CARD DECKS ARE making a comeback. We went through a period in which almost nobody was mailing card decks. Now they’re reanimating themselves.
But unlike the card decks of the 1980s and early 1990s, these become one-string fiddles, with card after card pitching the same wares.
You don’t have to create a card for a deck to know “The Card-Recipient Drill.” You know that drill from the decks that come to you. The average person decides in one to three seconds whether to keep a card or toss it.
Let’s apply the drill to a recent deck, the “Sales & Marketing SuccessDek.”
Here’s a card that invites us to “Cash in on the Health Care Crisis.” No, we aren’t getting $5 a pint for a blood donation; we can be a distributor for a New Health Card that…that…hmm. What does the card do? Aw, the heck with it. Our three seconds are up. On to the next card.
Fascinating! “List Brokers WANTED.” By the FBI? Some of them surely qualify. But this one continues, “Earn $300 or more per day as a mailing list broker.” Eat your hearts out, you guys who spend all day on a 5,000-name test. And get this: “Free Brokership with your first list purchase.” At last, something to hang on the wall next to that 1936 Saturday Evening Post cover!
Oops! More than 10 seconds blown. We’re behind schedule. Let’s grab a batch of cards exploiting the magical word “Free!” and see what we can get.
Here’s one card that really loads up with FREE. On the same card (caps are theirs, not mine): 1) ABSOLUTELY FREE LINK from your Web site to our mall. 2) FREE REPORT shows you how to make money w/your own domain! 3) Need legal advice for your business or family? FREE REPORT tells you how to get it! 4) Use priority envelopes to increase response to your business offers-FREE SAMPLE! 5) Get EVERYTHING in your home and office FREE! 6) FREE REPORT-Learn how to make money on the Internet by e-mailing this proven letter. 7) LOSE WEIGHT-MAKE $$$, GET HEALTHY-MAKE $$$. FREE REPORT! 8) Explosive Opportunity w/ Digital Satellite TV Tech Free Offer. 9) Get $10 of Free Groceries for $1! 10) Get a Free Newsletter from the American Small Business Association.
Whew! Free at last! And that’s just one card.
Lots of other freebies: “FREE CELL PHONE, FREE AIRTIME & UNLIMITED INCOME.” Hmmm. Whose phone did we steal? “Free Leads! Call Right Now & Receive 1,200 Free Leads for Your Business!” One of the 36 categories listed is advertising; yeah, we’re staffed up to handle 1,200 new accounts.
Here’s why the post office is perennially in trouble: “You Can Now Get Free Postage for the Rest of Your Life!! Guaranteed!!!!” Publicity probably comes with this, because if you rob a post office your picture goes up in the post office.
A ton of these cards (it’s a big deck) offer a Free Report or Free Information or Free Info-Pak or Free Moneymaking Info-Kit. Tucked into the deck, along with these harmless invitations, are some curiosities: “FREE BUSINESS START UP! VAXA!”
Vaxa? Is that something like “Shazam!”?
Another curious entry is headed “3 Reasons Why You Should Call Us…”
The three reasons:
1. FREE ENROLLMENT
2. FREE LAUNDRY CD DEMO
3. FREE SHIPPING & HANDLING
If I’m being critical, it isn’t on raw attention-getting grounds, because my curiosity was piqued. A free laundry CD? What’s on it-instructions on when to add bleach? An infomercial on how to top-load? Disaster photos of people who mixed new red garments with white shorts?
The subhead is equally unsettling: “Quick! Who Do You Know That DOES LAUNDRY & Wants to Make Money?” The connection is beyond me. So my negative reaction is based on the card seeming to be out of key with the “Sales & Marketing SuccessDek” it’s in.
You immediately see what’s wrong. The card aims at a target-the “SuccessDek” recipient. Instead of suggesting we can upgrade the washerwoman, why not make this a product pitch? An analysis of the card shows it’s a pitch for cleaning disk distributorships. So an easy switch to both clarity and selling potential would be an approach such as “Every washing machine (and that’s every household) can be a profit center for you.”
What a shame! Before I figured it out, I tried proving the deal by tossing a CD into the washing machine. No problem, though: It was an America Online upgrade.
One more:
What’s wrong with this copy?
SEND UNLIMITED NON-SPAM E-MAIL COMMUNICATIONS
Get a Worldprofit list server for just $399.95/yr. The more you mail, fax and phone THE MORE YOU PAY! But when you’ve got a Worldprofit list server, you can e-mail UNLIMITED communications to…
Right! It’s the sequence, which ties “THE MORE YOU PAY” into the first sentence. How simple the reconstruction would be. Something such as:
SLASH THE COST OF COMMUNICATING WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS!
If you’ve been mailing, faxing and phoning, the cost of reaching your customers shoots up as you communicate with them more. But now you can…
The point of all this is that the marketer who expects the recipient of a card deck to follow his or her convoluted sales argument through a murky mystic maze may conclude that decks don’t work.
No, buddy. It’s your use of the medium that doesn’t work.
Anyway, I have a better deck here. Every card is clear, complete in itself. Let’s see:
I bid one spade.
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