How can you create powerful direct mail to increase ROI?

Your sense of smell is extremely powerful. A scent can elicit vivid memories that take you to your childhood, to the mountains or just about anywhere you have been. Our sense of smell is the most powerful sense, even above both sight and sound. The location of our sense of smell is in the same part of our brain that effects emotions, memory, and creativity. This is the reason we react so powerfully to it.

To harness that power for your direct mail and make people respond is a marketers dream. In order to do that effectively you will need to take the time to figure out how to tie scent to your marketing message. If you create a message and then incorporate a smell that is not compatible, you have doomed your campaign. The scent must be symbiotic, both with the message and the visual images.

Here are a few things to get you started:

• Identify the message: This is not just conveyed with words but also with images.

• Identify the emotion: What are you trying to make people feel?

• Create the call to action: It needs to be very specific and easy to identify.

• Create the scent: Now decide what scent will enhance all of the above and drive them to respond.

If any one of the four is out of whack, your mailer will not get the desired response. So, the first thing to do once you have completed the above is to gather a group of people together (your focus group) to bounce these ideas off of. The group should not be employees of the company. They need to be outsiders who are seeing this for the first time and can give you honest feedback. They can be a mixture of customers and prospects.

Check out these examples of scented mailer ideas:

• Imagine for a moment that you are a company that needs to sell brownie mix. Of course you will put pictures of brownies on the mailer, but the real good smell of the brownies will invoke emotions and drive the action to buy the mix.
• Imagine you are a garden center and want to sell more flower seed packets. Add a floral scent to really pack a punch.
• Imagine you sell a cleanser that gets rid of skunk smell. You can use the scent of a skunk to remind people how horrible it is. I would advise you to use only a small amount. No need to stink them out of their home.

The best part about using scent is that you can use either good or bad scents depending on how you want to spin it. Sometimes the better choice is the bad smell. The reminder of what bad things can happen when people do not use your product or service. Do not be afraid to reach a little with your scent connection. Just make sure to fact check it with other people. If it is too far out there, you may lose the desired effect. To really make the campaign perform well you need to get very creative. By harnessing the power of scent you can take your direct mail campaign to the next level.

If you have any questions, contact us today. We are glad to help!