Keith Wiser eulogises about a new phenomenon in the ever-evolving world of his beloved direct marketing.

Undoubtedly, one of the reasons we are placed on this planet is to learn.

Of course, not everyone has been let in on the secret which explains why we are still making such a mess of things. 

Apparently, one of the things I am meant to be learning, this time around, is patience . . . but I don’t have time for that.

Learning is an iterative process with the overall objective of amelioration.

What that means, in simple English, is that if we keep trying, we will over time get better. This is another secret that no-one has explained to my youngest son in the context of his homework.

That said, all of this stuff about iterative progress may go a long way towards explaining why I love direct marketing. The entire direct marketing business is predicated upon amelioration.

A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of listening to Drayton Bird. He said: “There are only two things you need to know about direct marketing. Rule Number One is to continually test. Rule Number Two . . . if in doubt, go back to Rule Number One.” And why do we test? To make things better, of course!

I have a hypothesis
It’s a hypothesis, rather than a theory, because I haven’t yet proved it. It’s quite simply this – direct marketers are not like other people. I say this not in a bad way but, like Dame Edna, in caring way. While for most of the world’s population the given wisdom is ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, we can’t prevent ourselves from meddling. And while most of the world lines up with the ‘many hands make light work’ school of thought, we rather subscribe to the view that ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’.

That’s to say we are always seeking the optimal solution. Too many cooks in the kitchen would never ever allow for a decent return on investment.
So, what brought on this attack of philosophising? It was our recent, and indeed ongoing, involvement with something you may have heard about called TransPromo.

Another one of life’s secrets is that if you are going to reinvent the wheel you had better make sure it has fewer corners and is extremely well lubricated. And that is certainly true of TransPromo, which is the hybrid name created from two words (Transactions and Promotion) to describe something that we used to call Statement Stuffers. What TransPromo has done is to take the humble Statement Stuffer to an entirely new level.

For some of you, this will be old-hat but in countries like South Africa, and I suspect quite a number of others, this is a relatively new phenomenon. It may just be one of the biggest breakthroughs in direct marketing in a very long time. Let me explain why.

Can you think of any other direct medium that:

• Has a proven open rate of 95 per cent
• The reader spends an average of one minute perusing anyway
• Most readers come back to more than once
• Can be personalised to the nth degree based on known behaviour or high propensity.

If I sound like I am getting carried away, it gets even better:

• The cost of the envelope is already paid for
• The cost of the majority of the paper and printing is already paid for
• The cost of the stamp is already paid for.
   

Double whammy
We have always known that personalisation works. And, by delivering very personal messages through the billing channel (ie your good old fashioned statement), it’s a double whammy. This is like guaranteed sex without having to buy the lady supper first!

Of course, TransPromo was made possible because of a number of innovations over the last few years . . . the increased speed and decreased cost of data processing, coupled with breakthroughs in high-speed, variable, digital printing.

And if all of that wasn’t enough, we then started to see the potential of integrating the basic TransPromo element into other media, eg: SMS, web and PURLs. All of this has to put TransPromo up there with some of the greatest inventions of all time – like sliced bread, guitar hero and nostril hair pluckers.

Before intelligent inserting came along, statement stuffers used a one-size-fits-all approach. Today, TransPromo fully embraces the McCluan philosophy that the message is the medium. This may well, in part, explain some of the remarkable response rates that are being claimed for this new channel to market, with the transactional and promotional content being so cleverly interwoven. We are constantly exploring this new terrain to see how we can create a medium in its own right.

The jury may still be out on the long-term future of mail, but it’s my view that TransPromo will be around for a while. (TransPromo can be totally digital, by the way, but for me the printed version works so much better.)

If you consider all the things that make direct marketing so powerful (such as analysis, segmentation, personalisation, involvement and response measurement), then TransPromo has it all as we continually strive for increased response and reduced delivery costs.