My simple answer? With outstanding creativity founded on an in-depth, nuanced understanding of the target audience and with offers of such great perceived value that they can't be refused.

My colleague and friend Alan Rosenspan, who has won many of the top creative awards in the direct marketing industry, underscores the importance of the offer this way:

Direct marketing is, above all, the art and science of getting people to do things. Not feel things. Not believe things. Not understand things. Although these can certainly be important elements in your work, our main focus is getting people to act—and act immediately. Consider this: Even the most powerful fund-raising letter, with the most heart-breaking story, would fail if it only made people feel something instead of doing something about it. And the single best way to get significant numbers of people to act is with the offer.
http://www.alanrosenspan.com/recent_pubs/making_an_offer.html

Q) I'm a marketing manager for a nonprofit. Is it wise for my company to look like it spent a lot of money on marketing materials (i.e. really slick design, expensive materials, etc.)?

The common wisdom is no, it is not wise; you don't want to look like your organization has money to burn on “frivolous things” like fund-raising or donor materials. But it also depends on what kind of nonprofit you are or on the objective of the marketing piece. For example, a zoo or an art museum may not be able to communicate value without higher-end design and materials, and something like invitations to a charity event and the event itself might require higher expenditures on marketing materials. You saw the heart association mailing letter in the slide presentation. The complete mail package included a letter, a full-color roll-fold brochure with great photo portraits that required several photo shoots, a two-color reply card, a couple of other elements, and a reply envelope. It wasn't the most inexpensive piece tested, and it didn't look cheap, and yet it proved to generate the most donations for over five years. It had a terrifically persuasive concept of telling the real stories of people while presenting the warning signs of heart attacks and stroke. Some large nonprofits have quite sophisticated marketing capabilities and relatively large budgets dedicated to creating the most effective marketing materials. So the culture of the organization, the expectations of the target audience, and the organization's ability to test various marketing approaches also plays a role.

Q) So you say pictures are not "in". I'm in an industry where they look at our pictures. We have found good headlines and great pictures, get clicks ...

I'm sure your dynamite combination of good headlines and great pictures gets clicks. I don't think I said photos aren't "in" online. I wanted to point out the differing power photos had in print versus online. My point was that the studies I've seen suggest that photos don't have the same power on the web as they do in print to attract initial attention and hold it, and that once seen, if seen, attention then goes back to text or to scanning.

The 2007 update to the Poynter eyetracking studies of news websites says: "In the first eye track study in 1991 (note: of print only), we found that larger headlines and photos drew the most attention. This finding was supported in our study. And larger headlines and photos got dramatically more attention than smaller headlines and photos. In fact, they were the first points of entry in print. But online is different. It's navigation bars, teasers and story lists that get primary attention." (emphasis added)

Here are a couple of more quotes from the Poynter research:

“Now also consider another eyetrack observation of home pages: Dominant headlines most often draw the eye first upon entering the page—especially when they are in the upper left, and most often (but not always) when in the upper right. Photographs, contrary to what you might expect (and contrary to findings of 1990 Poynter eyetracking research on print newspapers), aren't typically the entry point to a homepage. Text rules on the PC screen—both in order viewed and in overall time spent looking at it." http://poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/main.htm

"Poynter's eyetrack studies of reading online found that many web readers were drawn first to dominant headlines rather than photos, that they read from left to right and that smaller type promoted focused reading, while larger type encouraged scanning." http://poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/advertising.htm

You will also be interested in the discussion of advertising and photos and how large photos invite greater attention and clicks. http://poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/photos.htm

Jakob Nielsen's studies of web advertising on many different types of sites say, "… we know that there are three design elements that are most effective at attracting eyeballs:

• Plain text
• Faces
• Cleavage and other "private" body parts."

Plain text is probably the only surprise there!

