‘Secrets of a Direct-Mail Legend: Rodale’ by John Forde

Clayton Makepeace has released the latest issue of ‘Total Package’. The featured article by John Forde is titled “Secrets of a Direct-Mail Legend: Rodale”. [Article]

Clayton Makepeace has released the latest issue of ‘Total Package’.

The featured article:

Secrets of a Direct-Mail Legend: Rodale

by John Forde

Once in awhile, you can’t beat a good case study. And what better case study for a copywriter or direct marketer to learn from than the profile of a legendary direct-mail publisher: Rodale.

Rodale, if you haven’t heard of it, is located in Emmaus, Pennsylvania. Emmaus is a small American town that’s less than eight miles square. Just under 5,000 families call it home. One of those families is that of J.I. Rodale, a former New York tax accountant who started Rodale Manufacturing in 1923.

Yes, manufacturing. Not publishing.

But then, during the Great Depression, Rodale moved to an empty warehouse in Emmaus.

And it was in the corner of that building that J.I. took a chance and followed his passion … straight to a printing press in the corner of the electrical warehouse.

His first few efforts were flops.

No, strike that, his first SEVERAL efforts were flops. They included a miserably unpopular humor magazine (closed after one issue) … some health digests … and a book of randomly accumulated health facts.

From 1923 to 1940, nothing seemed to work.

Then the company picked up roots and moved operations to a nearby 60-acre farm.
In addition to publishing, J.I. had a fascination with natural farming techniques and organic living. By 1942, he had combined the two and was publishing a magazine called Organic Gardening and Farming.

Yawnsville?

Maybe to the coke-and-cheeseburger set.

But Organic Gardening (now titled OG) is still around. And it’s hugely successful, with over three million subscribers worldwide.

The passion-publishing combination seemed to do the trick. Rodale started producing a slew of health magazines and books …

Prevention – arguably the most successful health magazine in history – was one of them.

Other titles include Men’s Health, Backpacker, Runner’s World … and books like The South Beach Diet, The Home Workout Bible, The Organic Suburbanite, Shrink Your Female Fat Zones, The Testosterone Advantage, A Road Map To Ecstasy, and many more.

The Rodale Empire grew. And J.I. Rodale prospered.

He passed away in 1971, during an appearance on the Dick Cavett show.

So What Was His Secret?

The first time I saw one of Rodale’s direct-mail book promos, it was in the mid 1990s.

According to Forbes, the market for direct-mail-sold books was 4% of overall wholesale book sales. Today, according to the same article, that market has shrunk to about 1.4%. Rodale’s book division felt the pinch. Others, like Time-Life, cancelled their direct-mail efforts altogether.

But not Rodale. They stuck it out. Then they stumbled on an outrageously simple idea: Focus.

More focused marketing … more focused editorial … more targeted benefits …

And most importantly for Rodale, more focused tracking of customer buying behavior.

Rodale took survey data, customer purchase behavior, and their magazine databases … and applied the same rigorous sorting techniques you’d expect from a credit-card company.

They sorted and re-sorted their pile of prospects into fitness buffs, gardeners, weight-loss practitioners, etc.

Then they sorted even deeper until they found unexpected connections. “Organic gardeners buy household-hint books. Runners buy organic-lifestyle books,” said Forbes, “Using that information, Rodale sends out 100 million mailings a year.”

As focus and clarity had helped J.I. back in 1940, so it helped Rodale Publishing in 2002. Fewer ideas, more passionately-held. More quality. Bigger promises. And a crystal-clear answer to the question, “What does the customer want.”

Says Rodale of themselves, “Rodale is America’s leading “˜how to do it, you can do it’ book publisher … regardless of whether it’s a book, magazine, or Web site, we take pride in our ability to communicate with our readers through personal, positive, practical and passionate editorial … ”

Rodale’s direct-mail book sales have taken off. In 2002, they represented 31% of Rodale’s $450 million revenue.

New York publishers like Simon & Schuster and Houghton Mifflin, says Forbes, are so impressed they’re looking to apply the same discovery.

Like I said, this secret is simple …

In its essence, less is more.

Focus works better than trying to bludgeon your prospect with everything and the kitchen sink.

That’s a lesson here for the online marketer too. For instance, super-simple websites are leagues more effective than ones with 100 bells-and-whistles. E-mail marketing sent with relevent messages sent to pre-qualified, captive readers work much better than blanket “˜spam’ mailings.

And so on. But you get the picture.

Contributed by John Forde

THE TOTAL PACKAGE

John Forde’s 15-year career as a top copywriter started as an understudy of Bill Bonner and Michael Masterson. Since then, he has written countless controls, trained dozens of new copywriters, and has helped generate well over $50 million in sales.

John has also worked three years as a financial journalist and has written books on wealth building and health. And he has taught copywriting in seminars and private training sessions in Paris, London, and Bonn, Chicago, Buenos Aires, Baltimore, and Warsaw. He and his family split the year living and working from Paris, France and locations on the East Coast, U.S.

John has also written well over 250 articles on copywriting for his popular e-zine, The Copywriter’s Roundtable, which currently has several thousand readers in more than two dozen countries worldwide. You can sign up for the Copywriter’s Roundtable here: JackForde.com

Attribution Statement: This article was first published in The Total Package. To sign-up to receive your own FREE subscription to The Total Package and claim four FREE money making e-books go to www.makepeacetotalpackage.com.

The Total Package

*IMNewsWatch would like to thank Clayton Makepeace for granting permission to reprint this article.