Keeping Creative Alive for Continuity Offers

by Hallie Mummert

In continuity marketing, the end game is the take rate, or how many shipments you can get a customer to keep and pay for. The beginning of this tenuous match, however, is all about getting the product in the customer's hands.

Positioning of the offer becomes a delicate matter. Since the initial direct mail package is akin to the first step in a lead generation campaign, how much or how little you tell the prospect about the offer can make the difference. Additionally, the words you use to describe that offer can mean the difference between a prospective customer and a trashed mailing.

When comparing direct mail campaigns from the last decade, an interesting pattern emerges in relation to offer and position. The development of a more savvy consumer along with new sales and distribution models have made an impact on how continuity is sold today.

To keep up with the times, direct marketers who want to sell their products via a continuity model have updated their long-term controls. The areas of greatest importance have been negative option, interactivity and new reply channels.

Turning a Negative Into a Positive

Two factors have combined forces to bring about a change in the way many continuity and club marketers do business: the Internet and a mature market. Companies compete with so many different channels these days, and customers have a plethora of options for almost any purchase they want to make.

Over the years, consumers became disgruntled with negative option clubs for books and music that require them to return rejection cards to stop automatic shipments and invoices for unwanted products. For these reasons, both Book-of-the-Month and Columbia House have launched positive-option clubs in the last three years.

Columbia House's most recent mailing for its positive-option club, called Play, harkens back to efforts from the early 1990s. The 4˝ x 81⁄2˝ envelope package bears strong resemblance to its forebears with a personalized, plastic membership card peeking through the address window and the ubiquitous stampsheets for selecting free CDs. The major difference is in the offer: Now it's 12 CDs for a penny plus a $4.99 enrollment fee compared to eight CDs for free, and the copy pushes hassle-free membership compared to the earlier strategy of playing up the free music.

What's Your Position on Commitment

While Book-of-the-Month launched a positive-option club, called Bookspan, it still mails heavily for its negative-option club. In 1994, the book club retired its 10-year control, "Psst … don't tell your friends," for a more modern package. The old control, written by Bill Keisler, kept its message short and sweet with a soft offer of four books for $1 each and no further commitment. The whole package whispers "no obligation" over and over to entice prospects to respond, and speaks to them as if they are a special group singled out for this offer.

The current six-year control softens up even more with an offer of five books for $1 altogether, plus a premium for response. The new copy platform doesn't softshoe around the subject of commitment; prospects are told upfront that they will need to buy four books in two years to fulfill their membership requirement. However, the benefits of being a member increase, too. Now members get a free book with every six regular purchases.

Upping the Level of Involvement

Time-Life and International Masters Publishers (IMP) have been big on involvement devices in their continuity offers from the beginning. Both companies added interactive creative elements, like response stickers or scratch-off game pieces, to their mailings. In fact, IMP's entire mailing for its card series, including a pack of 12 sample cards, index cards, etc., wrapped in cellophane, could be considered an interactive device itself.

But today's jaded consumer needs a little more persuading. It's likely that IMP's business has been feeling the impact of the Internet; its cards may not be perceived as valuable when consumers can get the same information for free on the Web. To stay competitive, IMP has not only been testing envelope mailings against its signature card packs, but also re-vamping its product lines to include CDs. Customers still get the card series, but the CDs enhance the information by making the delivery interactive, quick and targeted.

For its "Our American Century" book series, Time-Life has taken the customer survey that's usually an upfront interaction device included in the prospect mailing and shifted it to the fulfillment stage. Prospects who reply to the offer for the first book in the series get a survey with their shipment and the promise of two premiums for their input. One of the gifts is a collector's set of U.S. coins (what's considered a "greed" premium), and the other gift is another volume in the "Our American Century" book series (an editorial premium). Of course, the intended result is that the survey and premiums will draw these new customers into the series and pave the way for the all-important second sale.

RSVP—21st Century-Style

It used to be that choice was bad; give the consumer options, and you gave them too much to think about. When it comes to response in the '00s, choice appears to be the better strategy.

For example, most of the continuity marketers give prospects the option to reply via mail, toll-free phone or the Web. Time-Life and IMP require mailed responses, as their sticker tokens for "Fast Fifty" premiums wouldn't carry much weight otherwise.

But Gevalia Kaffe doesn't let that detail slow it down. Its updated version of its long-term control that offers a free coffeemaker as the premium for accepting shipments of coffee relies heavily on choice. Prospects can place stickers on the reply form to indicate their choice of color for their free coffeemaker and their choice of 17 different coffee blends for their trial shipment. They can also choose to give the stickers to their kids to play with and respond by phone or the Web.

Of course, both Book-of-the-Month Club and Columbia House give their prospects as many response methods as possible. Since wide selection is one of the reasons consumers flock to online music and book retailers' sites, both clubs can offer their entire inventory of titles online and use their direct mail offers to drive interested prospects to their site.

Continuity marketers can survive in the 21st century, as long as they understand that the customer wants to be in the driver's seat.

Hallie Mummert is editor of the newsletter Inside Direct Mail. She can be reached at (215) 238-5437.