I’ve seen it happen to dozens of financial institution marketing promotions. The bank or credit union tries to squeeze as many product promotions as possible into one mail piece.

That’s not only wrong, it’s ineffective.

I suppose there are plenty of reasons mixed messages happen: Office politics (“Their product line gets a promotion and we don’t!”), or an attempt to save money (“If we put everything in this one mailer we can eliminate the other three!”), or even inexperience, as well as others.

Here’s why it’s not a good idea to mix two different products in one promotion.

Multiple products in one campaign are difficult for the reader to understand. No matter what the advertising media, you have only seconds to get the reader’s attention and convince her to read or listen more. If your product or offer isn’t immediately clear on the outside of, for example, your mail piece, there’s no incentive to look further.

Prospects will not spend time deciphering your product or offer. That’s your job. They’ll simply move on.

But isn’t it economical to combine two or more promotions into one?

No. Let’s say you’ve been using a checking account acquisition promotion that’s opened X number of accounts each cycle. You think by adding a home equity promotion to the same mail piece that you’ll not only open those X number of checking accounts, but also Y number of loans.

It doesn’t work that way. Because you’ve sent the prospects mixed messages, made them decipher your product and offer, expected them to work to discover what you want, even confused them, you likely see a drop in the X number and won’t reach the Y number you expect. ROI suffers.

It’s the opposite of consumer involvement in your promotion that you want to generate.

The objective of your individual promotion is to open as many new accounts as possible. You accomplish that goal by communicating simply — making your product and offer easy to understand — so prospects are tempted to read your offer and act on it.

Multiple products complicate and confuse.

One message for one promotion. Simple. Direct. Effective.