By Mindy Charski

How do you connect customers who are literally out of reach? It’s a challenge Anritsu Company faced when promoting its BTS Master Base Station Analyzer, which tests the quality of a cell tower’s base station. After all, many in the campaign’s target audience — which included U.S.-based technicians and network managers at four top cellular companies — spend much of the day in the field.

“When you have a customer who is so busy and in and out of the office all the time, it’s pretty hard to know which way you’re going to be able to reach them,” says Katherine Van Diepen, Anritsu’s director of Marketing Communications.

So the Morgan Hill, Calif.–based company created an integrated marketing campaign for its lead generation to 1,417 of its contacts. The effort was created by a local agency, Beasley Direct Marketing.

A dimensional mailer arrived first and included a letter, additional product information and a response card to set up an in-person product demonstration. An e-mail followed a week later, and a high dose of telemarketing began soon after. Prospects also could request a demo via a personalized landing page.

The result? Total captured leads from the mailer and e-mail combined (i.e., people who completed the form and requested more information) was 4 percent. That climbed to 8.6 percent with the telemarketing efforts.

Van Diepen says a sale valued in the millions also resulted from the campaign, with additional potential sales added to the pipeline.

Why the strategy worked
Four key aspects of the Anritsu campaign contributed to its success:

1. Clever dimensional mail. The box stood out because it looked exactly like the product itself with images on every side, including depictions of buttons and ports. “The benefits of our product are it’s smaller, more portable and battery operated,” Van Diepen says. “We wanted to show its dimensions and how easy it is to hold to give customers a true product experience. They also saved the box to show others in the company.”

2. Skilled telemarketers. Anritsu hired Direct Marketing Partners to manage the telemarketing effort. The callers set up appointments with both prospects who had and hadn’t responded off the list. They discerned which targets were no longer appropriate and contacted new prospects whose names they received through referrals on the original calls.

3. Personalization. The recipient’s first name appeared on nearly every campaign element. “We know from experience and all the research that personalization on campaigns can increase response rates from 50 to 130 percent,” Van Diepen says. The product benefits were also tailored to each carrier’s technology. “We wanted to let them know we had the solution that would address their specific technology,” she says.

4. An enticing giveaway. Targets would receive a free MP3 player at the demo, which Van Diepen describes as “a door opener.” Some carriers ban such gifts, but by loading a podcast about the product onto the player, the company transformed a giveaway into acceptable collateral.

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Polycom Campaign Generates Noise with Customers

Radio Station Mixes Channels to Lure Advertisers

How lumpy mailers are helping marketers boost response rates.

By Christine Hansen

Lumps in your gravy? Not so good. But when found in direct mail, lumps generate curiosity and demand attention.

AlphaGraphics, for example, scored an impressive 21-percent response rate by including lumpy, or dimensional, mail in a recent multichannel campaign.

“It’s more important than ever to do something unique in your approach that will attract consumer attention,” says Jesse Himsworth, AlphaGraphics channel marketing manager.

The marketing firm, which has more than 260 owner-operated locations worldwide, sent a branded Rubik’s Cube to 1,880 customers and prequalified prospects to showcase its digital color and direct mail capabilities.

The dimensional piece included a personalized insert outlining the company’s key benefits and directing recipients to a personalized URL. Once visitors arrived at the PURL, they were asked to complete a brief survey regarding marketing service needs. Upon completion, visitors were offered their choice of a $20 gift card from one of three stores.

How follow-up added another dimension
The visit to a PURL also generated an automatic e-mail to that recipient’s AlphaGraphics sales representative. Within four hours, the sales representative would call the lead to set up an appointment and deliver the gift card.

“Our owners are extremely busy people, meeting impossible deadlines day in and out,” Himsworth says. “The dimensional piece was a way for us to help them attract customer attention and gave them a turnkey solution so they could really focus their energy on sales.”

That’s why AlphaGraphics also supported the campaign with webinars on best practices for building lists, a sales process plan with a timeline for pre-calls, mailings and post-calls, and suggestions for what to say during pre- and post-calls.

Himsworth says the centers that adhered strictly to the sales process plan achieved the highest responses. Too, some of the centers made the sales representatives responsible for the costs of the direct mail pieces, which motivated the sales representatives to produce the highest quality lists possible and which, in turn, led to much higher response rates.

“Too often marketers put all their energy into worrying about the creative for a piece, and neglect everything else,” Himsworth says. “When combined properly though, the creative, list, offer, strategy and process of a campaign can produce exceptional results.”

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Treating Prospects to a Dimensional Mailer Cuts through the Clutter

Dimensional Mail Reaches Executive Class

By Mindy Charski

Marketing to marketers is not, as you might imagine, always easy. But enterprise marketing software company Neolane (neolane.com) has done well reaching other marketers since learning that chewing gum helps its message stick.

In advance of last fall’s pro baseball championship, Neolane sent out about 500 baseball-themed mailers to other marketers, touting the benefits of the company’s marketing automation capabilities. “Our real objective was [creating] another touchpoint to be able to create a dialogue, starting with a personal phone call as follow-up,” says Kristin Hambelton, senior director of marketing at Neolane, which caters to corporate marketers in high-tech, retail, entertainment and travel.

Given that its audience is both time-pressed and inundated with any number of other offers, the company decided that a colorful dimensional package with concise messaging was the ideal approach. “I think people are intrigued about opening something,” says Hambelton. “It’s this whole childhood mentality of ‘Oh, I got a little present. I want to open it.’”

The mailer, which Massachusetts-based Neolane created in-house with help from a freelance designer, arrived in a white box with a label that read, “Is your cross-channel marketing ready for the big leagues?” Inside were a pack of bubble gum and four postcards nestled in blue or orange crinkle-cut paper shreds — Neolane’s signature colors.

One card, measuring about 6.5 by 4 inches, featured a personalized greeting and overview from Hambelton along with a link to an online demonstration of the cross-channel marketing software. The other, slightly larger cards contained mini case studies that explained how major corporations have benefited from the software. The cards and a sticker on the gum package included a URL with more detailed versions of the case studies.

