Denny Hatch - The Master of Million Dollar Mailings

With all the powerful tactics the Net affords, who in their right mind would want to spend money on direct mail?

As it turns out, direct mail is still a vital component of every small business marketing program. But how does one develop a strong direct mail program that guarantees a high response rate?

Simple - you consult with the undisputed master of direct mail, Denny Hatch. Hatch's book, Million Dollar Mailings, is the first and last word on the subject.

This 5 pound 500-page monster of a book covers the art and science of creating money-making direct mail - revealed by more than 60 direct marketing superstars who wrote, designed, and produced the most powerful mailings of the past decade.

Simply put, you need this book as part of your marketing education. It's a purchase you'll return to again and again!

A Discussion With Denny Hatch

Denny Hatch is the author of the books Million Dollar Mailings and 2,239 Tested Secrets For Direct Marketing Success : The Pros Tell You Their Time-Proven Secrets.

Denny has been a freelance direct mail copywriter, designer and consultant. Currently, he is a contributing editor of Target Marketing Mag serving the direct marketing community as well as a feature writer for All About ROI.

In 1984, with his wife Peggy, he launched the newsletter, WHO'S MAILING WHAT! out of their home in Stamford, CT; it was based on his massive library of direct mail samples.

To create the newsletter, Denny would read 3,000 to 4,000 direct mail packages a month in more than 200 categories - business, consumer, non-profit and catalogs - and presided over a library of over 200,000 direct mail samples; for a fee subscribers could get copies of any of these mailing packages.

In 1992, his company was acquired by North American Publishing Company in Philadelphia where he continued to publish the newsletter (now called InsideDirectMail), as well as editing Target Marketing and The Directory of Major Mailers and What They Mail. After five years with Target Marketing, the publication was once again highly profitable.

Denny has been featured in a front-page article in The Wall Street Journal, has been quoted in Time, Newsweek, and Forbes and has appeared on NBC's Today program. He is the son of biographer Alden Hatch and nephew of 1930s screwball comedy writer Eric (My Man Godfrey) Hatch.

I was lucky enough to snag a few minutes with him!

Corte Swearingen: Out of everyone I've interviewed, you seem to be the most eclectic; someone that follows their passions no matter what direction they may take. As an example, I see one of your websites, dennyhatch.com, advertises "Business Know-How, Laughs and High Adventure" and displays not only your marketing strategy books, but also your non-fiction books like "Coldcocked - a novel of 7 murders, the media and the law." Before we dive into the world of marketing, tell us about your non-fiction writing. Will we be seeing the next Denny Hatch novel on the big screen anytime soon?

Denny Hatch: When my first novel, "Cedarhurst Alley," was published in 1969-70, only 15,000 new titles in all book categories were published. I got reviews (including one in TIME magazine) and I got movie deals. It was sold to the movies maybe 7 times; no film was ever made. My only souvenir is a dreadful screenplay by Ring Lardner, Jr. (who wrote the screenplay for M*A*S*H). Two subsequent novels were published and optioned by filmmakers. No film has ever been made. This year, roughly 400,000 new titles are being published. Writing a novel is easy compared to getting it published.

"COLDCOCKED" was an itch I had to scratch. It is politically incorrect, rips the media, has a very opinionated protagonists. It's been seen by a few publishers and scares the hell out of them. So to answer you question, don't hold your breath for a Denny Hatch novel to be on the screen!

Corte Swearingen: I credit your book "Million Dollar Mailings" with having to restart my chiropractic visits. I think I threw out my shoulder just picking up this massive volume! I've never come across a book filled with such great advice on the art and science of direct mail. Tell us a bit about the publishing of the book and the time it took to research and write.

Denny Hatch: In 1983 I heard a speech by US News & World Report circulation director Dorothy Kerr who said:

"To be successful in direct mail, you have to see who's mailing what, track the mailings that keep coming in over and over again (which means they are successful controls and making lots of money) and then STEAL SMART."

I immediately started collecting junk mail and in 1984 I launched the newsletter and archive service WHO'S MAILING WHAT!

Each month the newsletter listed 1,500 to 2,000 mailings in nearly 200 categories-consumer, business, non-profit and catalogs.

Subscribers could order actual mailings from the archive. For a fee we would create folding dummies, so they could see copy, offer, design, etc.

This was the first serious analysis of direct mail. A number of competitors have come and gone over the years. Trouble is, they were statisticians, not direct marketers. They did not know the rules of marketing and direct marketing and so could only make mailings available, but offer no help as to why the winners were winners and the losers bombed.

Twenty-five years later the WHO'S MAILING WHAT! Archive is still chugging along even though e-mail and the Internet are the current direct marketing media of choice.

Instead of purely print, the Archive is now online with information about more than 200,000 direct mailings in over 200 categories - consumer, business, catalogs and non-profit.

Included is pure marketing gold - nearly 1,000 "Grand Controls." These are mailings that have been received during three consecutive years and are ipso facto hugely successful. Many of these are instantly available as PDF files for a small fee from anywhere in the world.

In 1991 I was a approached to do a book based on WHO'S MAILING WHAT! and the result was the "Million Dollar Mailings" Book.

Although it is a book from the 1990s, the information is still valid for direct mail and I believe directly translatable to e-commerce.

Corte Swearingen: Tell us about a successful direct mail program you've been involved with and what it was that made the response so high.

Denny Hatch: My favorite program was a subscription package I wrote for Archaeology magazine in 1977. When I got the assignment I had no idea what to write.

The morning I was going start work, I opened The New York Times and here was a huge story about an archaeologist breaking into a burial mound in Virgina, Greece and found the tomb of Philip of Macedon - father of Alexander the Great. It was filled was filled with incredible ancient objects of art in gold, silver and bronze in perfect condition that I lovingly described in minute detail.

