October 29, 2014 •Brian Watson
Skilled jujitsu practitioners understand the value of leverage.
Unlike “flashier” martial arts that rely on the use of aggressive attacks, jujitsu is all about reacting to your opponent. Literally translated, the term means the art or technique of “gentle, soft, supple, flexible, pliable, or yielding” – words not often associated with a form of combat.
And that’s because it’s not a typical technique. The overarching philosophy is to manipulate your opponent’s force, using their aggression against them to turn a weak position into a strong one. Students are encouraged to fight like water: always flexible, always attentive.
But what does a centuries-old martial art have to do with direct mail effectiveness?
Simple: the most profitable campaigns are often those that leverage the heuristics and biases of the human mind to craft a message that appeals to – rather than competes with – an audience’s preexisting perceptions and cognitive shortcuts.
Mastering the Psychological Jujitsu of Direct Mail Marketing
Developing a winning direct response campaign is no easy task.
Your mail piece will usually only have a few moments to capture attention, communicate a fundamental message, and generate action. And in those few moments it will be competing against all the ingrained attitudes and beliefs of your target audience.
All humans have biases that inform how we behave, make decisions, evaluate experiences, and engage with ideas – many of which have evolutionary roots that date back thousands and thousands of years.
You could choose to attack those predispositions directly. But that’s a task that’s often really difficult and expensive to accomplish.
A smarter alternative used by many of the best direct campaigns? Use your audience’s own mental shortcuts to strengthen your core message or generate a desired outcome.
Similar to a black-belt jujitsu practitioner using her opponent’s momentum as a counterbalance against their size and aggression, direct response marketers who adopt this strategy tap into their audience’s biases when crafting a message, offer, and call-to-action.
They don’t ignore the bandwagon effect. Or gloss over confirmation bias. They understand that our brains create schemas and shortcuts to simplify and speed decision making and social behaviors. And they use that knowledge to develop a mail piece with the best chance of success – converting a position of weakness into a position of strength.
In the rest of this post, I’ll highlight three common behavioral tendencies and how you can leverage their cognitive effects to create more effective, profitable direct mail campaigns.
Confirmation Bias
Confirmation Bias refers to the tendency of people to interpret information in a way that supports existing beliefs or past choices.
We like to assume that our attitudes are the result of years of experience and objective, logical analysis. But in reality, we’re all subject to the cognitive stumbling block of zeroing in on the information and arguments that conform most closely to what we already believe.
For example, people that believe strongly in one political party are more likely to choose books, websites, and TV news stations that confirm their values.
Confirmation Bias has important direct response marketing implications. As an outbound technique, your campaign’s success often hinges directly on changing attitudes – convincing someone of the value of a new concept or persuading them to make the switch from an existing brand to a new product.
To overcome people’s tendency to selectively interpret information that fits their biases, you need to make people question their pre-existing beliefs. That’s easier said than done, of course.
First, you need to know your audience. What they think, they feel, they know about the kind of product or service you’re selling. And then respond to their attitude with proof that they can understand and trust. That’s where psychological jujitsu comes into play.
Techniques that Work
• “Telling” the benefits of a product can seem confrontational or easy-to-ignore to someone with deep-seated beliefs. “Showing”, on the other hand, gives prospects the chance to form their own attitudes and opinions. Consider giving your product away for free with a no-strings-attached demo or a limited-time trial membership. Google, for example, regularly offers new users an allotment of free credits when they sign-up for an AdWords account.
• Use customer testimonials that provide a template for your audience to challenge their own beliefs. For example, highlight the stories of customers that overcame initial doubts about your company or its products and services. When dealing with an audience that might be hostile to your message, that kind of feedback tends to be more impactful than the typical “great service” pull-quote.
• Provide reinforcement from verified, impartial sources. Even the best-crafted copy can ring hollow if it’s unsupported – especially if someone has a reason to doubt you or your claims. Use industry awards and certifications to help back your argument with proof from an unbiased third-party your audience knows and trusts.
• Offer an iron-clad, no-strings-attached money-back guarantee. Communicating a strong warranty policy is a good way to prove that your audience can trust what you say. In addition, it limits the downside risk of a decision that might go against their strongly-held opinions.