Of the 500 mailers sent, Hambelton says, 58 people clicked through to the software demo and 69 to the case studies. Since prospects were already in Neolane’s database, the firm used its own software to track them after the visits and had sales associates call them as the baseball championship series was unfolding. “This achieved our goals in terms of people visiting the Web site [and led to] two accounts moving further along the sales cycle,” she says.

Hambelton says she wasn’t surprised that the mailer worked, as Neolane learned a while ago that audiences respond well to its baseball-themed packages — and the chewing gum in particular.

Of course, other recipients were just as impressed with the message and the overall dimensional package. “You just don’t see it a lot,” says Hambelton, “so I think it makes you stand out.”

By Vicki Powers

For many in the drapery industry, the final curtain began to fall not long after the U.S. housing crisis erupted in 2006. As new home sales declined, companies that had thrived for years selling shades and other drapery products to newly minted homeowners were forced to watch helplessly as revenues dried up and customers went away.

But at Blinds.com, one of the nation’s leading online drapery retailers, company officials continued looking for ways to turn the crisis into a window of opportunity.

In an effort to win over new customers, the company rolled out new products, explored new ad channels and even employed a series of new marketing techniques, like posting dry-cleaning hangers on doors.

But the results weren’t what the Houston company was seeking. After one particular $60,000 campaign flopped two years ago, company officials decided to recalibrate their marketing efforts.

Changing course
The overhaul began in 2008, when Blinds.com dumped its old lists and began using different databases for customer acquisition. Although the company relied on mail in the past, Blinds.com executives decided to get more aggressive and smarter.

“When you have a small business, every cent counts as far as your marketing spend,” says Esther Steinfeld, public relations manager. “Direct mail is something we can always count on to bring in revenue and be profitable.”

Also key to the company’s recalibrated efforts was an expansion of its target audience. Research showed that the company didn’t have to depend on new customers as much as previously believed. Working from new mailing lists, the company found that the list that worked best was actually made up of customers who had requested a free blind sample or e-mail newsletter. Past customers were easier to reach than new ones, the company found.

“There was a premise internally that there is a limited amount of retention-type mailing you can do when mailing to your own customer base,” says Daniel Cotlar, Blinds.com CMO. “How many times are customers who have already made a purchase going to keep buying? But that was the one sale that worked well.”

Blinds.com also began its current practice of sending different cards to various audiences on a rolling basis to see how they respond. Thus, three times a year, marketing sends oversized postcards to a list of 200,000 previous customers and those who ordered a free blind swatch. The mailing style is similar each send, including a proven combination of elements, but with different offers. Each message focuses on a different theme: “limited time,” “save money” and “great offers.”

The challenge is ensuring the conversion rate actually rises. Cotlar says those who order a free sample convert to sales 40 percent of the time. As a result, he tries to make sure they’re offered products that they might not buy otherwise.

“It’s such a prime group that you don’t want to just add costs and give them a new offer in direct mail for a product that they were going to buy without the offer anyway,” he states.

Promo codes help the organization track purchases from direct mail. All postcards feature copy that encourages recipients to “use these yourself or give them to a friend.”

The overhauled marketing efforts are proving successful. The company, which started in 1994, saw its profits rise by 17 percent this year. And company estimates suggest that the marketing campaign has generated as much as $1 million in revenue annually.

As even further proof of the power of the reworked marketing plan, the American Marketing Association named Blinds.com its AMA Houston Marketer of the Year in 2009.

Experimenting as a way of life
Blinds.com’s marketing metamorphosis is in keeping with the company’s values. When CEO Jay Steinfeld started the company 16 years ago, he preached three central tenets to employees: Experiment with new ideas, don’t be afraid to fail and continue to improve.

Not only do these ideas infuse the company’s marketing strategy, they’re also painted on the walls of its new office complex, where the company moved after spending nine years in offices above a sandwich shop.

The staff — which has grown from 29 to 110 in the past five years — seems more than happy to embrace Steinfeld’s edicts. Cotlar says the staff’s willingness to take chances compels the company to continually adjust its messages to customers. “Without the tweaks, we’d certainly see a decline in the profitability of a list,” he says.

Blinds.com has its own analytics team to see which segments of its lists do better and how people respond to various offers. The organization tests each mailing with several different cards. The piece with the best response carries over to the next mailing for a different test.

“With custom in-house analytics, we’re able to dig down deeper and refer back to data more easily than we would if we were relying on a third party,” says Abraham Israel, analytics manager at Blinds.com. “We’ve been able to maximize our spend by taking a deeper dive into the analytics.”

The deep dive helps save money by eliminating people who won’t convert and grow revenue by providing a deeper understanding of customers. That, in turn, enables the company to reach further in the list and tune its message more accurately. The deep dive also improves the company’s chances of winning over a customer who might not be as profitable otherwise.

“We felt a lot of pressure to really work on profitability of things like direct mail,” Cotlar says. “And it was everything: Tighten down, find ways to work more efficiently and spend less but achieve the same results or better. And that’s helped us now when things are starting to pick up.”

The science behind marketing
The “experimentation” theme carries over in other ways, too. The marketers at Blinds.com have dubbed themselves “The Idea Laboratory” — occasionally sporting white lab coats and posting a “Periodic Table of Marketing Elements” on one wall.

“Our experiments don’t involve test tubes and beakers, but we do experiments all the time,” says Steinfeld. “We’re also very analytical, so when things don’t work you can quickly tell.”

Even playful items like the periodic table help Blinds.com marketing experts. The variety of elements on the chart — such as direct mail, viral marketing and CEO letter — help define more clearly certain business goals, such as attracting prospects, converting them into customers, securing customer feedback and wowing customers enough to get them to spread the word about Blinds.com.

The company is still waiting for more new homeowners to return amid an improving economy, but Cotlar feels its mail marketing endeavors have given the business an edge by enabling it to craft more engaging, relevant offers and to better understand the potential of existing customers as a source of new revenue. Like any good experiment, the Blinds.com marketing overhaul has the company now thinking of what else could be.

“With the success we’ve had, we know now what’s possible with mail,” Cotlar says.

