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After the mailing was received a follow-up telephone call was made to establish
the recipient’s response to what they had read.

The control group response rate was a little under 1 per cent.
The experimental group buying rate was a little over 15 per cent.
Consider just what happened in this case. Like most of us the experimental group
probably disliked junk mail. Their usual response to it was probably to bin it without
even opening it, or to glance at it and decide that it held no interest for them. But that
telephone call had persuaded them to look out for this mailing and the vast majority
of us keep our word especially if doing so is neither too onerous nor too expensive. So
for starters it is almost certain that more people read the message, but there is more to
it than that. Psychology teaches us that when we do something out of the ordinary we
justify the changed behaviour to ourselves any way than we can. More people read
the mailing, but more importantly they read it with the intention of finding something
worthwhile in it. In short, they sold themselves on the message.
This three-pronged approach costs a little more but, unless you can afford massive
mailings, a 15 to 1 response ratio is almost certainly worth the additional cost. This is
particularly true for those who take our advice and test their marketing initiatives with
small numbers. A few thousand telephone calls will stretch the budget of all but the
biggest spender, but a couple of hundred brief calls, even if repeated, can be carried
out relatively quickly and cheaply.

mini case study

The bane of the mailing expert’s existence is the gatekeeper or dragon. The personal
assistant who dumps unsolicited mail in the bin rather than bother a busy boss with it.
If, and only if, you can get your message past the gatekeeper and into the hands of
the intended recipient can you make a sale. This innovative approach went like this:

n Most PAs in this sexually unequal world are still women.

n Most women like flowers and regard red roses as particularly romantic.

n Romance and mystery go together and are great, though harmless, fun.

This mailing was aimed at chief executives with the intention of getting them to a
meeting to assess a new and exciting concept. The whole campaign went like this:

Step one
A single long-stemmed red rose was mailed to each gatekeeper. It had a gold-edged
card attached bearing no message, only the lady’s given name. The card was attached
by a green ribbon.

Step two
Three days later a gold-edged envelope with an identical ribbon and addressed to the
chief executive arrived in the mail. Inside was an invitation card that matched that
which had been attached to the rose in every way except that it bore details of the
proposed meeting and was therefore larger. The PAs, in the main, went further than

You can buck the market! 151