To have the appropriate consumers opt-in to our Internet ads, at Brokerville we are continuously experimenting with different verbiage, ad formats and layouts. Counter to our intuition, we hit on an ad format that covers 4 separate pages as compared to our previous one page ad.
Interestingly, we have seen this phenomena before that what begins to work best is what everyone else is NOT doing. For example, back when we used a lot of direct mail (prior to 2001), we mailed envelopes without a return address and printed nothing on the envelope. Other mailers did just the opposite: they highlighted their company name in the return address and printed messages on the outside of the envelope. What these mailers dd not realize is that the recipient could prejudge the contents without even opening the envelope. As a result, many of the envelopes got thrown in the trash without being opened.
Our envelopes had nothing other than the recipient’s name and address on the front. The recipient was unable to prejudge the contents and consequently, had open the envelope. This format produce twice the response rate of the typical format being used.
So the lesson from this post is: look at what everyone else is doing and try just the opposite to get noticed.