Looking for ways to keep your customers coming back? Download our “Build Repeat Business” white paper at delivermagazine.com/strategy.

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Making Old Customers New Again

Marketing Tips for Attracting Post-Recession Consumers

Marketing tips for attracting post-recession consumers

By Paula Andruss

Two years ago, consumers bought McMansions with no money down, racked up historic levels of credit card debt and indulged their coffee habit daily. Today, they’re more likely to opt for a downsized home, paid-down debt and a cup of joe they brewed themselves.

Whether you think the recession is over or not, there’s no doubt it has taken a toll on consumers’ purchasing habits. Most aren’t spending as freely as before, and many are learning to be happy with less.

But the news is not all bad for marketers. New research from Communispace and Ogilvy & Mather Chicago suggests that while post-recession consumers may continue to keep a tight hold on their wallets, there are new consumer characteristics emerging that marketers can tap into to drive sales.

How consumers have changed
The Communispace and Ogilvy report, which gathered consumer insights in the fourth quarter of 2009, found that consumers who embraced frugality plan to continue in that vein. Seventy-eight percent believe the recession has changed their spending habits for the better, with only 21 percent saying they personally will go back to spending like before the recession hit.

“Historically the pattern has been that Americans spend their way out of a recession,” says Manila Austin, Ph.D., Communispace’s director of research and co-author of the study. “But we heard people saying they weren’t going to do that this time. Consumers are more aware and also more cautious.”

Chris Fedorczak, brand planner at The Richards Group branding agency in Dallas, agrees that consumers have become cautious, and says that trend is unlikely to change soon.

“People are more conscientious and deliberate when it comes to financial matters than they have been in years,” he says. “This behavior will not quickly evaporate.”

To entice frugal consumers to buy, marketers would do well to focus on value in their messages. The study found that while 92 percent of respondents are using coupons, 91 percent are shopping at discount stores and 90 percent are buying more store brand or generic products, those shoppers are typically not willing to sacrifice quality for price. Buying fewer but higher-quality products was preferred by 73 percent of respondents vs. 27 percent who said they’d go for a larger number of lower-quality items.

“It’s not enough to simply shout about constant sales or gimmicky promotions,” Fedorczak says. “Marketers need to understand their customer’s nuanced sliding scale of value, and they need to position their brand within that range to be most relevant. Price is always a component, but it’s rarely the only consideration.”

That idea rings true for Danny Wong, marketing manager of Blank Label, a Boston-based provider of men’s dress shirts that consumers “co-create” with the manufacturer by choosing their own colors and design elements.

Wong says many of the company’s customers say that they previously shopped mass brands or visited their local tailor and paid upwards of $150 for a custom shirt, and they appreciate the fact that Blank Label allows them to co-create a shirt that’s made to fit them in both size and style, all at a more economical price.

“They’re impressed by the value as well as the innovation,” he says.

As a result, Blank Label is pushing the concept of co-creation as a marketing and branding strategy, a tactic Wong says has been good for business.

“People are looking for value, and when they hear about co-creation at a cost similar to what they’re already paying, they think it’s special and different,” he says.

Redefining the American dream
Making purchases that are special to them also reflects another consumer trend emerging from the Communispace and Ogilvy study, referred to as the “reincarnation of the American dream.”

More than 90 percent of respondents say they would rather have respect from family than status, as well as have a smaller house without a big mortgage than a big house with a mortgage to match. That means personal relevance may become even more important as marketers reach out to their customers.

“The last few years have been challenging, but they have helped people clarify what is truly worth it, and what they will — and will not — do for money,” Austin says. “People still want things, services, experience; but they are seeking to align spending with their personal values.”

Fedorczak adds that the American dream never died — it’s simply being redefined. “People will no longer lust after the lifestyle of the Joneses,” he says. “Instead, they will carefully examine what makes them truly happy before they buy.”

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How Valpak Is Capitalizing on the Coupon Explosion

Demography Is Key to Survival

By Pamela Oldham

It goes without saying that companies have to market to those who do the buying. But it’s just as important that brands market to those who do the selling, says Paul Criswell, Xerox Corp. channel marketing manager.

“Resellers are looking to get as much out of their relationships as possible,” says Criswell, who manages all communications between his company and about 3,500 top-tier reseller partners. “They’re looking for new opportunities to make money.”

Xerox has done more than many major companies to empower its sales force, but the last few years have seen the company step up that commitment considerably. Blending high-level creative with an assortment of communications channels, the print giant has crafted an annual marketing effort for its sales teams that rivals many B-to-C efforts.

For starters, Xerox kicks off its yearly push to resellers by publishing and mailing eye-catching guidebooks replete with information about the coming year’s partner program. This year, the program uses a sports theme, with “Team Up with Xerox” as the tagline. Appropriately, sales reps have received a book entitled “Player’s Playbook,” while owner-operators have been sent the “Coach’s Playbook.” Spiral bound and printed in full color, the 85-page guides describe the year’s sales incentives, demo programs and other aspects of the overall initiative.

“They talk about all the reasons why you should partner with Xerox,” Criswell says. “We’ve received great feedback on both of these books, and I think that’s because they’re very targeted.”

But the guidebooks mark only the beginning of the effort to sell the sales team. Creative promotional campaigns build awareness and excitement all year long. In the summer of 2009, for example, Xerox mailed a barbecue-themed sales promotion, tagged “Fire It Up,” to all its partners. The package was shaped like a grill and contained a number of “tools,” such as a baster. The company also used a combination of direct mail, e-mail and web marketing for a sales contest geared toward reseller sales reps.

In previous years, most of the communication had been aimed at the management of reseller organizations — the owners and operators. Last year’s mailing, though, marked renewed efforts by Xerox to address salespeople, too. “We directed communications to the people who were getting paid the sales bonuses, those motivated by extra cash,” Criswell explains.

He adds that they’ve seen some really positive results from communicating what owners and operators like to hear. “They definitely have different needs than their sales reps,” Criswell says. “Resellers care about the value that Xerox brings to their business and to their company. We talk about finding discounts when they’re buying product from distributors. We talk volume incentives and rebates and demo discounts. We have a training tool specifically for the owners on compensating their partners and reps around managed print.”

