Take a Different Tack with Teasers

By Christen Gruebel

Go from blah … to aha! Which tactic does one industry veteran swear turns an ordinary package into a mailbox-busting control?

As the opening sentences gamely attempt to imitate, baiting a prospect with tantalizing queries is a good way to get your outer envelope opened. But although the draw of sheer curiosity is strong, direct mail copywriter, Ken Scheck, suggests a more efficient way to capitalize on the power of teasers is to use them to summarize the key points of packages with extremely detailed content.

By their short-and-sweet nature, teasers can help appeal to the various informational needs of a target audience while still being exciting to read. This tactic—one Scheck has used to great success on mailings he’s created for Harvard Health Publications—allows for an enticing outline of topics to be covered and increases the odds that prospects will open the envelope because they’re more likely to see something that speaks to them specifically. “Teasers give you an opportunity to put a number of things on an envelope from different subject areas, so that instead of loading all your ammo into one headline, you can hit them with a number of different things,” says Scheck. He cites a health publication as an example, “You can talk about the heart, you can talk about weight loss, you can talk about a couple of different things … it gives you more of a likelihood that prospects will see something that interests them.”