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DM Tips #22 - Musings on Marketing_ Apri April 2003 Published as a resource for your direct marketing work. Depend on FCC for imaginative, results-producing creative work, including direct mail - web - e-mail - ads - more! http://www.fried-cas.com --ininfo@fried-cas.com |
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Dear Friend, ____Spring is beautiful marketing weather! Why, you ask? Because the incredible sunshine makes every part of being alive more pleasureable -- including our daily marketing work. So get out and enjoy. Your salesmanship will be more compelling, your copy stronger and your life more rewarding. I promise!  |
The 5 Most Important Direct Marketing Ideas By Albert Fried-Cassorla Why 5 ideas and not 2 or 47? Because 5 is an interesting number, that's why! Which brings me to my first point… 1. Be interesting. In advertising, there is nothing so unforgivable as being boring. Ouch! Think about it -- you can get away with other inadequacies and make the best of the situation. Maybe your offer isn't as strong as it could be. Your product is an also-ran. But if you find a way to sing and dance before they pull the hook, you've got a chance! Not that you should shout "SALE! SALE!" when you're selling funeral plots. We're talking reasonable here. 2. Think like the customer. A copywriter must be like a playwright. He has to project himself into the character. In this case, the character is the customer. How does she think? What are her hot buttons? Never mind what you think about that camisole top, Herbert. What counts is how she feels about it and whether she feels it goes great with that skirt. And there's nothing like talking to the target market to deepen your understanding. 3. Dream up a great offer. Every offer can be improved. Brainstorm about how the deal can be sweetened. Selling guava jelly? Throw in a spoon and a mini-booklet about cooking with the product. Selling a more complex product, like investment services? Offer a premium such as a high value-perceived prominent investment book, CD-ROM or a video. And do the unthinkable - test your assumptions vs. the actual marketplace with multiple variables. 4. Be convincing. I know that emotion is supreme in selling. But sometimes, I wish advertisers would speak to my intelligence. I know I try to respect the customers' natural skepticism when I'm copywriting. I give them honest facts and figures. Speak to customers' reservations; don't ride roughshod over them. Yes, sometimes we just have to prove it to the folks. 5. Create genuine (not feigned) excitement. Everyone can spot a hyper-ventilating copywriter. I try not to be one, though I may breathe hard from time to time! "Exciting" goes way beyond the need to "be interesting" that I mentioned in the first point. It's the juice that sells. I remember how the copywriter-cataloger Drew A.
Kaplan used to get me so stoked with his DAK catalogs. You could tell he
lived, breathed and enjoyed all the computer gadgetry he was hawking. Drew
spoke of machines that "crushed your workload" and backed it up
with facts. And so I bought an office full of the stuff. That's the power
of creating true excitement! Hard to achieve, but worth mustering the energy. Albert Fried-Cassorla is a direct response copywriter and president of Fried-Cassorla Communications, a direct marketing agency. He also serves as a board member and newsletter editor of the Philadelphia Direct Marketing Association and has won their Best of Show Benny Award. He may be reached at albert@fried-cas.com or 215-635-5189. Find out how Fried-Cassorla Communications has used direct mail, e-mail and other media to achieve spectacular results! Visit www.fried-cas.com -- read our Success Stories on our work for Merck & Company, UNISYS, GMAC, CIGNA, Scott Paper Company and others! Then contact us at info@fried-cas.com to see how we can help you with your challenges! |
Add muscle to your direct response creative work! Let us help boost your response with powerful copywriting and design! Contact Fried-Cassorla Communications, Inc. now at 215-635-5189 (USA) or info@fried-cas.com |
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B2B Book features Fried-Cassorla Scott Paper Scott Paper direct marketing campaign Melrose Park, PA, March 4, 2003 - A section of a chapter in a recent B2B direct marketing book has emphasized a Fried-Cassorla Communications campaign on behalf of a Scott Paper Company product. The chapter section appears in Business Marketing, Connecting Strategy, Relationships and Learning, 2nd Edition by F. Robert Dwyer and John F. Tanner, published by McGraw Hill Irwin. |
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Scott Paper has become a part of Kimberly-Clark. The article highlights the 28% response achieve by this remarkable campaign. For more details, visit http://www.fried-cas.com/Success and click on the Scott Paper story.
