Letters to the Editor

Negative Donor Appeals

I was saddened and distressed to receive [poverty relief organization] Oxfam’s latest direct mail appeal. Its letter opens like this:

“Here’s what you won’t find accompanying this letter:

• Address labels that ‘guilt trip’ you into giving.

• An expensive calendar that you don’t need (and we can’t afford).”

It closes with the P.S., “There are more than enough calendars, address labels and other gimmicks arriving in your mailbox….”

It would be a shame to see direct mail fundraising follow in the footsteps of so many people who have run for public office — those who feel it’s more effective to criticize those they see as competitors than it is to operate on the merits of what they believe in.

It’s disappointing to think that Oxfam has found it necessary to discredit some of the most successful such fundraisers — to include the March of Dimes, Disabled American Veterans and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (to name a very few) — in an effort to improve the response of its mailing. It’s ironic that [Oxfam] chose this approach, in that address labels are one of the most cost-effective methods of acquiring new donors and renewing existing ones.

I don’t know of any successful direct mail fundraiser that uses cost per thousand mailed as the primary criterion for evaluating the most effective use of reinvesting donations to raise more revenue. Although they chastise address-label mailers for wasting money on expensive premiums, based on response rates, cost to raise a dollar, and net revenue per thousand mailed, [such premiums] can be a far more productive use of budgets for raising funds. With response rates that can be two to three times those of many conventional packages, address labels can be a much more cost-effective way to raise funds and acquire new donors than the very same package Oxfam uses to criticize this format.

In the many years I have worked in [this type of] fundraising, I’ve found that most foundations work together, in a cooperative spirit of parallel goals. Most all [of them] are more than willing to share both successes and failures with their peers, in order to help other foundations raise funds more effectively. It’s fortunate that most of these fundraisers still base their appeals on the merits of their mission and the importance of their donors’ support, rather than criticize their peers’ efforts.

It is my sincere hope that this trend of cooperation will continue, and that the donor public will reject negative appeals in the same way it has rejected negative political campaigns.
Jill Greto
March of Dimes
Birth Defects Foundation
White Plains, NY

Making CRM Work

After reading DIRECT’s March 15 “Special CRM Issue” from cover to cover, two points became abundantly clear to me: one, direct marketing agencies don’t seem to grasp that CRM is more of a business concept than just loyalty marketing; and two, companies are going to keep losing money on CRM initiatives if they continue to take a departmentally siloed approach.

For CRM to succeed and deliver the additional revenue that this management method promises, companies don’t need to shoot the wad on multimillion-dollar technology solutions — they need to work with CRM professionals to identify a particular area of their business that would benefit from CRM and get stakeholders from across the enterprise (product management, marketing, sales and IT) to support the initiative.

The success of that initiative feeds the next CRM project. Eventually, you get to an enterprise solution. This is a practical approach to CRM, something most people in the business totally lack.

CRM is not a magic technology solution. The more money you throw at it won’t make it work. What makes CRM work is a defined strategy using the tools a company has and building on the initiative from there.
Joanna Smith Bers
Managing Director
DB Marketing Technologies
New York

Thanks for the Memories

Your piece on Frank Johnson (“Frank Johnson: The Way It Was,” DIRECT, May 1) recalled once more that era of simplicity when clients as well as markets responded to traditional values.

Today’s ad person goes (people no longer say something): “Sure, if you can afford to advertise in Time, or on the Super Bowl, you’re like the best. Just grab attention. Dis professionalism, ethics, the idiot customer or the client’s ROI. Gee whiz, we’re a big-time advertising agency. Those dorks should thank Zeus we condescend to use their stupid logo.”

But not to the client’s face, of course. Because there is no client — only some shell corporation run by a bunch of suits.

Speaking of Johnson, one of the most successful DM letters I ever wrote used a Johnson Box to tout the offer — a bunch of free school booster items and a catalog — to heads of high school groups. My client, a rich son of an experienced direct marketer, was working with Ed McClain back when he was the world’s hottest DM consultant. It was no doubt McClain who suggested the box lead in. The letter was only one page, however, beginning “Dear Educator.” But there was an illustrated reply card that served as an accompanying brochure. The response was better than 6% on a 10,000-piece mailing. This from a company nobody ever heard of. My young client called me up and proceeded to bawl me out because his small-town staff was unable to fill all the requests.

Direct marketers now live in a world of anti-media, run by pseudo-companies whose major purpose is to scream so loud and so often nobody can make a decent direct response return. It’s a new challenge.
J.D. Kinney
CEO
Dev.Kinney/MediaGraphics Inc.
Memphis, TN

Thanks for the excellent article on Frank Johnson.

As a copywriter for info publishers such as Boardroom Inc., I learned from it and was inspired by it.
David Deutsch

Nice piece on Frank Johnson. Now it’s going to be harder to convince people that the Johnson Box is named after me.
Grant Johnson
Johnson Direct
Brookfield, WI

Not to beat this Maven thing to death, but there was an irony in your May 1 issue that I simply could not let pass without comment. On the “Letters to the Editor” page, the embattled Phil Landowski writes in once again to proclaim that we are living in a new era of advertising, a brave new world where long copy is dead, short copy and cutting-edge graphics rule.

According to Landowski, this is simply a fact of life in today’s society, however “unfortunate” it may be for “copywriters who had their heyday in the more calculated, analytical and conservative culture of bygone decades.”

Then in your excellent article on the life and times of Frank Johnson, you quote Johnson reminiscing about how the editors of Time and Life used to complain about the unnecessary length of his direct mail letters. When Johnson challenged the editors to try it themselves, “they would write a very literate three-quarter-page letter, and we would very honestly test it, and it would very honestly fail every time.” When did this happen? In 1948!

Even during my mere 25 years in this business, I’ve gone from writing two-page letters to magalogs and bookalogs that weigh in at 60 manuscript pages or more. Get it through your heads, kids! Long copy generally works better in direct response advertising than short copy. Even on the Internet.

The trick is, you’ve got to find someone as talented as Frank Johnson or Tom Collins to write it. And if Landowski is lamenting that it’s hard to find copywriters like that nowadays, he’s right!
Richard Armstrong

The Calculator, Please…

In reading the May 1 issue of your magazine (which I enjoy very much), I saw a curious entry in the Stats column. It stated that 47% of investors are women and 44% are men. Hmmm.

I decided to dash off an e-mail pointing out that these figures add up to only 91% (and the other 9% are…what?), but when I entered the den I saw my daughter’s Siamese placing an order for several shares of Iams on BuyandHold.com.

Never mind. Keep up the otherwise good work.
Jay MacNamee
Bavarian Autosport

A Legendary ZIP

Got a question for Gene Del Polito: Years ago, I heard the origin of the first three digits in the Chicago ZIP code, 606, is from the name of an old nightclub there. Which derived its name from a medication that cures certain social diseases. Seems the number 606 was stamped on each pill.

Urban legend or truth?
Steve Mazzarella

Gene Del Polito replies: I’m sure the assignment was purely coincidental. This sounds to me like one of those coincidences that finds its way into folklore as if it were fact.

Correction:

All of Scholastic.com’s e-mail newsletters (“Three-Part Spell,” DIRECT, May 15) are directed to adults. None are sent to or are intended expressly for children.