Having been in the trenches [...]]]>

Unreasonable Clients Do Not Work Hand-In-Hand With Their Vendor Partners. Nothing That Goes Wrong Is Their Fault.

I was on a couple of direct marketing forums over the past few days and at one point the focus of the posts switched over to ‘clients and their sometimes unreasonable demands.’

Having been in the trenches of direct mail for almost 30 years, I certainly felt I had some expertise and opinion on this particular subject.

Mail production is at the tail end of a mailing and by that time, a lot of money and time has already been invested into the campaign by the client. At this point, they have gone through strategy, design, data analysis, board or manager approvals, perhaps even printing.  These various stages may have taken days, weeks or months depending on the complexity of the project.

When looking at the different components of a direct mail campaign, the importance of the stages relative to the success of the mailing usually goes something like this:
40% list
40% offer
20% creative execution

That’s 100%. No more % left over for production.

And yet, the production – printing, data, lettershop, even mail delivery – can make or break the campaign.

Too many mailers at this stage feel that the campaign is as good as done.

And with most mailings, this is probably true. If you are hooked up with a true vendor partner who knows what he/she is doing and will actually work with you, it’s a safe bet that the physical execution of your mailing will sail through to your donors or consumers, as planned.

But when things are rushed in the execution phase, this is when problems can occur and unreasonable demands made. Too many times, it’s up to the lettershop (mailshop) to make up time that was frittered away in the front end of the campaign.

Many times, a drop date to the post office was missed by one hour. Could that ONE hour have been made up somewhere in the design approval stage, or in the strategy meeting? Could the list broker have returned a call just ONE hour faster?  Could the client’s production manager have stayed at work ONE extra hour to finish the project details?

The first problem is: when the job gets rushed,  the risk of mistakes rises dramatically.

The second problem is: whose fault is the problem – the client or the lettershop?

Unreasonable clients:

* Will always say it’s the fault of the lettershop, even though the lettershop had to skip their usual quality control procedures to get the job out on time!

* Will always demand a post-mortem meeting to discuss how and why the lettershop screwed up!

* Will always tell only half the story (their half) to their manager!

* Will always want compensation for something that could’ve been avoided by the client!

* Will always ‘nickel-and-dime’ the vendor and question everything on the final invoice even though the vendor went out of their way and performed many tasks gratis!

* Will continue to repeat the same behavior over and over, until the vendor ‘fires’ them!

* Will go from one vendor to another wondering why the vendors are constantly screwing up!

* Will never admit to their own shortcomings!

In the end, unreasonable clients will never get their jobs properly executed until they learn what it takes to work within the system, on both a professional and social level.

Rainer Fischer
Your Direct Mail Success Coach