Mail Order Advertising

The sever­est test of an adver­tis­ing man is in sell­ing goods by mail. But that is a school from which he must grad­u­ate before he can hope for suc­cess. There cost and result are imme­di­ately appar­ent. False the­o­ries melt away like snowflakes in the sun. The adver­tis­ing is prof­itable or it is not, clearly on the face of returns. Fig­ures which do not lie tell one at once the mer­its of an ad.

This puts men on their met­tle. All guess­work is elim­i­nated. Every mis­take is con­spic­u­ous. One quickly loses his con­ceit by learn­ing how often his judg­ment errs — often nine times in ten.

There one learns that adver­tis­ing must be done on a sci­en­tific basis to have any fair chance of suc­cess. And he learns that every wasted dol­lar adds to the cost of results. Here is a tough effi­ciency and econ­omy under a mas­ter who can’t be fooled. Then, and only then, is he apt to apply the same prin­ci­ples and keys to all advertising.

A man was sell­ing a five-​​dollar arti­cle. The replies from his ad cost him 85 cents. Another man sub­mit­ted an ad which he thought bet­ter. The replies cost $14.20 each. Another man sub­mit­ted an ad which for two years brought replies at an aver­age of 41 cents each. Con­sider the dif­fer­ence on 250,000 replies per year. Think how valu­able was the man who cut the cost in two. Think what it would have meant to con­tinue that $14.20 ad with­out any key on returns.

Yet there are thou­sands of adver­tis­ers who do just that. They spend large sums on a guess. And they are doing what that man did — pay­ing for sales from 2 to 35 times what they need cost. A study of mail order adver­tis­ing reveals many things worth learn­ing. It is a prime sub­ject for study. In the first place, if con­tin­ued, you know what pays. It is there­fore good adver­tis­ing as applied to that line.

The prob­a­bil­ity is that the ad has resulted from many traced com­par­isons. It is there­fore the best adver­tis­ing, not the­o­ret­i­cal. It will not deceive you. The lessons it teaches are prin­ci­ples which wise men apply to all advertising.

Mail order adver­tis­ing is always set in small type. It is usu­ally set in smaller type than ordi­nary print. That econ­omy of space is uni­ver­sal. So it proves con­clu­sively that larger type does not pay. Remem­ber that when you dou­ble your space by dou­bling the size of your type. The ad may still be prof­itable. But traced returns have proved that you pay­ing a dou­ble price for sales.

In mail order adver­tis­ing there is no waste space. Every line is uti­lized. Bor­ders are rarely used. Remem­ber that when you are tempted to leave valu­able space unoccupied.

In mail order adver­tis­ing there is no palaver. There is no boast­ing, save of super-​​service. There is no use­less talk. There is no attempt at enter­tain­ment. There is noth­ing to amuse. Mail order adver­tis­ing usu­ally con­tains a coupon. That is there to cut out as a reminder of some­thing the reader has decided to do.

Mail order adver­tis­ers know that read­ers for­get. They are read­ing a mag­a­zine of inter­est. They may be absorbed in a story. A large per­cent­age of peo­ple who read an ad and decide to act will for­get that deci­sion in five min­utes. The mail order adver­tiser knows that waste by tests, and he does not pro­pose to accept it. So he inserts that reminder to be cut out, and it turns when the reader is ready to act.

In mail order adver­tis­ing the pic­tures are always to the point. They are sales­men in them­selves. They earn space they occupy. The size is gauged by their impor­tance. The pic­ture of a dress one is try­ing to sell may occupy much space. Less impor­tant things get smaller spaces.

Pic­tures in ordi­nary adver­tis­ing may teach lit­tle. They prob­a­bly result in whims. But pic­tures in mail order adver­tis­ing may form half the cost of sell­ing. And you may be sure that every­thing about them has been decided by many com­par­a­tive tests. Before you use use­less pic­tures, merely to dec­o­rate or inter­est, look over some mail order ads. Mark what their ver­dict is.

