistically common usage in consumer communications, potentially distracting readers.
• The offer is good through "December 05, 202011." A date before the 10th of a month should not have a zero in it, and "202011" is not a real year. Proofread your materials!
• Every mention of Bill Me Later® includes a registered trademark in superscript. Legally, the registered trademark is required only in a company's first mention in body copy. Also, superscripted text interrupts eye flow and should generally be avoided.
• Some of the copy is pedestrian. For example, in the third paragraph the customer is asked to place an order for "an amount not exceeding your pre-approved amount." Huh?
• The letter has a signatory but no signature. This further suggests that it is an impersonal form letter and the company is not caring of the customer.

Hard to scan + Hard to read + Hard to understand = Hard to believe

On the whole, a letter like this will fail to inspire consumer confidence or interest in Bill Me Later. It is a challenge to believe that something is "convenient and safe!" when the sales letter is poorly written and has errors.  Even letters from the federal government look better than this.

PayPal could improve a one-page solicitation letter in many ways, including:

• Adding color to the package.
• Positively branding the envelope as from PayPal, a trusted brand, with the PayPal logo.
• Using balanced and varied typeface sizes.
• Adding a Johnson Box.
• Including subheads before paragraphs.
• Italicizing relevant URLs.
• Not going into detail about why I was preselected, or at least being correct about the company name.
• Using full dollar amounts and avoid decimals, e.g. "$5,000" rather than "$5,000.00".
• Including a signature with the signatory.
• Proofreading lettershop samples and verifying data field formats.

Lesson: There is so much wrong with this solo letter package that the lesson here is simple. Don't waste a valuable brand to send poor mail like PayPal did.

DMH Marketing Partners & Mail America: Fails for poor DMA prospecting

The annual Direct Marketing Association (DMA) Conference & Exhibition is this week.   If you have ever attended a DMA conference you know that your registration information is shared with prospective vendors that have a booth.  And what does a good direct marketer do with a prospect mailing list?  Mail, of course!  (Maybe there is a joke here: What is the best way to keep the postal service from going bankrupt.  Have a DMA conference every month!)

Looking through the pre-conference mailbag, this looks like the year for QR codes and iPad2 giveaways.  Some of the mail has both – a QR code where you could win an iPad2 for visiting a booth or purchasing a service.  

This piece utilizes a contest concept to motivate people to visit their booth.  Everyone is a “winner” of something of value up to $25,000.  The disclosure that appears in white-on-blue mouseprint states that the odds of winning the grand prize are 1 in 10 million.  Given that there will be not nearly that many people attending the conference, it should be safe to assume that everyone visiting the booth will "win" free direct mail advertising.  This legally proper but misleading contest merits a Fail for Offer.

 
Creatively, it is not clear from the postcard who is the sender is -- “360° Marketing” or “Mail America”?  The left side of the postcard includes some explanation of services, but much of the copy is too small to read.

Is the company run by an ant,
or will there be an ant farm in the booth?

This postcard from DMH Marketing Partners is one of the most significant Fails for poor Creative design:

• One side of the postcard is horizontal-intensive while the other side is vertical-intensive.
• The postcard is the smallest size possible with primarily a white background, making it difficult to find in the clutter of the dozens of other pre-conference mailers.
• There is not a clear explanation of what the company does or what services it provides.
• The only Web address on the page is for the DMA conference.  The Web address for the company does not appear.  (Does this suggest DMH does not want to be found?)
• The messaging does not appear to have any alignment with the company Website.
• There is not a compelling reason to visit the booth – no gift, contest, person to meet, or topic to discuss other than the vague opportunity to increase responses.
• As a woman in my office put it, “That bug is just creepy.” 

The marching bugs in the background did not scan well.

Lessons:

1. Clearly communicate your offer and value proposition.
2. Offer a compelling, honest reason for a prospective customer to reach out to you.
3. Know your competition to develop creative that will be noticed.
4. If you are going to include an animal, use a cute mammal rather than a creepy bug.

Comcast: Sending the same Failed Mail – it’s Comcastic!