DM News online edition publishes Fried-Cassorla
article Melrose Park, PA, March 4, 2003 - DM News.com has published an article by Albert Fried-Cassorla entitled, "Email newsletters -- your relationship and sales building tool." The piece was published in DM News- iMarketing News Daily, and was also featured on the site, DMNews.com. Both vehicles reach thousands of direct marketers in the U.S. and abroad. Fried-Cassorla Communications, Inc. is a full service
advertising agency specializing in direct marketing, electronic marketing,
e-mail, and web design. Since 1988, the company has generated over $220
million in sales for such prestigious clients as Merck & Co., UNISYS,
GMAC, CIGNA, and firms of every size. 03:2 __________________________# # # |
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Roethke of the Raleigh - While spending a raucous weekend at the Raleigh Hotel in the Catskills, I broke away for a solitary walk in the woods. This is a memory of those moments. Theodore Roethke is a poet with a special affinity for nature, and whose work I admire. |
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3 Essential CRM Tips by Rob Keown Challenge: Avoid misunderstanding over what a CRM system will accomplish. Solution: In short, think it out well in advance. The strategies of Customer Relationship Management can be presented in many ways, some of them overly complex. Let's strip this approach to its essentials: 1. Give your customers what they need in a relevant way. Give them knowledge they can use. This can mean products, offers, information, and an attitude of sheer helpfulness. Do this and you will keep customers, which is one of the main goals of CRM. 2. Master the sophisticated technologies. Know who provides what software and services, and how it all can work together. Powerful new systems are coming on-stream all the time. Understand their capabilities and how to make apples-to-apples comparisons. 3. Know your long-range needs and understand your own business rules. Do an exhaustive inventory of both your current business rules and enterprise management system, PLUS your anticipated future. Do this before choosing, vendor or system. If you have certain essential approval processes, customer decision-trees, and other important steps in the customer lifetime cycle,know what they are. Put it in writing. Get vendors to say, "Yes, our system can handle that." Demand proof. Too often, a client's needs are not fully explained. Then the CRM system vendor wants very expensive and time-consuming improvements. Since we are vendors ourselves at MAC Direct, we work with clients to anticipate needs that will arise. This keeps them smiling. For example, for one Alzheimers Disease medication project, we needed to integrate a prospect and customer database. Many media sources had to be tied together. Also, we had to adhere to FDA guidelines. Among our challenges was establishing necessary points of contact, matching it up to stages in the patient's evolution. We needed to know how long he or she had been in treatment, how long they were on the medicine and a great deal more. Each of these data points had to be validated. By working with the client to understanding the entire system, we were able to develop a smooth-running program. You can do the same by thoroughly planning your CRM program in advance. _________ Rob Keown is Information Technologies Manager at MAC Direct. He may be reached at rkeown@macdirect.com. |
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Philadelphia Direct Marketing Association May 15 Meeting: PDMA Day: Philadelphia's most popular
marketing trade show . This year the day will have 50 booths including attendees from all three
of Philadelphia's largest marketing and advertising organizations: the PDMA,
the Philadelphia Ad Club and the American Marketing Association. Lunch will
feature the Benny Awards and the presentation to the Direct Marketer of
the Year, followed by the afternoon featured speaker Lois Geller, President
of Mason & Geller Advertising of NYC. |
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To see photos and read story, click HERE. |
The Virgin Islands have been called "the American Paradise." After our recent visit, I'd have to say: Seems so! We had a lovely 10-day journey to St. Thomas, with an excursion to St. John via ferry. The sights were splendid. Planned right, it can be as vigorous or relaxing as you'd like. Here's my story... |
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We've helped many companies successfully reach B2B and consumer markets with our power-packed direct mail. We base the appeal of our communications on delivering value, not hype. That means results for you. See the Success Stories on our web site, or even better... give us a call! 215-635-5189 (USA) or info@fried-cas.com |
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Humor - Dietary Advice Confused about what to eat to live a long life? Let us clear it all up for you! Just click HERE. |
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To be removed from our mailing list, just write back and ask us to do so. On the other hand, why not pass around the helpful info? We welcome new subscribers! "Imaginative Direct Marketing and Advertising" e-mail: albert@fried-cas.com Discover resources for marketers at www.fried-cas.com ---phone: 215-635-5189 fax: 215-635-0461 © Copyright 2003 by Fried-Cassorla Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. |
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--Musings on Marketing by Albert Fried-Cassorla