But Criswell says owners of reseller outfits also stood to gain from the various incentive programs for salespeople, thanks to rebates Xerox gave them for reps’ sales activities. “The approach for each group was tailored differently, and grand prizes of cash and merchandise were awarded,” he recalls. “It increased sales and the visibility of the partner program.”

Beyond incentives
The marketing programs have proven to be educational as well as lucrative for the sales force. Among the company’s triumphs has been the success of Xerox’s efforts to teach its partners new ways to sell. “Instead of selling on ‘speeds and feeds’ [print speed and specifications], we’re taking resellers a step further in selling value and selling a solution, rather than just selling hardware,” Criswell explains.

Xerox has become an expert in building mutually beneficial relationships with its channel partners — but financial incentives alone aren’t enough to ensure success. “We need to communicate to resellers what we bring to the table and that our value proposition will translate into more customer sales,” Criswell says.

Marketing efforts like the guidebooks help Xerox surmount communications barriers that confront many major channel marketers. For instance, because resellers typically don’t have the resources or time to train every salesperson on all the companies and products they might represent, product education is often insufficient. And engaging, informative marketing only enhances attempts to teach — and captivate — a reseller’s sales team.

Programs like these reflect the company’s long history of reaching out to its channel partners, and they are frequently cited as examples of best practices among major businesses. In April, for instance, the company was named “overall winner” by CRN magazine’s annual Channel Champions Awards, a recognition Xerox has repeated for four consecutive years.

Mixing channels, serving needs
In building bonds with his sales partners, Criswell has developed a potent multimedia approach to addressing their varied needs. “With the advent of the digital age, a lot of people have begun to go electronic,” he says. “But we try to have a good balance — a mixture of electronic and print media.”

Criswell believes his multichannel strategy offers a competitive advantage over rival marketers who rely on digital communications alone. “Our competition is telling their partners, ‘Hey, we’ve posted marketing information online. Go and print it or save it,’” he says with a laugh. “We take the extra effort to send it out to our base because we know that way, it will sit on their desks, right there at their fingertips.”

Along with the guidebooks and mail incentives, Xerox offers webinars, road shows and nationwide face-to-face training. Programs such as “The Builders Series” help Xerox sales representatives create high-quality custom marketing tools — everything from PDFs that can be customized with the reseller’s call-to-action and website URL, to an e-mail and web builder that speed promotional efforts.

For other companies looking to sell through channel partners, Criswell says it’s important to stay in front of competitors and in constant contact with customers. But keep things simple. “Make it easier to do business with your company than others,” he advises. “Enable your partners. Can you provide training or education they can use to improve their business? Training is a big trend, especially in this crazy economy of ours.”

The rewards of selling the sales team are both financial and intrinsic, according to Criswell. “We don’t just look at financials. It really is a balance,” he insists. “We look at how engaged channel partners are with us, how many demos they have purchased with us, how many promotions they’ve created using our marketing tools. Then we can accurately see if we’re making an impact, if we’ve helped them grow their business.”

Because in doing so, Xerox also helps to grow its own.

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Get Your Sales Team’s Attention

Highly Personalized Marketing Messages Leave Imprints on Consumers

By Pamela Oldham

Please pardon the sales team for ignoring you.

You see, the same focus that makes many sales teams successful at moving products into consumers’ homes also can be a barrier to small brands looking to excite salespeople with product information. For small and mid-sized businesses especially, your message to the sales force must always find a way above the din of today’s multimedia marketplace.

And you’ve often got to find new ways to educate and motivate salespeople, to get them excited about your brand even in the face of messages from larger competitors.

“It’s hard to get a salesperson’s attention,” concedes Susan Kerrigan-Meany, president of marketing communications agency SKM Group, based near Buffalo, N.Y. “They’re so busy. They just want to know, ‘How is this going to help me?’ And they want to see it in a way that gets their attention.”

By way of example, Kerrigan-Meany cites a recent challenge that confronted a mid-sized lending firm on the East Coast. The company, which specialized in commercial real estate, was having trouble getting mortgage brokers to consider its real estate loan packages. The brokers, the men and women responsible for bringing business owners and prospective investors to lending companies, had been avoiding the firm out of misperceptions about the difficulties of commercial lending.

In response, SKM and marketing executives at the firm developed a welcome kit that was mailed to thousands of independent mortgage brokers. The cards described various initiatives the lender had set up and offered brokers the chance to win vacations, appliances and other gifts. The mailer also contained guides, tutorials and tips for the brokers.

Over the campaign’s run, the company more than doubled the number of brokers in its database, from 40,000 to 86,000, and increased booked loans by more than 35 percent annually.

“A lot of times, we do more of an integrated approach,” explains Kerrigan-Meany, “where the recipient might be getting e-mails in addition to mail, along with other trade marketing. What works with direct mail is that you can do some unique things to stand out in the mailbox and get attention with interesting formats.”

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Marketing to Marketers Is Not Always Easy

Motivate and Empower Channel Partners to Sell More

Intelligent Mail is making it simpler for Hallmark customers to send personal greetings while helping the Kansas City, Mo.–based company easily track pieces as they enter the mail stream.

Hallmark’s new Postage-Paid Postcards — which hit store shelves in May — come with prepaid First-Class Mail® postage, eliminating the need for consumers to place a stamp on them.

When mailed, Intelligent Mail barcode technology linked to the postcards notifies the Postal Service™ that postage was prepaid when the consumer purchased the card.

“These Postage-Paid Postcards create a convenience we’ve not offered before,” says Cindy Mahoney, vice president of product development at Hallmark. “All consumers need to do is fill out the postcard and drop it in the mailbox.”

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Six Ways Direct Mail Will Thrive in the New Year

Direct Mail Messages Take Social Network Connections to the Next Level

By: Paula Andruss

Reaching out to your current customer base while tapping into new prospects can be a tricky endeavor for any marketer. Executing such a campaign cost-effectively is even more of a challenge, requiring innovative thinking and a strategic media plan.

