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How Copywriters Can Bounce Back After a Client Messes Up a Direct Marketing Campaign

Recently a copywriter named Chris asked me what she should do when a direct marketing campaign fails. "How do you bounce back in your freelance business after a client royally screws up a DM campaign?"

The short answer is that no copywriter wins all the time. The law of averages in the business of marketing won't support it.

Many factors must combine properly to make a winning campaign, and the degree of your success will depend on the degree to which EACH element is "right on."

Marketers depend on the copywriter to guide them in the creation of the campaign. So the copywriter should first have her pulse on the two most important aspects of any mailing:

1. The list
2. The offer

The list is the most important element of any campaign because if there's anything wrong with it (poorly targeted, old and dirty, etc.), it won't matter how great your offer is or how masterful your copywriting. The campaign will probably do poorly, or fail.

The offer is the second most important element of a direct response campaign. An expert copywriter will make sure the offer is extremely appealing to the target audience before he ever starts copy. In fact, there are many copywriters (myself included), who consider exceptional offer development to be the "secret weapon" behind their winning campaigns.

So setting yourself up for success is the number one rule for creating winners.

But of course, that's only half the battle. Chris said that the venerable Dan Kennedy once told her face-to-face that if anyone was going to screw up a direct marketing campaign, it's the client.

And while one can't lay 100 percent of the blame on the client all of the time, clients do have a way of monkey-wrenching the best laid plans.

In my opinion, many direct response campaigns fall short of their potential because the marketing team is constrained by time and/or budget. Often times they agree with the copywriter's vision for the campaign, but substitute poor offers for good offers, or push copy too fast, or other types of "corner cutting" to meet time or money pressures.

Other less obvious elements may be at play as well. Years ago when I was senior writer for Rosen/Brown Direct, a well-known direct response agency, we were baffled by a syndrome that emerged.

Our unique selling proposition what that we could get the client blockbuster response rates. On that basis we won lots of clients. But when it came time to execute their campaigns, the marketing directors would often put roadblocks in the way of our success. Richard Rosen and I were puzzled as to why.

Years later Richard told me he'd figured it out: Everyone wants high response rates initially, but if you get high response rates, it raises the bar for future campaigns.

It was his hypothesis that ultimately, the marketing director wanted good but not phenomenal success. This would maintain their job security without setting them up for super-high expectations in future campaigns.

What does this all means to the copywriter who has suffered a failed campaign?

First, all copywriters suffer failed campaigns. (You just don't want it to become the norm.) In fact, if you're doing it right, you're encouraging your client to test lists, offers, headlines, and more. Sometimes these tests will fail.

When I promote myself I pretty much offer "guaranteed" success. But that's only if the client allows me to run the whole show...and that means having a hand in list selection, and in creating the all-important offer.

These are the two most important elements of a direct response campaign...unless you're a mature marketer who's exhausted the available lists to test and tested enough offers to know what works best.

Then, and only then, is copy the sole star of the show. So when making promises, make sure you base your expected success on the confidence you have in the three crucial elements of any on- or offline mail campaign: the list, the offer, and the copy, in that order.

But if everything falls apart, how do you pick up the pieces?

In agencies, and more sophisticated marketing departments, a meeting will sometimes be called to discuss the results of a campaign. If anyone ever tells you there will be a "post-mortem," that's what they're talking about. It's a negative term, for sure, and I'll be glad when it's no longer trendy marketing language as I think it implies an expected negative result.

If the client doesn't call a post-mortem, and the results were dismal, then I'll call a meeting to go over every element of the campaign, and offer a write up as to why I think the campaign failed.

This is a very smart step to take, and for lots of reasons. First, you may uncover a "buried" influence. I recall one client who came to me and said "We don't want any response, we just want them to know we exist." To which I replied, "If we're making the effort, why not see what we can get? It doesn't cost us anything more."

When the campaign pulled a 0.7% response rate, the marketing director was disappointed. But when I reviewed the campaign from beginning to end and wrote up my analysis, we were all reminded that the number one objective of the campaign was awareness; any response would be gravy. On that basis, the campaign was then seen as a success.

A post-mortem analysis will uncover weak offers, reveal poor targeting, and sometimes lead to market intelligence you can use in subsequent campaigns. For instance, a back-end analysis of a recent campaign for the client I just spoke about revealed that the extra cost of personalizing does NOT pay off for a segment of their target audience.

By calling a post-mortem and by offering a written analysis of the campaign results, you show your client that you're not a fly-by-nighter. That you believe in your work. And that you're still their "partner."

I've found that the client is usually willing to work with you to make the next campaign more successful, by learning from past mistakes. Slinking away with your tail between your legs tells them that you were in it only for the paycheck.

Stand up to the situation and see what you (and your client) can gain from it. Not only is it the professional thing to do, but it can turn a failure into a learning experience, and provide value for future campaigns.

