Don't underestimate the power of fresh creative.

In a piece in DM News, Derek Moore of The Marketing Store foresees a doomsday scenario for direct marketers--the educated consumer.

"What do you do," he asks, "when you get an envelope that says 'No Annual Fee'? Well, that's what they do, too ... Our rules worked for a while, but we've trained consumers to recognize marketing tricks. Our worst nightmare is here, the tactic-resistant super consumer."

Moore goes on to speculate about the relative importance of various elements in a DM package--you know the litany: lists, offer, price, etc.

Moore quotes what he calls the "traditional formulas" for measuring this type of thing. The most quoted one is 40 percent list, 40 percent offer, and 20 percent creative.

Moore goes on to say he's seen recent variations like 60/30/10 and, lately "25 percent for these three plus a bonus round, or something."

Creative will have a critically important effect

I'm going to take the position that for 2006-2007 newsletter marketing efforts, creative will continue to have a critically important effect. It has been true, as the cliche has it, that an average package will bring average results, but from everything I've heard in recent years, those "average results" appear to be in a continual slow decline.

Blame that, if you will, on increased competition, of "everything free' on the internet, or on Moore's DM tactic-resistant consumer.

For the majority of newsletter marketers, the formula of importance can almost be turned on its head. That would put creative at 40 percent.

The list

Are "lists" actually that important for newsletter marketers--especially the large number of business-to-business titles? If you are publishing one of the number of large circulation consumer investment or health letters, that equation might hold. There are always new lists coming on the market that you can test. "Oooh-ee, Ace Hardware Consumer Award program certificate recipients." Given the information available and some assumptions about their age and income, that list might certainly be worth a test.

On the other hand, if you publish a newsletter for car dealers, how much "list research" can you do? You know who the market is and how to reach them. So you are mailing over and over to the same defined universe.

This also explains the apparent declining efficacy of forced free trials for some marketers. Hidden in their encomiums for the technique, FFT boosters often include the magic words, "given a sufficient number of fresh names."

That just isn't happening for folks marketing car dealers and many other business markets.

The offer

The offer is certainly important but newsletter marketers are constrained in this area. Unless, like Mad magazine used to claim, you are "Number One in a Field of One," you have competitors. They tend to surround you in the areas of price and frequency. When I was marketing a 24x/year title in vocational education priced at $177, we had five or six competitors, biweekly and monthly, and all grouped, as I recall, between about $147 and $275. Sure, you look for the dynamite premium and you strengthen your guarantee, but it's very difficult to make your offer dramatically different from others in your field.

The creative

So you do your best. You crank out packages, as Moore says, "strewn with the usual roadside junk: Johnson box, bright primary colors, put sticker here for a free gift." And hope.

But I can't overstate the effect of creative. If you could create packages and renewal series that boosted your results 10 and 5 percent respectively, after five years you'd have 30 percent more active subs. You know what that would bring to your bottom line.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you how to be "more creative." "If I knew the answer to that question," Lt. Col. Henry Blake once told Hawkeye Pierce in "M*A*S*H," "I'd be at the Mayo Clinic. Does this place look like the Mayo Clinic?"