Here is an excerpt from Pat Friesen writing for Target Marketing Magazine in November 2007
The 3:33 rule
Are you familiar with the three minute and 33 second (3:33) rule of direct mail? It’s important when you talk about “opening”.
The 3:33 rule suggests you have three seconds or less to stand out in the mail and stay out of the junk, then 30 seconds to engage the reader enough to open up and make the “short stack” for a later read. After the first 33 seconds, if you really get the reader into your email, spend an additional three minutes or less reading it and deciding whether or not to respond.
B2B Direct Marketing and the Importance of the Mailing Pack – the first 3 seconds
Business-to-business direct marketing can be a huge waste of money unless you do it right, so you need to do it right the first time. You need a piece of promotional marketing that is high quality, attention-grabbing, and you need to send it in a package that can be easily seen in the mail pile on your customer’s desk.
Too many B2B direct marketing campaigns go straight to the bin, often before the envelope has been opened, and therein lies the first problem: the envelopes. A plain, flat white envelope with a frankness or PPI is absolutely no mystery. Send your B2B direct mail in a white envelope and your campaign is well on its way to generating a high level of indifference. With that thought firmly in mind, you should seriously consider the type of protractor to use.
The saying goes that you only get one chance to make a first impression and the first impression your customer gets of your promotional mail is the appearance of the mailing package. I suggest that your mail should have a degree of volume and should be seen as some kind of gift or “gift”. This way, the mail will be opened with eager anticipation instead of complete indifference. The argument against this is that shipping costs will increase, but trust me, paying postage to ship an item that gets thrown right in the bin makes a lot less sense.
B2B direct marketing and the importance of keeping the customer’s attention: the next 30 seconds
Once the mailer has done its first job of attracting the reader’s attention, then it has to entice the reader to open it. I think the packaging has to be designed in a way that it’s not too difficult to open and that it leads to the main promotional piece without too much trouble. I say this because the promo piece itself will take care of the next few minutes, no problem! A B2B promotional email needs to capture your customer’s imagination and auto pop-ups are an obvious choice to achieve this. Pop-up action carries with it the elements of surprise, fun, interaction, and curiosity. An automatic, rubber band-driven popup, such as a popup cube or popup box, will easily pass the 30-second test and will typically represent the next few minutes during which your promotional message has been well and truly. assimilated.
B2B direct marketing and the importance of extending the life of your marketing campaign
There are direct marketers out there who would be absolutely delighted if your campaign met the requirements discussed so far, but why stop there? What is there to say that the promotional piece should stop working after having created such an impact? To achieve this, you don’t need to do much more than add a few holes to the top surface of the popup cube or popup box. By doing this, you can turn your promotional mail into a promotional pen holder, a product that will sit on your customer’s desk for months on end. The pop-up email will not only fulfill its original obligation by capturing your customer’s attention, but it will then become a permanent promotion for your business right there on your customer’s desktop.