This letter from Comcast arrived today. If it looks familiar, it is because it is almost exactly the same failed mail I covered earlier this month. The outer envelope is exactly the same as the first mailing – e.g. semi-blind outer envelope addressed to me “or Current Resident” – so I did not bother scanning it. The letter shown here has the same offer, layout, and body copy as the original letter. The only changes are the respond-by date and response phone number.

This suggests that the original letter was deceptive. The original letter stated “… this special offer is only available until March 31, 2010.” However, it now appears to be widely available for at least another half month. There is nothing wrong with creating urgency by including a specific respond-by date, but stating that an offer expires by that date when in fact it does not is misleading when you plan a second mailing of the same offer. It erodes trust with your customer. An appropriate approach in the original letter would be “Please respond to this special offer by March 31, 2010.” or “To take advantage of this special offer, call 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx by March 31, 2010”.

It is generally not misleading to have a grace period after a respond-by date. For example, if want people to respond by March 31, you could accept responses until say, April 7, because some people read their mail late, don’t get around to calling, or delivery is delayed. What is misleading is when your urgency level suggests the offer is final but you send the same offer with a later offer expiration date.

Let’s assume for the moment that the offer in fact expires April 16 and assume that the rest of the letter is final. Even if the offer is available only for existing customers, including the word “customer” in the close is superfluous. The limitation of “only” does not apply to the availability but to the timeframe. An improved means of closing the letter would be “Hurry! This special offer is available only until April 16, 2010. Call 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx today.” If your manager or legal reviewer is directing you to emphasize that the offer is available only to customers despite having a disclosure, then replace “special” with “exclusive”.

Another Fail for Creative applies for the extra space in the closer between “until” and “April 16, 2010.” Someone did not check the spacing.

Of course, a basic Fail applies for repeating use of the same envelope and letter without material modifications. As explained here, if a recipient does not open or respond to the first letter, there should not be an expectation that the recipient responds to the second one using the exact same approach.

On a positive note, Comcast intelligently used a different phone number in the second mailing. This will enable adequate tracking of raw call counts for each of the two letters.

Learnings:  While it is productive to maintain a sense of urgency, do not mislead customers about when an offer expires. Proofread your grammar and every line in your communication. When resending the same offer, modify the creative from the original version. Track distinctly responses from each sales communication.

AT&T & Comcast: Two Bundles, One Impersonal Fail

Fail: Creative
These two solo mail cross-sell packages recently arrived at the same home a couple days apart from each other. The recipient has Comcast for cable service and AT&T for landline phone service and internet. This person has a different company for mobile phone service.

The letter from AT&T is stamped. The return address on the back includes the company name and logo. The letter inside also includes the logo and is addressed personally to the recipient.

I reviewed fails of a similar creative package from AT&T -- selling multiple products in one letter and other creative missteps -- but what AT&T does right with their mail is they recognize the value of their brand, leveraging their customer relationship, and addressing the relationship. Since my review of AT&T's second fail, AT&T improved the letter creatively by personalizing the signature and reinforcing a call to action in the postscript. Overall, the letter feels personal.

The strong aspects of AT&T’s letter highlight the Fails from Comcast:

• The envelope return address does not include the company name. This is often referred to as a “blind envelope”, because the recipient is blind to the identity of the sender until the mail is opened. It is a common and sometimes sensible tactic in an acquisitions mailing. However, the postage indicia includes the company name. If Comcast truly intended to have a blind mailing, then the postage indicia could have used a permit number -- or better yet, use a stamp. The result of an incomplete use of this tactic is that the outer envelope is a double-fail: one for not including Comcast in the return address when mailing to a current customer (he would have opened it anyway), and a second fail to including it in the indicia. This suggests that Comcast believes it’s brand equity is negative but is not willing to take a couple extra steps in production to completely cover up it’s brand name.

• The envelope is addressed to the recipient “or current resident”. This suggests that Comcast lacks confidence in the qualify of it’s customer list, Comcast was not concerned about production quality, or this was a mass mailing without considering who might already be actual customers.

• The letter is impersonal. It is not addressed to the customer, it is addressed to “Dear Customer”. It does not recognize what services the customer has with Comcast. In this case, the recipient believes he already has Digital Preferred Cable but after reviewing his Comcast bill, he is not sure.

