49-Point Checklist for Beating Your Control
OPEN LETTER
This list is a mash-up of questions I’ve gathered over the years — mostly from Denny Hatch’s Who’s Charging What, Dick Benson’s book, Ed Nash’s Direct Marketing Handbook as well as from my early training at Ogilvy and BBDO which, for me, proved to be great institutions of higher education in advertising and marketing.
List
A recent list history, or results by list for your last few mail campaigns, will quickly answer most of the list questions below.
• Which lists do you plan to test? Are the data cards available? If not, how would you describe your sources? Explain why you, or your brokers, chose them.
• Which are your best lists and why do they do well?—both anecdotally and empirically.
• Which lists have performed poorly in the past. Why did they fail to pull?—again both anecdotally and empirically.
• Have you established any specific list buying criteria? Things like recency and frequency, list size and universe, special selects, hot lists, compiled vs. mail order, etc.?
• Is your list broker available for consultation on the creative?
• Regardless of lists, describe in a few words the individual who is your main prospect (e.g., a working woman, 35 years old, with two pre-school children, rising executive, making $63,000, living in the suburbs, etc.)
• For online marketing, describe as fully as you can the nature of your e-mail lists and the individuals on them. Please provide of list of planned media/banner placements, if you can.
Offer
• What offer do you plan? Provide price and term. Is one of your objectives a new offer?
• Is this your winning (best-performing or control) offer? Do you plan to test this offer?
• Please provide results of recent offer tests.
• What is the objective of this offer? Sampling? Cash with orders? To maximize the quantity or the quality of the initial orders?
• Any premiums, gifts, one-time savings, introductory bonuses, deadlines, etc.?
• What are the payment options? Bill me? Check enclosed? Credit cards accepted?
• Do you offer a guarantee? A free trial? A sample period? Do you accept / wish to encourage orders by telephone, fax, internet?
Mailing History
• Do you have samples of your control mail package to examine?
• What—through testing, intuition or judgment—makes your control succeed?
• Can you provide a recent creative history (package formats / offers / prices / tests), as well as the corresponding profit / loss results history, along with samples of what was tested.
• What has been the focus of testing over the past few years? What has experience taught you makes success or failure?
Online Promotion History
• Can you provide your recent test history in online promotions? Particularly helpful are step-by-step results / analytics (clicks, convert-to-order and convert-to-paid rates), cost data, and corresponding profit / loss results, along with examples of the creative used.
Newsstand History
• What is your recent history of newsstand sales? Draw and sell through statistics per month. Characteristics of top-performing and under-performing agents / locations. Contractual obligations as they influence or limit other direct marketing efforts.
Agents | Other Media | Ancillary History
• Can you provide the results and examples of other promotions that contribute significantly to circulation sales? These might include inserts in syndicated mailings, agent sales, partner programs, etc.
Editorial Product
• Can you provide — either electronically or hard copies — several recent back issues?
• Have you bought a subscription in order to experience your title as a subscriber?
• Any special editorial or event coverage planned in up-coming editions?
• How does the editor describe your publication? How does your publisher or sales director describe your publication to advertisers? Is there a written editorial mission? Is there an SRDS editorial summary?
• In few words can you describe your publication as outsiders see it?
• What is the practical purpose of your publication?
• What are the main features of your publication?
• What are the main benefits of your publication?
• What makes it different, better, unique? Why is it indispensable, exclusive, special?
• Which publications compete for your subscribers? Why do they succeed when they do?
• How would a non-responder complete this sentence?—“The problem with (your publication) is…” If you answered, “the cost,” what’s the next most-likely objection? If you answered “time to read it,” what’s the next most-likely objection after that?
• What are your taboos? What must never be stated or promise?
• Can you provide your publication’s history … how it came to be? Any interesting company folklore, legends, personalities?
• Do you have any third-party testimonials that can be used? Any reader “love letters”? Any famous fans?
• Who or what should one read to learn more about your publication? What’s the best way to know and understand you?
Advertising, Research, and Competitive Information
• Can you provide a current media kit along with any other media mailings that help explain why advertisers choose your publication?
• Can you provide readership studies, market research, or other related materials that help reveal the hidden nature of your readers or market.
• Can you provide, at random, ten recent “expires” or “order cancels” — readers who let their subscription lapse or immediately canceled after initially ordering (typically via soft / free offers).
• Is it possible to talk or email these people informally?
• What or who is your main competition?—seen by your main prospect as well as you?
• What makes your competition effective?
• Is your main competition something other than another publication?
Guidelines, Standards and Practices
• Are there any terms, phrases or descriptions that are off-limits in your promotions?
• What is the quantity and production budget for your mail tests? For your online tests?
• What class of postage do you mail at?
• Are there any peculiarities in your offline or online ordering process?
• What is your project schedule? Who will be involved in the approval process? Who is the final decision maker?
• Anything else?
