The Witch Doctors Were In

With their agency looking for a fresh way to capture new business, marketers at the Price Group — a full-service marketing shop known for its work with financial concerns, medical companies and universities such as Texas Tech — recently found themselves turning to voodoo for answers.

At least, that was the theme of the self-promotional marketing campaign that they devised to draw clients. Dubbed “On Point,” the campaign employed a three-part appeal to potential business prospects, using mail, the web and follow-up sales calls. At the heart of On Point, launched last October, was a three-dimensional mailer that came complete with a set of voodoo pins and a simple, arresting pitch: Tired of generic marketing plans? Looking for something that’s more, well, on point? We forgo templates and put our focus on ritual process proven to work.

The mailer targeted 250 businesses including hospitals, universities and convention and business bureaus around the San Angelo region of Texas, just outside of Lubbock. Each mailer included instructions on how to plot the pins toward specific business goals such as improved branding and increased audience. “We’re not that much different from our clients,’’ says Kristy Melcher, vice president and creative director for the Price Group. “We have to stay ahead of our competition. So when we do a campaign for ourselves, what we really want people to say is, ‘Wow, why don’t we do things like that?’”

And the Price Group isn’t the only agency trying to prompt that question from its mail targets. As the fight for clients’ marketing dollars intensifies amid shrinking budgets and a growing din of multimedia messaging, so does marketers’ search for inroads to new business. And as many are learning, the most direct trail to clients often can be blazed through self-promotional campaigns that showcase the very same skills that the agencies are offering to their prospects.

The battle for new business

“We believe in the very same ideas we preach to our clients. We have to,’’ says Kevin Gilligan, vice president of sales and marketing for Essex, Conn.–based agency Structural Graphics. “We’re out there telling our clients that our type of work can help them improve their results and that they should use dimensional and high impact mail as part of their integrated campaigns. And that’s exactly how we market ourselves.’’

Marketers liken their self-promotional efforts to an elaborate game of show-and-tell. To work, self-promotional campaigns have to blend eye-catching creativity with a message that’s confident without being off-putting. And as with any other campaign, marketers have to make sure they’re getting relevant messages out to just the right audience. Melcher says the Price Group — whose mailer also featured a primary font that essentially turned each letter into a replica of a shiny, pointed pin — is still fielding inquiries from the campaign. “A postcard can be just a plain-Jane postcard or a mailing can be just a plain-Jane mailing,’’ says Melcher. “But you have to be innovative and creative, and your messaging has to be on target. Today’s customers want something back. You have to give them a call to action, a reason to engage with your offer.”

Sticking it to the competition

The Price Group’s On Point campaign did just that, playing off of the natural mystique of voodoo and a bit of clever copywriting: “For this process to work, we need to meet. We’ll talk about you — your business goals and what’s standing in your way. Then we’ll work our magic to customize this process with pinpoint accuracy and yield results. So, let’s get together, you can learn more about us and we can learn more about the voodoo that you do.’’

Prospects who found themselves on “pins and needles” after receiving the initial mailer were invited to visit a micro-website to set up a face-to-face meeting. Marketing directors who agreed to a sales call received the campaign’s final piece, a boxed voodoo doll — slyly nicknamed “Competition” — and instructions on how to use the pins included in the campaigns initial direct mail piece. “We kind of feel like, in order to be on point, we have to be able to show the different strategies that set us apart and that will help set the client apart by choosing to work with us,” says Melcher. “You can’t do just one thing.’’

Nor, says Gilligan of Structural Graphics, can marketers employ a haphazard approach to self-promotion. “We do industry-specific marketing throughout the year, typically touching an industry four to five times a year,’’ he says.

And mail is almost always the driver of each in-house campaign. “It’s really powerful when you can deliver a message with the engagement and interaction of mail,” says Gilligan. “That’s our niche; we always lead with high-impact pieces, either something that’s dimensional or has a lot of interaction to it, things that get people’s attention that you can’t do with a postcard.’’

For marketers, Melcher argues that postcard campaigns, while simple, can require more touches in order to succeed, as some consumers can overlook single mailings like they do mass-marketed e-mails. “You can’t just send one postcard and think that people are going to call you,’’ she warns. “It’s more of a drill-down effect. You’ve got to stick with it for at least one quarter and do multiple mailings.’’