Also, take a look at “MarketingSherpa's Email Award Winner Gallery 2007: Creative for Your Swipe File” for a lot of great ideas. http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=29889#

But nothing any of the studies says or that I say can beat your own testing and experience. And you have to read the studies carefully. Poynter has some interesting comments on misinterpretations of their findings. Bottom line: What works is what rules in direct marketing.

Q) Are sans serif fonts preferable for e-mail marketing?

My preference is for sans serif in e-mail because readers seem to prefer it. Verdana seems a safe choice in 10 point. Here's a nice article on a test of user preference for typefaces online in various sizes: http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt6/html-email-fonts.htm. Also, you'll find this discussion interesting on what “science” shows or doesn't show about the readability of serif versus sans serif on screen on Marketing Sherpa: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?ident=29921. Next, this study compares 12 different online fonts at the 10-, 12-, and 14-point sizes: http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/41/onlinetext.htm. The findings are somewhat complex, but the bottom line was: "Of the fonts studied, Verdana appears to be the best overall font choice. Besides being the most preferred, it was read fairly quickly and was perceived as being legible." By the way, Jakob Nielsen's studies say sites that target seniors should use at least 12-point type as the default. So you could translate that advice to e-mail to seniors.

Q) What elements have you seen this year that were used by big companies for the holidays that you think were successful?

Free shipping on the offer front. Gift cards in both b-to-b and b-to-c. Postcard mailings integrated with e-mail offers were timed well and relevant, and the ones I saw were themed beautifully. For example, Red Envelope just sent me a post-season postcard asking if I forgot anyone. Nice touch. I thought one challenge could be in the frequency of e-mails. What's too much?

Q) What do you think about using many different types of fonts in different mailings, as opposed to sticking with two to three?

I think it depends on the skill of the design team in direct marketing and skill in designing to trigger response. I wouldn't advise my very experienced direct mail design partners on the subject. But in this forum, it's probably safer for me to say limit yourself to two or three fonts in mailings, while keeping in mind, goals vary and target audiences vary. (Remember the Annie's Attic mailing?!?) For many clients, branding considerations will probably play a role in determining font usage. One hopes that branding doesn't trump readability or what works in direct response in font selection. For example, you want to use a readable font in direct mail letters. Direct mailers would say that it should be a serif. And, in fact, many direct mailers still prefer Courier for letters, which I bet would rarely be selected by the brand police. But a readable serif is all we really need. I love it when clients have sensible direct mail brand standards or I can help them create direct mail brand best practices.

Q) In a letter format, does a bold type work as well ... and does type that is underlined get attention?

Both bold and underlining work to get attention and to help people scan the letter to figure out:
1. Why are they sending me this?

2. Why should I look at it now?

3. What's in it for me?

4. What do I do now?

But you really have to pay attention to directing eye flow when you use graphic emphasis devices like bold, underlining, faux handwriting, highlighting, and so on. Take a look at World's Greatest Direct Mail Sales Letters, by Hershell Gordon Lewis and Carol Nelson, for instance, to see how letters are laid out and how graphic emphasis devices are used by the pros. The book has a nice introduction entitled, “What Makes a Great Letter ‘Great’?" The letters in the book cover a variety of objectives and industries. You have to decide how conservative or how "hype-y" to be for your situation, but there are a lot of tricks of the trade displayed in the samples.

Q) What do you think about breaking grammar rules, i.e. asking a question but dropping the question mark?

In general, direct marketers break grammar rules when they think the rule breaking makes the copy sound more conversational or more like the target audience would talk, and when the grammar rule adds awkwardness to the writing that makes people stop and ponder or causes reading to slow way down. On punctuation, we try not to use periods in headlines even if the headline is a sentence because they make people come to a full stop. With a question, I'd generally use the question mark, but I could envision the case where you asked a question and then used ellipses or an em dash to pull the reader into the next part of the copy. Direct marketers use ellipses to indicate continuation or a pause, not to indicate a deletion in copy. Everybody seems to know that.