About the Author

Master copywriter and coach Chris Marlow publishes a free ezine for copywriters who want to quickly build a profitable business. Visit:


Short Review on online marketing course
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online marketing course Products we recommend
Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want

Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want
Contrived. Disingenuous. Phony. Inauthentic. Do your customers use any of these words to describe what you sell or how you sell it? If so, welcome to the club. Inundated by fakes and sophisticated counterfeits, people increasingly see the world in terms of real or fake. They would rather buy something real from someone genuine, rather than something fake from some phony. When deciding to buy, consumers judge an offering s (and a company s) authenticity as much as if not more than price, quality, and availability.

In Authenticity, James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II argue that, to trounce rivals, companies must grasp, manage, and excel at rendering authenticity. Through examples from a wide array of industries as well as government, non-profit, education, and religious sectors, the authors show how to manage customers perception of authenticity by:

· Recognizing how businesses fake it
· Appealing to the five different genres of authenticity
· Charting how to be true to self and what you say you are
· Crafting and implementing business strategies for rendering authenticity

The first to explore what authenticity really means for businesses and how companies can approach it both thoughtfully and thoroughly, this book is a must-read for any organization seeking to fulfill consumers intensifying demand for the real deal.

Customer Review: Maddock Douglas endorses "Authenticity" as a masterpiece

I've been pimping this AWESOME book to many of my big brand clients - it is a powerful reinforcement of the idea that strategic clarity = authenticity. Iconic, American brands that are committed to "living what they believe," embrace this "Authenticity" ideology - the book illustrates it very well....the reality is that they (the great brands) are a rare breed....most do not leverage the potential authenticity that they have..instead only pay it lipservice....perhaps because they don't know the value or know how to define it let alone leverage it - after reading this book however, they will be well aware - at that point however, its a matter of caring enough to do something about it....if they don't know how, this book can fix it....if they don't care, that's a whole other matter.

Every leader should read this book - it separates the essential from the important. Loved the book!!!! I can see why its in TIME magazine.

Customer Review: Pieces of a thesis

I love the thoughts put forth in this book -- very academic. When the authors apply the thinking, it is pretty strong.



I was looking for a bit more application than theory, but did find this rather though provoking. Not an easy read, though, be prepared.

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The Fiesta Bowl is one of the youngest of the four major bowl games, with its inception in 1971. This game will matchup the Oklahoma Sooners and the Boise State Broncos. Running time approx. 90 min. DVD cover Subject to change.

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The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
"The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life," writes Malcolm Gladwell, "is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do." Although anyone familiar with the theory of memetics will recognize this concept, Gladwell's The Tipping Point has quite a few interesting twists on the subject.For example, Paul Revere was able to galvanize the forces of resistance so effectively in part because he was what Gladwell calls a "Connector": he knew just about everybody, particularly the revolutionary leaders in each of the towns that he rode through. But Revere "wasn't just the man with the biggest Rolodex in colonial Boston," he was also a "Maven" who gathered extensive information about the British. He knew what was going on and he knew exactly whom to tell. The phenomenon continues to this day--think of how often you've received information in an e-mail message that had been forwarded at least half a dozen times before reaching you.Gladwell develops these and other concepts (such as the "stickiness" of ideas or the effect of population size on information dispersal) through simple, clear explanations and entertainingly illustrative anecdotes, such as comparing the pedagogical methods of Sesame Street and Blue's Clues, or explaining why it would be even easier to play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with the actor Rod Steiger. Although some readers may find the transitional passages between chapters hold their hands a little too tightly, and Gladwell's closing invocation of the possibilities of social engineering sketchy, even chilling, The Tipping Point is one of the most effective books on science for a general audience in ages. It seems inevitable that "tipping point," like "future shock" or "chaos theory," will soon become one of those ideas that everybody knows--or at least knows by name. --Ron Hogan

Customer Review: This books stays with you...

I finished this book on 2 cross country flights and haven't been able to stop talking about it since. It's an easy and engaging book that you will want to recommend to everyone.

Customer Review: A simple concept expanded into a tedious collection of repetitive samples

To be very blunt, this is an author whose writing style is enjoyable and one I would consider reading again, but this is not a book I recommend.



The principal behind the Tipping Point is neither new nor uncommon even among average business schools. Gladwell spends considerable time on a subject that could easily be condensed into a very brief commentary. I would go as far as saying that if this subject is new to you, some of the broad reviews included here will offer you enough insight on the subject to save you time of reading the book.



I do not enjoy providing such a harsh review, but as one who reads countless books every month, I can attest first hand that some books are not worth the time. I believe reporting both the good and bad is at the heart of the integrity of these reviews, and so this is a book I have deemed to not be worthy of your time. I give this 2 stars instead of 1 because the author is in fact eloquent and I am sure capable of quality material, just not in this instance.



All the best.



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Dogs Large Scoop Tote Bag

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