The art of great direct mail isn’t dead!
Although you have to shell out a lot of money upfront, a good piece of Direct Mail will still bring a great return for you. A good campaign relies on getting 3 things right – your data, your mailing piece, and the offer.
This is something Lovefilm are superb at getting right, let me explain…
A couple of times a year Lovefilm launch a ‘member get member’ campaign (that means a campaign that encourages existing customers to turn their friends into customers). The data is great because they’re targeting existing customers – so the response rates are going to be good.
Where they get very clever is with the mailing piece and the offer.


We have a very compelling offer:
- Your friends can get 2 months membership of Lovefilm for free, worth £29
- If you get a friend to take their freebie, you (and the friend) get entered into a competition to win £5,000, or some cinema tickets
It rewards the friend; it rewards the customer; it gives the customer a way to be kind to their friends. All that is highlighted in the letter copy.
It’s really easy to get involved:


Not only is the offer very easy to understand, Lovefilm have tried to remove every possible barrier to taking part – it’s really easy:
- There are 2 “credit card” vouchers that you can peel off and give to a friend with all the info they need to get the offer
- Once you peel off the credit cards they remind you that you can use the code to share with more friends
- Throughout the mailing piece the repeat the word “share”, not ‘give’, not ‘recruit’, but “share”
- On the back of the letter they remind you of the different ways to “share” Lovefilm – gift cards, email, social media etc
Personalisation
They have also used a lot of simple personalisation on this piece – the cards are personalised with my name, the envelope is personalised with my name, as is the letter. That all means I’m more likely to open it, and to share the offer.
No space is wasted

As we’ve seen above even the space behind the cards is being used! As is the envelope and the back of the letter.
The clever thing will all this use of space is that it’s being used to promote the offer AND to remind customers of all the great stuff that’s part of their subscription. So if a customer doesn’t want to share the offer, they’re still being reminded of how great their Lovefilm membership is.
How could you use a simple letter like this in your business?