Quite frankly, the package wrote itself. I recounted the high adventure of archaeology and how readers would be in on the thrill of this discovery of great treasures around the world and twice a year would be alerted to great archaeological sites they could visit. The offer: send for the current issue FREE! (no risk, no obligation).

The package - which included a 6 X 9" envelope, 4-page letter and 4-page brochure - was control for about five years. Results began to flag and the cost of the mailing was just too high to continue when editor Phyllis Pollack Katz came up with the idea of testing it without the 4-color brochure. Not only was money saved, but response actually went up and we got several more years out of it.

Corte Swearingen: With the Internet, I've noticed many companies de-emphasizing direct mail and spending more of their marketing budget on SEO and web conversion improvements. Are companies missing out by minimizing their direct mail programs? Is direct mail a dying marketing channel?

Denny Hatch: Compared to direct mail - with its average cost of $500 per thousand, e-commerce looks to be very inviting. However, several factors are working in behalf of direct mail. One serious direct mailer just told me that direct mail is very attractive to the 18-34 crowd, because they are so sick of spam that they do not trust e-mail offers. In addition, with e-mail, you are one mouse-click away from oblivion. If someone has been away for a day or a week and the in-box is full of stuff, chances are good your effort will be deleted.

With the Do-Not-Call and CAN-SPAM programs directly impacting e-commerce, direct mail looks better and better. That said, I absolutely believe that success in e-mail depends heavily on having experience - and knowing the rules - of direct mail.

One example: The challenge of getting your effort opened - whether in direct mail or e-mail - relies on the same two elements:

1. Who is sending it?
2. What is the subject?

In direct mail the subject is envelope copy or teaser; in e-mail, it is the subject line. Freelancer Mel Martin-whose mailings for Boardroom were responsible for turning a minor newsletter into a $125 million-a-year publishing empire - was the world's slowest copywriter. He could spend a full week on just the envelope. How many e-marketers spend that kind of time on the subject line of an e-mail? I would say damned few if any. Because of poorly thought through subject lines that have been slap-dash thrown together and sent out, results are minuscule.

In short, virtually all the rules of direct mail hold for Web commerce.

Corte Swearingen: In your opinion, what are the top mistakes business owners make when it comes to direct mail?

Denny Hatch: The late guru Ed Mayer said that success in direct mail is 40% lists, 40% offer and 20% everything else.

Freelancer Malcolm Decker said that there are two rules and two rules only in direct mail.

Rule #1: Test everything
Rule #2: See Rule #1

Based on those two rules, it's not hard to figure out the top mistakes in direct mail.

Corte Swearingen: Tell us about the single most successful advertisement in the history of the world.

Denny Hatch: Late in 1991 I called Wall Street Journal circulation manager Paul Bell and ran some numbers by him.

HATCH: Would you say that the average mail order circulation of the Journal over the past 18 years was about one million?

BELL: [Pause.] Yes, that's about right.

HATCH: Am I right in assuming that the average subscription rate of The Wall Street Journal over the past 18 years has been about $100 a year?

BELL: [Pause.] Yes, that's about right.

HATCH: Is it safe to assume that 55 percent of all your mail order subscribers over the past eighteen years have come in as a result of Martin Conroy's "Two Young Men..." letter?

BELL: We have a lot of other sources - telemarketing, subscriptions as a result of newsstand sales, supermarket take-ones, inserts. But, yes, I think 55 percent is a fair estimate.

HATCH: Paul, one million subscribers per year times $100 equals $100 million times 18 years is $1.8 billion times 55 percent equals $1 billion. If these numbers are correct, the Martin Conroy letter is directly responsible for bringing in $1 billion in revenues to The Wall Street Journal, and is, therefore THE MOST SUCCESSFUL SINGLE PIECE OF ADVERTISING IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD!

BELL: [Long silence. Then in a small voice.] Uh, please don't tell Marty Conroy. He'll raise his prices.

Denny Hatch: Like the mailing for Archaeology, this was a book that pretty much wrote itself. I got it into my head that successful direct marketing required in-depth knowledge of the rules - what has been tested over the years and worked. Many of these rules were inside the heads of the great direct marketers. Co-author Don Jackson and I made a list of roughly 750 people in the industry and I wrote 750 letters inviting them to contribute their favorite rules. We got back about 150 responses.

We made up bunch of categories, saw what was missing and filled those in with rules of our own.

Plus, of course, we did a lot of research in the books and articles of the great practitioners - David Ogilvy, John Caples, Dick Benson, etc.

We were going to call it the "Book of Rules," but guru Axel Anderson said rules are boring and don't sell. Call them "secrets." Which we did. We are still getting royalties after 10 years.

Corte Swearingen: Direct mail testing can be prohibitively expensive for the small business owner. Is it viable to test your headlines and offers on the web and then to roll out the best converting page elements as a direct mail piece? Do successful online offers always transfer to successful offline offers?

Denny Hatch: I would say absolutely. Compared to direct mail, testing on the Web is not only absurdly cheap, but you can do A-B or multiple splits, read results (where people drop off) and make changes on the fly. You still gotta test. But you'll going in with a stronger hand than a cold direct mail test.

Corte Swearingen: What current projects are you working on?

Denny Hatch: Do look for "A Treasury of TAKEAWAYS - Quotations, Rules, Aphorisms, Pithy Tips, Quips, Sage Advice, Secrets, Dictums and Truisms In 94 Categories of Business and Life" from BusinessCommonSense.com.

I am self-publishing this with Amazon.com's BookSurge program and I think will be (1) useful and (2) a lot of fun!