So when premium scented-candle manufacturer and retailer Yankee Candle Company sought to both acquire new purchasers and bring its current customer base back into its stores, the company challenged Valassis, one of the nation’s leading marketing services companies, to come up with a plan. The solution was a media strategy that combined precise consumer targeting with a nontraditional media mix of freestanding inserts in both mail and newspapers.

According to Yankee Candle officials, the integrated program reached the right target audience, increasing new customers by more than 15 percent and boosting the average purchase by more than 10 percent. The successful campaign also delivered an impressive ROI of more than 300 percent. “Our main goal was customer acquisition,” said Heidi Partain, director of retail marketing for the candle maker, based in South Deerfield, Mass. “We use mail for catalogs and customer relationship marketing, and those are all one-to-one customer interactions with a known mailing list. But to get a cost-effective customer acquisition, you need to go to the folks you don’t go to today.”

Yankee Candle chose to test the integrated media program in the Boston market, the company’s strongest geographic sector. Roughly 1.2 million die-cut inserts ran in four separate shared mail and newspaper drops during the holiday season. The offer was $10 off any in-store or online purchase of $25 or more.

Therese Mulvey, vice president of marketing intelligence for Valassis, explained that the approach combined shared mail, a lower-cost way to employ direct mail initiatives, with optimal sub-ZIP™ code coverage of Yankee Candle’s target retail demographic. The candle manufacturer generally defines its core audience as women ages 24 to 45 with children at home, a higher than median household income and interest in home décor.

“We used their customer database to look at the geography around their Boston locations and decide, based on the penetration of the newspaper, where to use newspaper inserts and where to use shared mail inserts,” Mulvey added. “We did it on a sub-ZIP code level, which allowed Yankee Candle to optimize both its spend and the coverage of its target audience.”

Identifying and understanding that audience was crucial to allowing Yankee Candle to find additional shoppers who might be similar to its core customer base, said Partain.

“There are people out there who are potential customers who we’re not currently talking to, and the best way to figure out who they are is to find those who look a whole lot like our current customer base, and give them an easy reason to try us,” she added.

That detailed front-end analysis allowed Yankee Candle to reliably reach its current customers as well as extend the offer to those customers’ mothers, sisters, friends and neighbors.

“Because we have a strong data set and a strong relationship with Valassis we could look specifically at our customers — what they look like and where they live — and then say, ‘Three houses down is another woman who looks a whole lot like her and isn’t on our list, so let’s find that woman,’” Partain explained. “You can’t do that if you’re only dealing with the syndicated information or only dealing with your own internal data; you have to have collaboration to get there.”

Mulvey added, “We were able to take the company’s data and then find look-alikes — new people for them to talk to. We have a lot of capability to find look-alikes at a neighborhood level and target them at a sub-ZIP code level. It’s not as expensive as targeting at a household level, and at the same time it eliminates duplication and waste.”

Once those potential customers were found, the integration of shared mail and newspaper distribution was an innovative and effective way to make sure the insert and an offer made its way to them.

“We used newspaper and mail because they were the right mechanisms to get us where we wanted to go,” stated Partain. “The program is not focused on where we are; it’s focused on where the customer is.”

This particular media mix also allowed Yankee Candle to allocate mail and newspaper inserts based on the local market. For example, some areas would use a bigger proportion of newspaper inserts because these areas typically have a higher newspaper readership. In other areas, however, shared mail inserts were more effective because those customers were less likely to see them in the paper.

“It’s a pretty data-intensive process, and you have to be willing to change your media mix to suit the market,” commented Partain. “In New Hampshire we had a different blend of newspapers and mail than we did in Cape Cod. The customers are different and their consumption rates are different, so we had to be willing to break the mold of doing all or none to get to that blend. That worked for us, because it let us go where the customer is.”

Once they were reached, customers responded in droves. The program has been so successful that Yankee Candle is not only repeating it in Boston, but also expanding the campaign to new markets. Though the company is reluctant to give additional specifics about the campaign, Partain is confident that the campaign garnered a response rate that’s higher than both the industry average and the company norm. It also boosted retail activity, particularly coupon redemption, both online and in-store.

“Not only does this offer drive affordable new customer acquisition, it also drives a higher ticket for existing customers,” Partain asserted. “We broke even very early and identified strong enough performance to exceed our return on investment goals and expand the program, too.”

The next generation of the campaign features a free-standing insert with a slightly different creative. The company plans to double the number of ad pieces it sent out last year as part of the program.

One thing that won’t change, however, is the blend of newspaper and mail, stated Partain.

“Targeting is what got us to those customers, the creative is what gave them the easy reason to come see us, and the integrated mix between newspaper and shared mail is the thing that made the return on investment work,” she explained. “Could we have reached all those customers if we went only through newspaper or only through mail? Probably. But our return on investment would have been significantly lower had we chosen all of one or all of the other.”

By: Paula Andruss

After watching its clients reap the benefits of multichannel campaigns integrating direct mail and the Web, marketing communications production services provider Tukaiz (pronounced Too-KAYZ) decided to double down on its own advice by blending direct mail and image personalization into a campaign that has driven the marketing firm’s own sales and branding efforts.

Last spring, the Franklin Park, Ill., company launched a baseball-themed campaign using print image personalization and state-of-the-art technology to show current and potential customers how the combination can bolster their marketing efforts. The one-time mailing was sent out in April (to coincide with baseball’s opening day) to more than 4,000 existing and potential clients nationwide.

The mailer, a 6″ x 9″ card die cut to an image of a baseball glove and tucked inside a clear envelope, featured the recipients’ first and last names and included a call to action to visit personalized Web addresses (known as a PURLs). That landing page dropped recipients into an elaborate baseball stadium scene that contained personalized text, audio and images. It also included survey questions about the campaign and the recipient’s interest in it. Finally, recipients were given a chance to win an authentic pro baseball jersey with their chosen name emblazoned on the back.

Frank Defino Jr., vice president and managing director of Tukaiz, says because the main purpose of the campaign was to capture recipients’ attention, direct mail — and personalized direct mail in particular — was a natural choice.