Mixing it up

Gilligan also encourages marketers to blend their mailings with other media, as integration usually enhances a self-promotional campaign. For instance, existing Structural Graphics clients — largely pharmaceutical and insurance companies — receive weekly e-mails with a video showcasing a project of the week as a marketing case study. From the weekly e-mail, Structural clients are also invited to a microsite filled with other case studies and videos. The site also offers them the option to receive additional mailings or get a follow-up sales call.

“There certainly is a benefit to driving people online using high-impact direct mail. Companies are investing heavily in websites, microsites and landing pages, and our high-impact and dimensional designs have been proven to get the recipients’ attention, engage them and drive them online to continue their engagement,” Gilligan notes.

Gilligan points to a recent Structural campaign targeting 1,600 automotive, home and life insurance companies. The campaign featured an iron-cross box with four fold-out panels. Inside the box was a thumb drive. “Once plugged in, the thumb drive launched you out to a website where you could see additional information about what we do with insurance companies,’’ Gilligan says. “What was really great is that we had the ability to track the people who activated the drive. We knew exactly who was entering our site and when they did. They then got a follow-up sample pack and phone follow-up from there.’’

The campaign marked just the second time Structural has ever turned to a web key, but Gilligan says the campaign has become one of the company’s most successful self-promotion efforts, netting more than a 20-percent response rate and almost $130,000 in revenue. “For every dollar we spent, we get six dollars in returned revenue,’’ he says. “We’re expecting that it will go even higher because we have a lot opportunities that are still open.’’

Mail, Gilligan says, made the difference: “When you get something in the mail that we send, it’s going to surprise you and entice you to continue the engagement online. It’s an easy way for us to deliver for clients and for ourselves, too.’’

So, no question mail is effective at getting out your brand messaging, but even better: Use mail to get your product directly into the hands of your best customers by sending a sample.

Sampling can be a highly effective and persuasive technique for generating sales. In a December 2009 survey for the Postal Service,™ 61 percent of consumers said that sampling a product is the most effective way to get them to try a brand, and 81 percent indicated they would try a sample they received from a brand.

Packages delivered through the mail get immediate attention, and surveys show us that people consistently rate samples as one of the top five items they like to receive in the mail.

Putting your product directly into the hands of customers and prospects — especially when using a targeted channel like mail — is effective and efficient. You’re reaching your best customers in a place where they’re most comfortable making purchase decisions — right in their own home.

We understand that our pricing hasn’t always been competitive with other channels, and we’re acting to change that. So, we’re initiating a new program in January that will make using mail for sampling more cost-effective and less complex. Our goal is to ensure that businesses that use the mail for samples receive the level of return they need on their investment.

You might also want to investigate our Sample Showcase box — which gets your product into the hands of a targeted, interested group of consumers. The box features samples, promotional items and coupons — and you can choose to be one sample in the mix or buy out the box for your brand.

Our Postal Service Samples team is ready to answer questions about sampling and how it could impact your brand. Contact us at samples@usps.com for details.

Samples do lead to sales. Discover the value of sending samples through the mail by downloading our white paper at delivermagazine.com/strategy.

Marc McCrery is manager of shipping products for the U.S. Postal Service and executive manager of the sampling program.

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Employing a wedding theme, the company sent out 1,500 bifold self-mailers that featured photos of a car adorned with a placard that blissfully reads “Just Refinanced.” The accompanying text further punched the nuptial theme: “Honeymoon over with your old car loan? Check out TopLine’s low rates and save big over the term of your loan.” Sweetening the deal, the mailer teased info about a limited-time offer for a $50 gift card upon loan approval.

“Just for the month of April, we generated 26 auto loans for about $335,000 in balances,” says assistance vice president of marketing Vicki Roscoe Erickson.

Overall, the campaign resulted in 71 new accounts for $690,000 in balances — a 4.73-percent response rate. “I always like to measure the total business that is generated, as the mailer is a reminder that TopLine is a full-service financial institution,” Erickson says.

TopLine’s direct mail campaigns are part of a multichannel mix that includes QR Codes; e-mail messaging; website; and in-branch, on-hold and statement messaging. “Depending on the message we’re trying to convey, we use a mix of large postcards, self-mailers and sometimes letters to keep it fresh and to capture mindshare and response,” Erickson says.

