Your campaign brief is critical to the success of your campaign and should always be agreed between client and agency – with each element forming part of a written contract, signed and dated by both partners.

Always consider and agree the following elements:

  • Profile your target customer thoroughly

Identify who you want to target as precisely as possible.

Poor targeting will just waste your resources, effort and money, jeopardise your ROI and affect your environmental performance – whilst you risk undermining your brand reputation by marketing to consumers for whom your offer is not relevant or welcome.

Provide any information you have readily available – such as a detailed customer profile. If you do not have a profile available, consider working with your agency to develop one. Your agency should have access to market research and other information that can help.

 

  • Be specific about target areas

Specify whether your campaign is national or not.

If your customer base has a regional or local bias, be specific about which region(s) you wish to target.

 

  • Understand industry benchmarks

Clarify the campaign benchmarks that are most appropriate to measure your campaign against.

You may wish to assess your campaign against one or more of the following:

  • Response rates
  • Cost per lead
  • Cost per sale
  • Conversion rates
  • Return on investment
  • Profit
  • Set clear, measureable, realistic goals

Benchmark realistic response rates and use these when laying out how you expect your campaign to support your wider business goals.

 

  • Set realistic budget

Establish what budget you have available and exactly what this needs to cover.

Be completely clear to your suppliers whether it covers media only or whether it includes media, print and production, delivery, VAT and other costs such as fulfilment, incentives, origination, creative and so on. Assess all campaign costs in terms of cost per thousand (CPT) and evaluate them against your budget.

Your agency should be able to sense-check these costs based on their experience.

If you prefer simply to specify a particular number of customers you wish to reach, your agency should be able to work back from this to determine the budget you will require.

 

  • Specify timing

State when you wish your campaign to run.

Take into account your broader business goals and capabilities and consider whether this timing is realistic. If you are looking to drive product sales, for example, consider when you want the sales themselves to happen and whether your organisation and supply chain will be ready to deliver an increase in demand.

Establish the time period over which you want to run your campaign as this will affect the response lag. You do not need to send out your entire inserts volume in one go – you may find it more effective and efficient to spread publication over a period of time to encourage a constant flow of responses, rather than a big surge.

Make sure you state clearly if your campaign is date sensitive or subject to an ‘end of offer’ date.

 

  • Detail your offer

Make sure you have thought the workings and permutations of your offer through very thoroughly before briefing your media and creative agencies.

Ensure that it is on-brand, appropriate to your product and that it constructs the easiest, most successful, most sensitive customer journey.

For example, should you make your customer journey a one-stage, two-stage or longer process? Are you realistic to expect your customer to make a buying commitment straight away, or should you concentrate on positioning your product and asking your customer to find out more information at this stage?

If your offer requires multiple stages of response to lead up to a purchase, remember to factor in additional costs to cover the full cost of sale – such as cost of subsequent response handling, postage, collateral sent out and so on.

 

  • Ensure you have appropriate registrations

If your offer asks for a ‘cash with order’ response and you are using inserts in a national newspaper, ensure you are registered with the Mail Order Protection Scheme (MOPS) operated by the Newspaper Publishers Association.

 

  • Agree insert format

Agree the best insert format with your creative agency, taking into account your budget, goals, product and messaging, content and creative ambitions, brand values, target audience expectations and response requirements.

There are many format elements to consider, including:

  • Paper quality
  • Total size
  • Weight
  • Number of ‘pages’
  • Shape
  • Need for a leading edge for the inserting process
  • Number of folds, perforations and so on

Occasionally the size and format of the insert is agreed after the schedule has been agreed and the particular specifications of each proposed publication have been considered.

Please note that sometimes creative strategy may drive the format – but it is always wise to seek a combined recommendation from your creative and media agencies.

Confirm with your media agency that any formats you are suggesting can be accepted by the proposed publications. Always agree chosen formats in writing as part of your contract.

 

  • Specify testing

Remember that one of the great things about inserts is the ability to test things easily – such as putting two variations of a creative treatment in the same publication to see which works best.

Testing is a valuable exercise – but you are likely to only have time and budget to test the most important aspects.

Think about what choices are likely to have the most impact on your response rates and production efficiency – for example, you might want to compare two different creative approaches or assess the value of a more exciting format.

Whatever you decide to test, make sure that you plan and communicate this thoroughly to ensure you get reliable and revealing results.