“We believe direct mail can be used in conjunction with the Internet in a different way,” he says. “Rather than your first start of action being an e-mail blast, it can be direct mail that makes people take notice.” Direct mail can be especially effective, he adds, because people might get five or 10 pieces of mail in a day, while they might easily get more than 100 pieces of irrelevant e-mail.

Personalization helped the piece become the start of an exceptional journey, according to Defino. “The journey begins when you receive it, because there’s a die cut with your name on it that you can see through the clear envelope,” he says.

It also created a “wow’ factor that caught recipients’ attention and kept the piece from being tossed into the recycling bin without a glance.

“You might ask ‘What does baseball have to do with a pharmaceutical company or manufacturer?’” says Defino. “But it’s not about the image itself being relevant to the vertical market you’re calling on; it’s about the image being so powerful that it makes the recipient take note. Everybody is looking for something clever.”

Recipients found that innovation in the Web portion of the experience as well. When people accessed their PURL, they came to a personalized landing page complete with flash, voiceover and background sound, all of which created a movie-like experience in which the recipient is the star, with his name announced by a broadcaster and displayed on a huge scoreboard.

“All along the way, this was an entertainment experience for the recipient,” Defino says.

That engaging experience was a home run in terms of garnering attention and building brand awareness, according to Defino. The campaign achieved a response rate of more than 12 percent, with an equal mix of current and new customers, most of whom Defino says then used the same campaign for their own purposes.

“They liked it so much we just had to modify it to make it relevant to what they were trying to sell in their own campaign,” he says.

The baseball mailer also earned an impressive 14-to-1 return on investment — a ratio that Defino says is still growing as companies continue to take action on the mailer, which they’ve held onto for months.

“Recipients do not throw direct mail like this in the trash,” he says. “People keep it because it has their name on it, and even if they don’t buy from it immediately, they hang onto it. That’s another advantage direct mail gives us that e-mail can’t.”

To capitalize on that advantage, Tukaiz plans to continue sending out mailers containing image personalization for as long as the feedback remains so positive.

“Even in this economy, there are no plans to stop marketing and stop what works,” says Defino. “We actually have people asking us to add them to our mailing list. The feedback we get from recipients is that this type of piece is very relevant to them, so that’s why we’ll continue to do it.”

Campaign Synopsis
Company: Tukaiz
Goal: “We wanted to show marketers how you can use the technology of image personalization in direct mail to attract recipients’ attention,” says Frank Defino Jr., vice president and managing director of Tukaiz.
Target Audience: Existing and potential customers
Geographic target: National
Channel(s): Direct mail, Web
Duration of campaign: One-time drop in April 2008
Mailings: 4,179 cards die cut to look like baseball gloves with personalized text that directed recipients to a movie-like personalized URL with flash, voiceover and even more personalized content.
Results: The campaign garnered a response rate of 12 percent and a return on investment ratio of 14:1.
See the piece: http://john.smith.mytukaiz.com

Efforts to educate Massachusetts residents about health-care reform took marketers to some interesting places – including out to the old ball game

By: Elaine Appleton Grant

Peanuts, hot dogs, beer…and health insurance?

That was the pitch, so to speak, at Fenway Park in the spring of 2007.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts made news in April 2006 by becoming the first state in the nation to mandate nearly universal health insurance coverage. The new law required all citizens who could afford coverage to have health insurance by December 31, 2007, or forfeit a $219 personal tax credit. Skip health insurance in 2008 and the penalty increases drastically.

Passing the legislation was extremely difficult for the state legislature, but it was still only the first step. Once the mandate became effective on July 1, 2007, the state had only a few months to create new programs and to figure out how to get hundreds of thousands of uninsured citizens to enroll. And that challenge led state officials to Fenway Park.

It seemed like a logical destination to Joan Fallon, communications chief for the Massachusetts Health Connector, a state agency created to develop and implement new universal health-care policies and programs. Fallon and four other staffers were charged with reaching an estimated 372,000 to 619,000 uninsured Massachusetts residents, and helping them get coverage by the end of the year. Fallon’s entire marketing budget, which would fuel education and awareness from Cape Cod to the Berkshires and beyond, was $4 million.

With health-care reform near the top of election-year campaign issues, the question isn’t just what to do about health care, but also how to conduct the massive communications campaigns vital to any such drastic change. For marketers, Massachusetts’ successful multichannel program — which helped cut the number of uninsured residents — serves as a solid model of how to inform and persuade a broad and diverse audience, offering lessons that apply not only to health-care reform but to any time- and resource-challenged campaign.

Teaming Up

As Fallon and her colleagues geared up to push statewide coverage, they found that the most difficult group to convince to purchase health insurance included many of the same people chomping ballpark franks and cheering from the bleachers. Research showed that the bulk of the uninsured were men in their 20s and 30s. Noticing this apparent overlap between their target audience and baseball fans, Fallon and Weber Shandwick, the Connector’s PR firm, approached Red Sox executives with an unusual request: Would the ball club join other groups in partnering with the state to convince young men to sign up for health insurance?

The Sox jumped in wholeheartedly. The team ran ads on the local sports station that featured Red Sox “ambassadors,” young men and women who greet ticket-holders arriving at the park. The club broadcast interviews with healthcare advocates, staged press conferences and hosted an insurance sign-up booth at every home game. And they did it in inimitable baseball style: One public radio story caught a booth worker shouting, “get your health insurance here” with the same distinctive Fenway cadence with which thousands of hot dog vendors have landed wiener sales. “The signups in the park really complemented the ads,” says Adam Grossman, the team’s vice president of marketing. “If you were a Red Sox fan, you couldn’t miss the message.”

But smart targeting had as much to do with the success of the promotion as its ubiquity. The Red Sox partnership illustrates that when you want to change the behavior of a diverse population, you must first identify the character traits of the people you’re trying to reach. Then, segment your audience accordingly — and go where they are.

Experts praised Health Connector for developing such a far-reaching campaign in accordance with appropriate marketing best practices. In figuring out what was important to the audience, the organization was able to spot potential openings for its health-care pitches.