Come on, it’s OK to admit it. At least some of the time, some of you think just that. We’ll even admit that, at least some of the time, so do some of us at Deliver.® To deny it is to deny being human.

While we need hardly point out that everyone being smarter than the average presents a mathematical impossibility, we would like to make clear the danger of giving in to such thinking when it comes to making crucial marketing decisions.

To be sure, marketing history has its tales of visionaries who scored at research and laughed in the face of predictive tests — who claimed to intuitively know what was going to work — and went on to enjoy success as a result. Positive thinking enthusiasts make heroes of them, parading their experience as the natural and inevitable outcome of damning torpedoes and speeding ahead. “Trust your intuition!” becomes the rallying cry. “Testing, shmesting,” some say. Just go with your gut.

Yet in celebrating people who defy the odds and win, we risk overlooking an implicit, sobering reality. “Odds” refers to most-likely outcomes. People who defy odds and win may not be models to emulate so much as exceptions to congratulate on their good fortune. Exceptions do not change the fact that, from a statistical standpoint, it is safer to bet with the odds than against them. That is, after all, how odds get to be odds.

Which calls to mind another rallying cry, this one popular among direct marketers: “Test, test, test.” It is born of the lesson driven home each time a valid test produces results that are opposite what the best minds expected. In those moments, marketers thank their lucky stars that they took the time and trouble to test instead of betting — and losing — the farm on their (allegedly) superior smarts and intuition.

If you are ever tempted to say, “Testing, shmesting, I’m going with my gut on this one,” here is a word of advice: Test.

Good news: The oldest medium for reliable, real-world testing is as powerful as ever. We refer, of course, to the U.S. Mail.

For a refresher on testing, visit delivermagazine.com/testing.

The publisher’s senior promotions director, Vladimir Damianov, says his company significantly boosted subscription rates using premium offers to subscribers. When Hearst offers consumers, say, a free tote bag for subscribing to Country Living, results index at a whopping 143 percent.

Last year, the tote offer was also tested with Good Housekeeping and Woman’s Day. Both had response lifts at 25 percent and 35 percent, respectively.

The results were just as good for the company’s male-oriented titles. Hearst’s baseball cap premium for Popular Mechanics (Jan. 2011) indexed at 123 percent, while its Car and Driver and Road & Track baseball cap premiums (Dec. 2011) each showed a 28-percent and 5-percent lift, respectively.

Damianov says that the direct mail/free gift offers have been so successful that they are now “fully integrated into the general Hearst best practices.”

Here’s a thought: Build a Trojan horse. Think about it — what if you could create a marketing package so clever that the gatekeepers would vet your doohickey, and then walk it into the CEO’s office with their tacit blessing. Cool, right?

That’s what Will Pringle did. A marketing demand generation vice president for the IBM subsidiary Netezza (pronounced net-eezah), Pringle designed an intriguing marketing campaign that relied on the popularity of another device: a highly coveted MP3 player. Toward his goal of showcasing the value and innovation of Netezza’s data storage appliances, Pringle shipped attractively packaged MP3 players to more than 250 tech execs nationwide. Loaded with personalized content designed to emulate the feel of a sales pitch meeting, the branded Netezza players featured custom videos and other virtual goodies explaining how the analytics appliance provider could help recipients meet their business objectives. The effort, says Pringle, was designed to provide a “high-touch” experience to the prospect.

IBM chose to employ the attention grabbing power of direct mail to boost business. “I usually describe this as the ‘silver bullet’ campaign,” Pringle says of the Netezza initiative. “This direct mail piece is the one bullet that you slide into your gun when you really need to talk to the decision maker.”

How to build a Trojan horse

Purchased by IBM in 2010, Netezza creates big data analytics appliances designed to make advanced analytics simpler, faster and more accessible. Though its clientele includes numerous big brands, Netezza’s tremendous reach and influence is perhaps best illustrated by another one of its top customers, Catalina Marketing. When most Americans scan their supermarket rewards cards, their purchase info is relayed to Catalina, which collects shopping data on more than 75 percent of American shoppers. “They have to calculate, track and store more than 300 million different retail transactions every week,” Pringle says of Catalina. “The foundation of their data warehouse environment is the Netezza solution, which supports their retail direct online customer loyalty application, in-store coupon delivery and health resources business.”