Q) Are condensed fonts good or bad for body copy?

In general, bad. Realistically, copyfitting sometimes demands some condensing. However, condensing generally decreases readability in body copy. I like what the Adobe Type Primer says:

"In general, type becomes less readable as it becomes too condensed or too extended, point size becomes smaller, leading becomes tighter, and line length becomes longer … If you find yourself forced to use 6-pt. Helvetica Compressed Ultra with 6-pt. leading, it is time to start editing." http://www.adobe.com/education/pdf/type_primer.pdf

Q) How important is color? Is more better? Q) Are there any specific colors that have been proven more effective in direct-mail pieces? Q) You said red was the best color to use for direct marketing, but what happens when everyone uses red? Doesn't it start to blend in with everything else? Q) Do you have any articles to prove red is a good form of color in design? Q) Do four-color envelopes influence response more or less, given the same strong OE headline? Q) Is a black-and-white piece as effective as full color or spot color?

I feel I answered the color questions a little superficially on the day of the webcast. Color is a dynamic and complex subject. For instance, while spot color may work fine for one situation, in another full color could make the difference. Study the industry and the expectations of the target audience. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer for every direct response channel or marketing need.

I tossed off "red" as a great direct response color and it is. But obviously, it's not the "best" color or the one you should automatically turn to for everything. The study that gets touted the most on the use of color in direct mail and personalization is An Investigation: Direct Mail Responses Based On Color, Personalization, Database, and Other Factors, by David Broudy and Frank Romano, for the Digital Printing Council: http://www.printnet.com.au/verve/_resources/Direct_Mail_Responses.pdf. I also like this report put out by Scitex that includes the results of the Broudy and Romano tests and adds some more context and some information on digital variable printing: http://www.edsf.org/img/BeholdThePowerofColor2.pdf.

When I worked for a public seminar company cutting my teeth in direct marketing, we tested specific colors constantly on the brochures we mailed, and we tested full color against spot color (usually two color), photos against no photos against illustration, again in full color and in black and white. The results differed over the years and by seminar subject. And the decisions on what won got made on marginal cost and ROI.

I'll also share some other "colorful" experiences. I have won with colored outer envelopes and then seen the colored envelope beaten in subsequent tests by white envelopes with the same teaser copy and graphics. A client in California tested a fresh California palette where the dominant color is blue. The accents are magenta, green, and soft yellow. It uses its palette in its very successful mailings and on the website. I once tried to beat their control self-mailer with a predominantly bright yellow background with more heads in red and lost. There were a number of factors that explain why the mailing and offer didn't resonate, but I also concluded that the bright yellow and red were too much off-brand and too out-of-date.

Today, branding plays a big role in color selection for work for a lot of clients. I think best practices are to look at the discipline of direct marketing and come up with a set of guidelines on color usage across channels used for direct marketing that supports both the demands of direct response and brand integrity.

I hope these answers help. Use them with a dose of common sense and, remember, it's all testable.

General references mentioned in the webcast or in these answers:

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox:
How Users Read on the Web
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html
10 High-Profit Redesign Priorities
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/roi.html
Long vs. Short Articles as Content Strategy
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/content-strategy.html
Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/banner-blindness.html

Eyetracking: Interesting results for online design
http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/main.htm
http://poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/photos.htm
http://www.eyetools.com/index.htm
http://www.slideshare.net/coolstuff/poynter-eyetracking-study-march-07
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/070312ruel/

An Investigation: Direct Mail Responses Based On Color, Personalization, Database, and Other Factors, by David Broudy and Frank Romano, for the Digital Printing Council.
http://www.printnet.com.au/verve/_resources/Direct_Mail_Responses.pdf

Books
Type & Layout: Are You Communicating or Just Making Pretty Shapes by Colin Wheildon
World's Greatest Direct Mail Sales Letters by Hershell Gordon Lewis and Carol Nelson
Influence: Science and Practice by Robert B. Cialdini