The idea behind the marketing for Spring-Green Lawn Care seems simple enough: Send customers a letter, and they just might try a number. So, each year the company kicks off a highly personalized direct mail campaign aimed at getting potential customers to reach out to Spring-Green through its company call center.

Once a recipient phones in, he or she is urged to sign up for the Spring-Green services through a local franchisee. The campaign underscores how successful medium-sized businesses can use direct mail not only to push a brand message but also to buttress a business interest that marketers often struggle to integrate into their larger campaigns: the company call center.

“We generate calls and book the sale,” boasts James Young, president of Spring-Green, which is based in suburban Chicago. He adds that they end up answering about 85 to 90 percent of the calls for the franchise owners who elect to use the call center.

Call center generates business

Young readily admits that the call center isn’t a moneymaker for the company — but nonetheless is an important part of the company’s direct marketing arsenal. It’s also a welcome tool for small Spring-Green franchise owners around the country who can’t afford to man phones ’round the clock. The strategy frees up franchisees, some of which are one-person operations when they start the business, to focus more on serving clients and less on having to scour their territories for business.

“To be in the call center business is a loss leader,” says Young. “It’s there with the sole purpose of influencing gross revenue. We got into this business because we felt it would make a difference and be beneficial to the franchise owner and franchisor.”

The Spring-Green mail campaign, which runs from January to May, extends to millions of homeowners and businesses in about half of the nation’s states.

Three-step approach delivers results

The first piece of mail builds brand awareness and generates leads. It includes a free gift, educational materials about lawn care and the business card of the Spring-Green franchisee in the target area. The business card features a photo of the franchisee and a telephone number.

The second mailing is a direct sales piece that includes coupons and other special offers. The third mailing tries to close the deal by urging mail recipients to take advantage of the savings before it’s too late.

Now in its fourth year, the mail campaign — which also has included personalized URLs (PURLs) that recipients can visit — is paying off handsomely. In fact, Young says, the mail effort has become the lifeblood of the company’s growth in acquiring new customers.

“To date, it influences more than 50 percent of all new customers each spring. Local advertising, search engine optimization and social media are all part of our mix, but by far, mail is our dominant channel.”

Rick Locke, a former automotive executive in Indianapolis who is in his first full year as a Spring-Green franchisee, agrees: “The direct mail campaign in my first year probably accounted for 75 percent of my new sales this year.”

Spring-Green was driven to direct mail out of necessity, says Young.

“Ten years ago, for sure, the primary vehicle for us was telemarketing,” says Young. “But the advent of the ‘Do Not Call’ list forced us to reinvent ourselves. So we had to make that transition.”

Why it works

After the “Do Not Call” list torpedoed many telemarketing operations around the country, direct mail seemed like the most logical choice for Spring-Green. It is less intrusive, and with the right message can still seize a customer’s attention, says Young. He explains that the campaign has been effective for several reasons:

First, he says, the highly personalized effort focuses on customers or potential new customers with specials that speak directly to their needs. Spring-Green officials work closely with franchisees to gather data such as lawn size and type of grass for each client. This legwork is essential if the mail is to speak to the needs of the prospects.

“It comes down to the right street, the right neighborhood and the right offer,” says Young. “We secure a measurement on the property through Google Earth or a franchise owner driving through the neighborhood.

“Where is lawn care being used? Where are competitors? How are they priced? We add proprietary logic as to who will make the best customer and we test custom offers to the household. The message, copy, pricing and promotional offers can all be tailored to the [individual] households. All the direct mail is flexible. Price and promotional offer are personalized.”

Second, he says, Spring-Green plays up the local angle in order to position its franchisees as the faces of the business in their communities.

The pieces of mail include a local telephone number. So mail landing in the boxes of customers in, say, Indianapolis would have a 317 area code. (What customers don’t realize is that when they call that number, it rings at the Illinois call center.)

Local approach works

The localized approach plays quite well with customers, says Locke: “I’ve had a couple of customers say, ‘Hey, you’re the guy on the card!’ That helps.”

The third reason the campaign succeeds, says Young, is because it gives potential customers response options.

“There are three ways they can respond,” says Young. “They can call us or go to the web through the PURL and go directly to the shopping cart by credit card. We see more sales (online) between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. And the third response is envelope response with postage prepaid.”

Company officials say the campaign has been instrumental in helping them keep revenues steady in spite of the recession. The integrated campaign has also allowed the company to upsell additional services at a higher rate.

Making the call center effective

Franchisees instantly get e-mails from the call center regarding customers. “Having a smartphone has made it easy for me to respond to requests very expeditiously,” says Locke. “There have been a few times I was able to be at a customer’s place within half an hour. That impresses a customer.”

Then at the end of the day, he says, franchisees get a recap e-mail of all their calls, including sales calls, service calls and estimate calls. “I like the model in that it drives traffic to the call center, freeing up the operator to be out doing the work,” he says.

Timing is key

Although the mail campaign kicks off in mid-January, location dictates how early the approximately 6–8 million direct mail pieces begin landing in the mailboxes of prospective customers.

“The first in-home date is mid-January in the South,” says Young. “For the Midwest and the Pacific Northwest it could be late February or early March. The call center staff builds as more markets open up. [The employment] is seasonal, which makes staffing challenging. By the time we get [the center] up and running at full tilt, [the season] is starting to wind down.”

In the lawn-care business, adds Locke, timing is everything. “If you’re hitting a mail piece when dandelions are starting to pop, your response rate will be much higher,” he says.