With its impressive client list and the prestige derived from having joined the IBM corporate family, Netezza was understandably eager to ratchet up its marketing efforts. So in 2010, Pringle asked members of the Netezza sales team to articulate their absolute ultimate wish. More than anything, they wanted meetings with C-level executives at their target accounts. So Pringle and his team began to brainstorm about how they could capture their attention.

“We thought, ‘What could we do with the C-suite that would provide them value and entice them to respond?’” Pringle recalls. “We narrowed that down to, ‘How do you talk to the CEO, CIO or CMO?’”

Eventually, Pringle and his team came up with the idea of shipping MP3 devices that featured apps designed to create a sales meeting experience. Pringle tingled at the possibilities. “I thought it would be the ultimate direct mail piece if we could immediately catch the attention of C-level executives,” he says. “What if the recipient powered the MP3 player up and the first thing they experienced was a customized video that addressed them by name? The more I thought and penciled everything out, the more excited I became.”

While his Netezza sales reps created dream lists of top-priority executives, Pringle rolled up his sleeves and began executing. First, he contacted a noted manufacturer to help create devices that would accommodate exclusive Netezza content. “We couldn’t just take a store bought device and redo the operating system on it,” Pringle explains. “We had to talk to the company that created the device and license the option to change the operating system. Ultimately, we needed the creator’s blessing, and fortunately we got it.”

After securing the software and codes to alter 100 of the gadgets, Pringle and his teammates then served up a cornucopia of personalized content. He rounded up IBM data specialists and general managers — sectors ranging from retail to healthcare to financial services — and had them record personalized video messages for targeted executives. “For instance, our financial services general manager is Jamie Lynch,” Pringle offers. “When our targeted CIO activates her MP3 player, she is greeted by a message from Jamie. The idea is that he is talking to the executive and addressing her business challenges personally and directly.”

The intro video was just the beginning. Each MP3 player was custom tailored. The music application was loaded with classic rock tunes all designed to remind recipients of Netezza’s tremendous speed and simplicity. For the photos application, Pringle created close-up pictures of Netezza appliances. He even loaded directions to the recipient’s nearest IBM office into the map app. “We customized every app on it,” Pringle says. “We wanted prospects to smile and think, ‘Wow, these guys really thought this through!’”

Breaching the gates

Finally, in August 2010, curious cylindrical mailers appeared on the desks of executive administrators nationwide. Save for United States Postal Service® labeling and a Netezza “N” logo on the cylinder’s plastic cap, by design the mailers boasted no overt promotional messages.

When exec admins opened the packages, they discovered yet another cylinder inside. Made of clear, pliable Plexiglas, the inner cylinder revealed the package’s entire contents, including the MP3 player, a cover letter and a business card from IBM Netezza general managers. The face of the MP3 device featured a sticker with a color photo of a Netezza analytics appliance that read, “It’s time you got in touch with Netezza.”

Pringle says there was logic behind the relatively mysterious outer packaging and its revealing inner counterpart. “To pique curiosity and to get it from the mailroom to the exec admin, we decided on packaging that didn’t show what was inside,” Pringle says. “When they pulled that MP3 player out, we knew it would shine and show the true value of our product.”

The mailers were vetted by the targets’ respective exec admins before being passed along to the executives themselves. And once they turned on the devices, the executives were treated to a personalized digital sales experience: Following the intro pitch video, another screen pops up that is customized for the sector the targeted CIO works in (e.g., retail, healthcare, etc). Once the intro video closes, many recipients were taken to custom Netezza case study video presentations in that industry.

A few days after the initial packages were shipped, Pringle’s team started putting in calls to his target C-level executives. “Within the next two to three weeks, we secured seven meetings out of 15 — an almost 50-percent success rate,” Pringle says. “In many cases, we had attempted to meet with these companies for years, and this was the piece that opened the door.”

“Executives have called our GMs and said, ‘Hey, I got your MP3 player,’ and ‘If you care enough to produce this mailer, then I’d love to take the time to hear how Netezza/IBM can help my business.’”