• The offer is incomplete and potentially misleading. For example the bundle of Digital Preferred Cable & High-Speed Internet is $79.99 for 6 months. What is the price after 6 months? Based on the text in the disclosure, my guess is somewhere in the neighborhood of $135 - $150. That does not appear to be a way to “Cut down on your household bills!”

• The tone of the letter is promotional but with needless self-bluster. Phrases such as “we are pleased to offer you” do not add value to the communication. To my knowledge, only the Queen of England has the privilege to refer to herself in the first person plural. Also, being pleased to offer something has no benefit to the customer. (Given the long-term price for the bundled services, perhaps Comcast is pleased because they are offering a potentially bait and switch price.) The letter is signed by “Comcast Houston”, an inhuman corporate entity.

Lesson: You cannot build a personal relationship by being impersonal. It is important not only to know your customers, but to address them personally as customers. Communicate to them as people and persuade them that you want to address their needs.

Allow customers to read the fine print

Fail: Creative   

This fold-out self mailer might be listed on mouseprint for it’s Fail.

The businesses, EAS, appears to have spent a bit extra on printing to include a solid silver color to break though mail clutter. The offer of insulating your home for only $100 is so compelling that it borders on disbelief.  The credibility of the headline is further strained by the reference to “No Money Down / 12 Months No Payment / No Interest Financing".  Hmm, why would those claims be necessary for only $100 worth of servce?  Let’s check out the fine print to find out … What?  You can’t read it?  Well, maybe you can if you have a magnifying glass or zoom in on a scanned image. But the average consumer will not notice and can not read that.

This disclosure* text is in the bottom right corner of the mailer, in white print over a light blue background. The color contrast is inadequate and font appears to be 8 point Arial Narrow, rendering it unreadable.  With a Fail like this, the direct mail solicitation borders on being misleading.  Nearly all offers these days will have some sort of disclosure, but the point of having them is for them to be able to be read.

The piece could also deserve a Fail for creative being heavy on snowflakes while targeting homeowners in south Texas.  It snows here in Houston about once every 3 years.  We care about insulating from heat much more than cool air, even in February.  (As I write this, it is 65 degrees and sunny.)

Learning: Ensure that your disclosure is readable by including the text at a reasonable font size and with adequate color contrast.

* Many people mistakenly refer to small print associated with marketing communications as a disclaimer, when in fact it is a disclosure. According to dictionary.com, a ‘disclaimer’ is “the act of disclaiming; the renouncing, repudiating, or denying of a claim; disavowal” while a ‘disclosure’ is “the act or an instance of disclosing; exposure; revelation.” ‘Disclose’ is defined as “to make known; reveal or uncover” From a Marketing standpoint, a disclaimer is an admission that the headline is false – otherwise why renounce it? However, a disclosure provides secondary but relevant facts of an offer. So the only reason an offer or marketing communication would require a disclaimer is if it was misleading from the onset.

Timing is Important

I modified my original post to add a fourth element of basic best practices for successful mail & e-mail.  Timing is a key element of any marketing communication.  It should arrive at a time that is relevant to the customer. 

With the holiday season approaching, now is the right time for marketers to focus on things relevant to the giving gifts, whether it is a holiday gift for family or friends, or giving the gift of charity for those less fortunate.  Mid-November through late December is not a time to spend limited marketing dollars soliciting customers for low-interest categories such as phone service.  To quote Bob Stone, direct marketing guru and writer of  Successful Direct Marketing Methods, to the best of my recollection, "Once JCPenny has it's first Christmas sale, little else matters."  That sale is typically the second weekend in November.  This year, it could even be this coming weekend.

Likewise, a good time to actively market health products and financial services is January and February.  Consumers are past the holidays, looking at their waistline and their credit card and bank statements.  Many enter a period of self-reflection.  This will be a good time to offer savings tools, higher interest rates on savings and lower interest rates on credit cards.  In recent years, many banks used the first quarter to roll out acquisitions offers with teaser rates and low promotional balance transfer APRs.  (However, the rules changed with Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act, so this may not be the case next year.) 

If you have a great tool for managing budgets or a dietary supplement to offer, it would be a Fail to mail or e-mail an offer now.  Likewise, if you sell gift baskets, it would be a Fail to mail a catalog in January.