Direct mail is still one of the more popular and successful methods of marketing for many companies. It puts your product or service in the hands of consumers where, hopefully, they read it and keep it on the kitchen table for a while—increasing the chance that the consumer acts on it.

With so much competition in the consumer’s mailbox, you have to design the piece for clear readability and quick communication of your message. Tell the reader too much and you risk them not reading the entire piece. Don’t tell them enough and they lose interest and toss it in the bin.

Rather than go into all the best practices of designing direct mail, I thought I would share my thoughts on a direct mail piece I received recently.

Bad direct mail

Make it difficult

I received the piece you see in the photo above. It’s a complete gimmick piece from a local Honda dealership with a key that is guaranteed to be a winner, IF it unlocks the $1 million bucks. I just have to bring it in to the dealership. I’m not sure how it’s guaranteed to be a winner only IF it unlocks the prize. But wait, there’s more. If the VIN number on the reverse side of the mailer matches the completely nonexistent VIN number at the dealership, I can also win an Android Tablet PC. Wow. How could I not resist not one, but two offers?

For whatever reason, I decided to open this one. So I hopped in my new car and drove down to my local fire station to borrow their “Jaws of Life” to get the Blister Pack open. That’s right. Honda decided that the best way to get me to read their mailer was to encase it in the most difficult packaging to open known to mankind.

Choose your audience randomly

Maybe you missed it in the previous paragraph, but I have a new car. I just got it less than six months ago. What’s so bad about that? I had my previous car (a Honda, no less) for five years. Every other car maker knew this, because they were all sending me direct mail pieces on a weekly basis back when I was looking for the new car. You can rent mailing lists of people who’s car is nearing the end of its payment or lease period. Why they chose to wait six months when they themselves knew that I was a current customer and that my last payment was coming up is beyond me.

Back to the mailer. On the outside, Honda chose to rely on stupid gimmicks to get me to open the piece. Putting aside the Blister Pack, this type of gimmick may have worked 20+ years ago, but consumers are smarter than this now.

Give the viewer no reason to read it

When I finally got the piece open, they offered me still less of a reason to visit the dealership. More fluffy text notifying me of how lucky I’ll be if I just bring the key into the dealership. Nothing about any sort of deals they could offer me, no rebate offers, no free T-shirt just for test-driving a car. Nothing. Ok, but how about something about your cars, I thought. Nope. Nothing there either. They knew what kind of car I had, so they could have made an educated guess and told me about one or two similar cars that I could upgrade to, and possibly share with me the latest bells and whistles on the cars. But they decided the key to selling me a car was literally a fake key.

I eventually ended up buying a Ford Escape. I had never in my life considered a Ford, but they had sent me a nice mailer right at the time I was deciding to rid myself of the Honda Civic Hybrid I had and upgrade to a cross-over/mini-SUV. How they knew this is beyond me, and it was probably a complete guess. But the small booklet mailer they sent me had a few photos of the interior and exterior of the Escape, a brief list of features of the vehicle that was enough to get my interest up, and some offer that I never ended up taking advantage of, but was nice to consider.

The moral of this story is K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid).

It’s an old rule of marketing that never fails. They knew exactly when I might be looking for a new car, and hit me with the mailer at just the right time. They didn’t rely on stupid gimmicks to get me to open their mailer, instead focusing on their product and quickly and briefly telling me why I should buy it. They told me roughly how much it cost, and offered a phone number of the dealership closest to me. And finally, they placed a link to the web page that offered a full list of features of the Ford Escape (rather than just sending me to the main page of the site).

Know who your audience is. Tell them why they’re product will make their life better. Tell them where, when and how to buy it. That’s it.

And for the love of God, don’t package your direct mail piece in packaging that requires the consumer to rent a jackhammer to get it open!