What we learned

Thus far, the Netezza campaign has achieved a 35-percent response rate, translating to approximately $30 million in new business. According to Pringle, it stands as the single most effective campaign in Netezza’s history. As of Q1 2012, the campaign cost Netezza about $200,000. Pringle says the investment has been well worth it. “When you’re talking about sending people unsolicited thousand-dollar packages in the mail, it sounds a bit silly,” Pringle says. “But so far we’ve gotten a 150-times return on our investment, and that’s not so silly. This concept resulted in the highest ROI of any campaign that I’ve ever worked on.”

Pringle contributes the campaign’s success to a variety of factors, not the least of which is the high-touch experience embodied by the mailers. Indeed, many recipients can’t help but be impressed by how Netezza imaginatively leveraged one of the world’s best-known consumer technology companies to create a forward-thinking marketing/sales experience.

The MP3 player direct mail campaign has been such a success that it’s an ongoing component of the Netezza marketing mix, which also includes e-mail, phone calls, webinars and trade show sponsorships, among other campaigns. But of all the options on the Netezza marketing menu, Pringle says the campaign is the one he employs when he wants to dramatically increase the likelihood of hooking a big fish. “This campaign has a specific use,” Pringle explains. “It’s the campaign we use when we want to capture the attention a C-level executive whose organization we can really help.”

The rewarding lesson of the initiative is clear, says Pringle: “Go with your instincts. Think differently. One simple idea can generate millions of dollars in revenue for your business. So stay confident and keep pushing the envelope.”

“Since Asian Americans are often well educated and affluent, using direct mail would be an obvious platform as part of an integrated campaign,” says Jon Yokogawa, vice president of consumer engagement for interTrend Communications.

Asian Americans make up a large part of the population in the United States. Here’s a breakdown: ¹

3.8 million Chinese
3.2 million Filipino
2.8 million Asian Indian
1.7 million Vietnamese
1.6 million Korean
1.3 million Japanese

80% of Asian Americans live in a household with Internet use — the highest rate among race and ethnic groups.²

Median household income differs greatly among Asian American segments. In 2009 the median income for Asian Indians was $90,429, while for Bangladeshi it was $46,657.³

20% of Asian Americans age 25 and older have a graduate or professional degree. This compares with 10% for all Americans 25 and older.³

23.6% are under age 18

9.6% are 65 or older

35.3 is median age

5.6 million live in California

1.6 million live in New York State⁴

46%: Increase in the Asian American population between 2000 and 2010, topping other major race groups.⁵

2.6 million people age 5 and older in the U.S. speak Chinese at home. After Spanish, Chinese is the most widely spoken non-English language in the country.³

161%: Projected growth in the Asian American population between 2008 and 2050, vs. 44% for the nation.⁶

1 U.S. Census Bureau: American Fact Finder

2 U.S. Census Bureau: Reported Internet Usage for Households, by Selected Household Characteristics, Current Population Survey: 2009

3 U.S. Census Bureau: 2009 American Community Survey

4 U.S. Census Bureau: Population Estimates

5 U.S. Census Bureau: 2010 Census Redistricting Data

6 U.S. Census Bureau: “An Older and More Diverse Nation by Midcentury,” Aug. 2008

An author, speaker, and self-styled digital “technology evangelist,” Ray is the founder of SmallBizTechnology.com, a media company that counsels growing businesses on technology. Ray learned “firsthand about the power of direct mail when a flier arrived in his mailbox.

“Lo and behold, one day there’s a direct mail piece for ‘Furniture on Sale,’” Ray recalls. “My wife grabbed me and we went and bought a table. It hit me that direct mail is still relevant. All this time I’ve been a proponent of new digital technology, and there we were buying a table because a simple piece of paper came in the mail.”

Ray’s direct mail experience was such a revelation that he wrote about it on his blog. “It just showed me that social media isn’t the best for everybody,” Ray says. “I bet if we had an e-mail offer to buy that table, we would have deleted it.”

Though he’s no marketing expert, Ray’s direct mail experience has transformed him into a full-fledged proponent of multichannel marketing that integrates direct mail. “If your audience is online all the time, I say try social media,” Ray says, “but for some things that are kind of touchy-feely, paper works.”

Indeed it does, as Ray would learn again. “I got a flyer in the mail from Paul Fredricks for shirts,” he says with a laugh. “That’s when I bought my shirts!”