Direct Mail “Definitions”
Have fun with John's creative take on these common direct mail terms:
- Bluelines:
- (a) The term for the first-run package "proofs" you get from your printing company, or
- (b) the drug they must do in the design department to make them think it's okay to put graphics behind printed text.
- BRE:
- (a) The business reply envelope provided to customers to make it easier to mail back the order form, or
- (b) a funky French cheese that goes well with baguettes but makes your fridge smell like sneakers.
- Break-Even:
- (a) The level of orders it takes to recover the cost of your advertising, or
- (b) … Hey, no joking about break-even here, Buster! This is serious!
- Bottom Line:
- (a) The money and how much you're making or losing; also,
- (b) the second-most-common patient complaint heard by Beverly Hills plastic surgeons.
- Customer Retention:
- (a) How long you keep a customer after the initial sale; or, loosely defined,
- (b) how long your customer will stay in the bathroom to finish reading your latest promo package.
- Deadline:
- (a) The un-missable, absolute moment when copy must be turned in, or
- (b) … I don't know … I've never really seen one.
- Full Bleed:
- (a) When the colors or pictures on a printed page run to the edge (expensive!), or
- (b) what your forehead does when you can't think of a thing to write.
- Fulfillment:
- (a) Everything involved in making good on your promises, especially the sending of promised premiums and the product itself, or
- (b) the thing you hoped for back when you thought you'd actually grow up to be a poet. And NOW look at you!
- Indicia:
- (a) Postal information printed on every piece that goes out, or
- (b) a small country somewhere in the Pacific where old copywriters go to die.
- Johnson Box:
- (a) A paragraph or so of copy that appears ABOVE the body of the main promo letter, or
- (b) where copywriter Neville Johnson once lived. (He wasn't very good.)
- Lettershop:
- (a) The company that assembles, labels, sorts, and mails your stacks of promo letters, or
- (b) the people you blame when your "brilliant" mailing flops miserably.
- List Broker:
- (a) The specialist service that puts together your mailing lists, from selecting and sorting to deal-making to delivery, or
- (b) the people you blame for flopped mailings when the folks at the lettershop stop taking your calls.
- Merge-Purge:
- (a) The computerized comparison of mailing lists to sift out duplicate names and "dead" addresses, or
- (b) what new employees do at your Christmas party – come together, get drunk, knock over the punchbowl, and apologize to the toilet the next morning.
- Personalization:
- (a) A technique for dropping the customer name into the text or the headline of a package to make the pitch look more personal, or
- (b) the process by which copywriters take every critique of their "art."
- Response Device:
- (a) The card or coupon given to the customer so he can mark down his order, payment, and delivery information; gets mailed back to the seller, or
- (b) cattle prods, whips, knitting needles, and other things used to speed up a sale.
- Self-Mailer:
- (a) A promo package that requires no envelope –
- (b) as derived from the phrase, "What? Does he think the d*mn thing is going to mail ITSELF!" (Typically applied to marketing managers.)
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