A man adver­tised an incu­ba­tor to be sold by mail. Type ads with right head­lines brought excel­lent returns. But he con­ceived the idea that a strik­ing pic­ture would increase those returns. So he increased his space 50 per­cent to add a row of chick­ens in sil­hou­ette. It did make a strik­ing ad, but his cost per reply was increased by exactly that 50 per­cent. The new ad, cost­ing one-​​half more for every inser­tion, brought not one added sale. The man learned that incu­ba­tor buy­ers were prac­ti­cal peo­ple. They were look­ing for attrac­tive offers, not for pictures.

Think of the count­less untraced cam­paigns where a whim of that kind costs half the adver­tis­ing money with­out a penny in return. And it may go on year after year. Mail order adver­tis­ing tells a com­plete story if the pur­pose is to make an imme­di­ate sale. You see no lim­i­ta­tions there are on amount of copy. The motto there is, “The more you tell the more you sell.” And it has never failed to prove out so in any test we know.

Some­times the adver­tiser uses small ads, some­times large ads. None are too small to tell a rea­son­able story. But an ad twice larger brings twice the returns. A four times larger ad brings four times the returns, and usu­ally some in addi­tion. But this occurs only when the larger space is uti­lized as well as the small space. Set half-​​page copy in a page space and you dou­ble the cost in returns. We have seen many a test prove that.

Look at an ad of the Mead Cycle Com­pany — a typ­i­cal mail order ad. These have been run­ning for many years. The ads are unchang­ing. Mr. Mead told the writer that not for $10,000 would he change a sin­gle word in his ads. For many years he com­pared one ad with the other. And the ads you see today are the final results of all those exper­i­ments. Note the pic­ture he uses, the head­lines, the econ­omy of space, the small type. Those ads are as near per­fect for their pur­pose as an ad can be.

So with any other mail order ad which has long con­tin­ued. Every fea­ture, every word and pic­ture teaches adver­tis­ing at its best. You may not like them. You may say they are unat­trac­tive, crowded, hard to read — any­thing you will. But the test of results has proved those ads the best sales­man those lines have yet dis­cov­ered. And they cer­tainly pay.

Mail order adver­tis­ing is the court of least resort. You may get the same instruc­tion, if you will, by key­ing other ads. But mail order ads are mod­els. They are sell­ing goods prof­itably in a dif­fi­cult way. It is far harder to get mail order than to send buy­ers to the stores. It is hard to sell goods which can’t be seen. Ads which do that are excel­lent exam­ples of what adver­tis­ing should be. We can­not often fol­low all the prin­ci­ple of mail order adver­tis­ing, though we know we should.

The adver­tiser forces a com­pro­mise. Per­haps pride in our ads has an influ­ence. But every depar­ture from those prin­ci­ples adds to our sell­ing cost. There­fore it is always a ques­tion of what we are will­ing to pay for our friv­o­li­ties. We can at least know what we pay. We can make keyed com­par­isons, one ad with another. When­ever we do we invari­ably find that the nearer we get to proved mail order copy the more cus­tomers we get for our money.

This is another impor­tant chap­ter. Think it over. What real dif­fer­ence is there between induc­ing a cus­tomer to order by mail or order from his dealer? Why should the meth­ods of sales­man­ship dif­fer? They should not. When they do, it is for one of two rea­sons. Either the adver­tiser does not know what the mail order adver­tiser knows. He is adver­tis­ing blindly. Or he delib­er­ately sac­ri­fices a per­cent­age of his returns to grat­ify some desire.

There is some apol­ogy for that, just as there is for fine offices and build­ings. Most of us can afford to do some­thing for pride and opin­ion. But let us know what we are doing. Let us know the cost of our pride. Then, if our adver­tis­ing fails to bring us the wanted returns, let us go back to our model — a good mail order ad — and elim­i­nate some of our waste.

About the Author

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