Bandwagon Effect
In the winter of 2008, the Snuggie – in essence a wearable blanket – became an overnight sensation, riding the cultural zeitgeist to sales of over 20 million items within the first year of its launch.
It’s also is a very good example of the Bandwagon Effect in action.
A psychological construct that describes the phenomenon of fads, the Bandwagon Effect explains why trends become increasingly popular the more they’ve been adopted by others. When people make a decision based upon social signals, they often ignore rational information and internal beliefs.
First things first: I don’t advocate developing a campaign that encourages people to act irrationally. Fads tend to take off quickly – as people initially suppress their better judgment to follow the crowd. They also flame out quickly – when people realize that the Snuggie, or the Shake Weight, or the Pet Rock is, well, kind of stupid.
But people are social beings. And when faced with a decision we’re not sure about, social proof can be a powerful resource. Use these ethically-appropriate ways to leverage the bandwagon effect and improve long-term sales.
Techniques that Work
• Build social proof into your direct mail piece by highlighting the popularity of your company. Examples of this idea are everywhere in marketing, from McDonald’s “Billion’s Served” to businesses that tout the number of Fortune 500 companies they work with. And while most of us can’t claim client lists that extensive, providing a short rundown of your most high-profile customers is a helpful way to build trust with an audience.
• Stress the value customers will receive from your product. Thanks to online review sites like Yelp, Angie’s List, and Google+, most businesses will have no problem tapping into a wealth of customer attitudinal data these days. Assuming it’s worth promoting, share the results on your next direct mail piece. Or take things one step further and provide a personal testimonial alongside a more comprehensive review snapshot.
Endowment Effect
A man that mows his own yard politely declines the offer from a neighbor’s son to handle the task for $8.00. That’s despite the fact that he wouldn’t mow his neighbor’s similarly-sized yard for less than $20.00.
Economist Richard Thaler first introduced that scenario in the late 1970s to help explain what he called the Endowment effect – the tendency of people to place more value on things they already own, even when there is no reason for emotional attachment.
In one famous experiment, researchers posing as scalpers contacted students at Duke University who participated in a lottery for Final Four basketball tickets. Students who won the right to tickets in the lottery demanded an average of $1,400 to sell, while people who lost would only agree to pay an average of $170 to buy tickets should they become available.
In fact, people don’t necessarily even have to own an item to be influenced by the Endowment Effect. In a recent study, one group of subjects was permitted to touch two random objects – a coffee mug and a slinky – while another group was not. The group that handled the objects reported much higher levels of perceived ownership and willingness to purchase than people who were instructed to observe but not interact.
The upshot: ownership provides a very powerful connection. Create a feeling of buy-in among your target audience by integrating these techniques into your next direct response project.
Techniques that Work
• Use a trial introductory period as the call-to-action on your mail piece. As the examples above illustrate, sometimes cementing the value of a product or service is as simple as generating initial buy-in from consumers.
• Incorporate product demos as a proxy for the experience of ownership. Interaction is a critical driver of purchase intentions and preference – even for something as routine as a coffee mug. So consider offering a demo as a form of bite-size engagement.
• Use stories. Demos are perfect for creating a sense of engagement. But what if your product isn’t something that can be easily interacted with? In that case, substitute sticky stories and evocative language, like imagine, picture, grasp, or hold. New research shows that detailed descriptions and words that describe activity and motion – such as kick, touch, grab, or snatch – can simulate parts of the brain responsible for movement, not just those regions used to process language.
• Create a sense of scarcity with an offer that’s only good for a limited time or in a limited quantity. One of the reasons we tend to put a higher premium on the stuff we already own is that most people strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains – a theory called Loss Aversion. A person that feels they will miss out on a good deal will be more motivated to make a definitive decision thanks to our ingrained aversion to loss.
• Offer a rebate. Loss-averse customers are more likely to purchase an item if the downside risk is limited. A rebate that enables customers to get back a portion of their investment is a good way to spur action among people that respond to your product, but are still concerned about the potential downside risks.
