The Danbury Mint A new jewelry offer has been tracked from The Danbury Mint, a mailer better known for limited-edition collectibles like figurines, ornaments and plates. This latest 6" x 9" effort promotes the Diamond Fire Ring, which features 36 diamonds set in a 14kt goldband. Priced at $295 plus $15 shipping and handling, the ring is much more expensive than The Danbury Mint's typical offerings,
The Danbury Mint
A new jewelry offer has been tracked from The Danbury Mint, a mailer better known for limited-edition collectibles like figurines,
ornaments and plates. This latest 6" x 9" effort promotes the Diamond Fire Ring, which features 36 diamonds set in a 14kt goldband. Priced at $295 plus $15 shipping and handling, the ring is much more expensive than The Danbury Mint's typical offerings, which commonly range from $29.90 to $135. (Only a few items – like the company's line of cuckoo clocks – break the $200 price point.) The sales letter is penned in a rather powerful first-person narrative, relating the story of the Danbury Mint Director who takes the ring home to solicit opinion from his wife, and she instantly wants to keep the ring for herself. Two full-color inserts lend support to the letter with alluring photographs. Like most promotions from The Danbury Mint, installment billing is offered, here set as five payments of $59 (plus shipping and handling).
Lands' End
Not many catalogs want their customers to take a pair of scissors to their titles, but Lands' End lately encouraged exactly that. The Spring 2002 edition illustrates its "Great Go-Togethers" theme with a dotted line and scissors across the cover model's waistline. Cover
copy reads, "Our new spring clothes mix and match like a dream. Just cut along the perforation and see how nice our Fine-gauge Twinset and Stretch Knit Pants work with the outfit on Cover Number Two." In fact, there are three covers, each featuring a different model and outfit, and recipients are encouraged to cut and paste different combinations. Not only does this keenly illustrate a key quality of the apparel -- namely, its flexibility in one's wardrobe -- it also serves as a fun involvement device. Lands' End has a track record of being especially creative on its "Great Go-Togethers" issues. Last fall, comical photographic pairings of six dogs with their look-alike owners graced the cover in a checkerboard pattern.
Bookspan
Bookspan has recently tweaked its enthusiast book club offers – specifically The Science Fiction Book Club and Mystery Guild -- in an effort to drum up response. In an email promoting The Science Fiction Book Club, a new premium is offered, spurred by the recent
blockbuster movie The Lord of the Rings. Though not an official tie-in with the film, the club offers (with membership) a copy of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, a book compiling the fantasy epic's three volumes. The introductory offer to the negative option club is set at $1 for five books with a future purchase requirement of four more titles in two years. Mystery Guild, on the other hand, experiments with a new pricing structure in its latest mailing, a 6" x 9" package. The offer of $12.95 plus unspecified shipping and handling is presented as an invitation to a risk-free membership, as there is no future obligation. This differs from the club's past controls of 99¢ for six or eight books, with a commitment to buy four more books in two years. As an incentive, a choice of a nylon tote or additional book is given. Mystery Guild also includes a contest to win one of 50 Seiko mantel clocks.
The direct mail pieces appearing in Mail Stream are tracked and analyzed by Paradysz Matera, New York, through its online competitive direct mail and e-mail tracking tool MarketRelevance located at http://www.MarketRelevance.com/newsletter.cfm.