Using the baseball park was hailed as a master stroke not only because of the high profile that the Red Sox enjoy or because many in the target audience congregate at Fenway. Rather, the ballpark was also, despite the action on the field, a place where targets could soak up some of the details of the Health Connector message. After all, baseball games allow fans a fair amount of free time — between innings, during offensive lulls, at the start of the seventh-inning stretch — much of which is spent in line for the bathroom or staking out the concession stands in hopes of scoring a frankfurter and a draft beer.

But baseball fans weren’t the only group of people that Health Connector made efforts to reach out to. Indeed, there were numerous, widely divergent groups for the Connector to try to touch. Consider, for example, that Massachusetts residents speak at least 16 different languages. By themselves, Fallon and her small group of internal colleagues stood no chance of reaching all of their targets, so Fallon relied on other, lower-profile partnerships throughout the state to extend her group’s resources. Says Fallon, “We sat down and said, ‘Let’s think of all the ways that we can reach folks who need to be reached and get them to understand what they need to do and why it’s good for them.’”

Recruiting More Players

In addition to the Red Sox, the Connector worked with organizations ranging from huge health insurance providers and hospitals to tiny grass-roots community groups in towns and cities statewide. Grocery chains, drugstores and banks publicized the programs — generating publicity for more than 200 outreach sessions and educational forums that Fallon and her staff conducted. Fallon also teamed with the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, whose members went door-to-door educating people and held enrollment sessions following services. The International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers put up signs on the Boston expressway.

To reach college seniors, the Connector placed ads in university papers and asked schools to e-mail information about the effort to graduating students. And the Connector — through its partnership with other government agencies — mailed postcards to every state taxpayer to remind them of the new mandate. One mailing went out just before the mandate went into effect in July 2007, another prior to the New Year’s Eve deadline. “We tried to leave no stone unturned, be it direct mail or working with the churches,” says Fallon. “We’d work with anybody who wanted to work with us.”

Working with grass-roots leaders was critical, says Brian Rosman, research director for HealthCare for All, which partnered with the Connector to spread word of the health-care rule. “We wanted to reach as many people as possible, if not every resident across the state,” Rosman says. “We felt that would be easier to do if we could connect to leaders in other communities, because those communities, quite frankly, have better trust in those leaders than we could expect to have. Nor could we [necessarily] speak the language.”

From the Red Sox partnership to outreach sessions in far-flung towns, the partnerships accomplished their mission, observers say. In its first year, the campaign reduced the number of uninsured working-age adults from 13 percent of the population to 7 percent, according to research by the Urban Institute. By summer 2008, nearly three-quarters of previously uninsured Massachusetts residents were covered.

Fallon gives no single effort the bulk of the credit for the outreach program’s success. “It takes a multifaceted campaign,” she says. “Focusing on one thing isn’t the way to go. It’s many different smaller campaigns that you have to put into place that bring together an overall public education campaign.”

And, of course, it’s about reaching people where they live.

Hot dog, anyone?

Prospera Credit Union turned to a branded ice pack to trumpet its latest message about tax relief

By: Gwen Moran

As a community-based financial institution, Prospera Credit Union has cultivated an image of being a fun and friendly place, providing everything from insurance to checking accounts to loans, all with a sense of personality and approachability.

But how do you make equity shares fun? That was the challenge facing Prospera after it decided to raise capital through a special equity-share offering. It was a tall order: Create an exciting, fun and engaging piece about the tax-deferred product but also include a high level of dry detail.

While some experts warn against using too much humor in financial marketing, Prospera decided that it could balance the yuks against hard information about the equity shares.

For the company’s marketers, the tax benefits were the key. Since the share dividends are only paid out at the end of the investment period, investors have the benefit of deferring any income taxes until the end of the investment period. But while that’s an important detail, the information wasn’t enough by itself to have investors beating down the door — as the credit union learned after two previous campaigns to promote the equity shares.

This time, the marketing team began to play with the idea of “freezing your taxes” to reflect that concept. And few things say “freezing” better than freezer gel packs.

Before long, the credit union was mailing out branded gel packs bearing the message, “Paying taxes is a big headache. That’s why we’re freezing them for 10 years.” Print materials that explained the investment opportunity were packaged along with customized letters and the gel packs in Mylar envelopes, which allowed recipients to see the gel pack inside.

Prospera mailed nearly 4,500 packages to a highly qualified list of prospective investors culled from the credit union’s 60,000 members, says Tanya Curtis, public relations manager for the credit union. Key targets included those who were paying income taxes at higher marginal rates; those who had maximized retirement contributions for the year; those who had funds to gift, loan or transfer to a minor; and those who preferred dividend income over interest income, among other factors. Each recipient received a follow-up phone call about the offer from a Prospera representative.

The total cost for the promotion was $42,475. In just seven weeks, the credit union exceeded its revenue goal. Meanwhile, the ROI on the direct mail campaign bettered returns on the previous campaigns by 143 percent, Curtis says.

But whatever Prospera’s successes, financial firms should take care when being playful in their marketing, experts contend. Despite the urge to attribute the success of the campaign to just the gel pack, the real “magic” of the campaign was probably as much in the audience as in the mailer, says Chet Meisner, author of The Complete Guide to Direct Marketing and founder of direct marketing firm Meisner Direct, in Roswell, Ga.

“People don’t always see their investments as humorous,” he says, adding that he’s seen cases where response rates in financial service products have dropped when humor was used to promote them.

But Curtis says that the humor embodied in the freezer pack was vital to the Prospera campaign, which generated a whopping 8-percent response rate. “This was the third equity share promotion we had worked on,” says Curtis. “By using direct mail in such a creative way our return on investment was better than the two previous promotions.”

And for marketers at Prospera, that meant that at least one headache had been alleviated.

A building-materials manufacturer gets creative with its product samples and expands its market in the process

By: Vicki Powers

How do you move your company into a totally different market? It helps if you can identify the pain points of your new prospective buyers, and then graphically demonstrate how you can remove that pain. And if you can do it with a sample of your own product, well, even better.

That’s the approach that BuildDirect took when it mailed out a “dimensional” maze on its bamboo flooring product to illustrate both its product and its non-traditional approach.

Historically, BuildDirect’s business-to-consumer (B2C) market represented a purely online effort — mostly search marketing and paid affiliates. The organization figured that prospects in the B2B market were less likely to be online actually searching for building supplies. So BuildDirect, a Canadian company typically serving the do-it-yourself audience, relied on a clever direct mail campaign to attract the business-to-business (B2B) market comprising flooring distributors who resell to retailers and large builders.

“In their world, they have folks approaching them through trade shows and salesmen on the road,” says Rob Davidson, vice president of marketing at BuildDirect. “That’s not consistent with our online business model, so we thought direct mail would be a good way to reach out to these prospective commercial buyers.”

As a result, BuildDirect’s direct mail maze campaign was one part of a more comprehensive campaign packaged in a box as a dimensional mailer to 350 presidents/CEOs at flooring-distribution companies. (Another tier of 5,000 smaller companies received a flat mail piece.) The wooden maze actually consisted of two mazes, side by side. The traditional maze on the left represented the plethora of twists and turns that customers needed to navigate when sourcing through a traditional channel. Flooring materials often come from overseas, which involves foreign currency issues, excise taxes, customs and tariffs, so the maze included such landmarks as “lost at sea,” “damaged goods,” and “missing paperwork.”

The contrasting “maze” wasn’t labyrinthine at all, but rather featured a straight track along which the ball moved simply up and down. This was meant as a visual metaphor of how BuildDirect was taking a lot of the hassles and costs out of the buying process for these commercial buyers. “If you source through BuildDirect, it is basically one call to BuildDirect and a straight line to distribution,”
Davidson says. “As a subtle point, we put the whole thing on our bamboo flooring, one of the products we sell.”

The maze campaign garnered a 16-percent response rate through reply cards, e-mail and even phone calls. Davidson says they were pleasantly surprised with these results as a non-traditional player in a traditional industry, and that the piece really stuck in the minds of recipients. “People at trade shows continue to comment, ‘You’re the guys that sent the maze,’” he says.

tw telecom wanted its direct mail campaign to stand out. Faction Media did them one better – by creating a piece that stands up.

By: Anne Stuart

When you’re crafting a B2B direct mail campaign, it’s important that your piece has the ability to stand out on the recipient’s desk. What better way to accomplish that than to have the piece literally pop up?

“We wanted to create a piece showing what makes Time Warner Telecom services different; how they can add a new dimension to your ability to communicate,” says Aaron Batte, principal of Faction Media, which developed the campaign for Time Warner Telecom. (The company recently changed its name to tw telecom.) “We started by adding a dimension.”

Based in Littleton, Colo., tw telecom provides voice, data and Internet services to business customers in 8,500 office buildings in 75 cities nationwide. Because those structures are “lit up” — that is, already connected to tw telecom’s fiber-optic network — the company’s spring 2008 campaign targeted other companies in the same buildings.

Specifically, Batte’s creative team designed a 6×9-inch card that, on the outside, invites recipients to “open up to a whole new world” at their specific business addresses.

When they open the card, a three-dimensional city scene — complete with buildings, streets, pedestrians and a traffic signal — pops up. A prominently placed billboard offers an incentive, such as a free video camera, for making an appointment to discuss telecom service.

In the background — visible whether the card is opened or closed — is a city skyline customized with local landmarks: the Gateway Arch for St. Louis residents, the Empire State Building for New Yorkers, the Space Needle for those in the Pacific Northwest.

The campaign’s response rate varies from city to city, but averages 8 percent to 10 percent, according to tw telecom. That’s far better than the typical direct mail response rate, which historically has been closer to 1 percent to 2 percent.

Why does the pop-up piece generate those kinds of returns? “It’s a little larger, a little more eye-catching, a little more fun” than many direct mail pieces, says Batte. “People know there’s a sales pitch in there, but this piece is saying, ‘We’re going to give you something back. When you engage with this piece, we’re going to give you a bit of entertainment.”

Agency: Faction Media, Denver factionmedia.com

Client: Time Warner Telecom Inc., Littleton, Colo. (now known as tw telecom)

Target Audience: Businesses in or near more than 8,500 buildings served by tw telecom’s fiber-optic network in selected cities nationwide

Goal: To convince these potential corporate customers to buy tw telecom’s voice, data and Internet services

DM Vehicle: A freestanding one-piece mailer whose outside cover invites recipients to “open up to a whole new world” at their specific business addresses. Inside is a three dimensional city scene with a billboard and other text offering an incentive — typically a video camera — for making a sales appointment. In the background, visible whether the card is opened or closed, is a skyline customized with local landmarks (such as the Empire State Building in New York and the Space Needle in Seattle)

Size: 6 x 9 inches; mailed flat in clear 6 x 9 poly envelope

Response Rate: Averages 8 percent to 10 percent

An Atlanta marketing firm drew rave reviews from fashionistas for its personalized direct mailer

By: Lekan Oguntoyinbo

Two years ago, Grizzard Performance Group set out to take the New York-centric U.S. fashion industry by storm from Atlanta.

Of course, when they made the decision to go after business within the wholesale and retail apparel industry, executives at the southern-based marketing firm knew it would be a challenge. For starters, they were going against competitors who had a track record of working with some of the fashion world’s most venerable giants. And then there was the small matter of geography: Atlanta is not exactly at the epicenter of the retail apparel industry, and location carries much currency in that business.

“There’s a kind of parochialism attributable to different parts of the country,” says Douglas Broward, creative director of the Grizzard Performance Group and the campaign’s quarterback. “Being from the South, we had to work aggressively. Markets in places like New York are trend-setting as opposed to trend-reflecting. It was definitely uphill.”

Uphill but not unattainable, he figured. Grizzard had just come off a lengthy relationship with one of its biggest clients, so there was a lot riding on this. Broward and three colleagues set about developing a campaign that would magnetize a significant segment of their target audience. Four months of painstaking work led to the birth of Volume ONE, a campaign that consisted of a two-step mailing to approximately 50 potential clients.

The first step included sending out a low-cost poster that alerted the prospects that a second, more substantive mailing was on its way. Grizzard also developed a URL that was specific to the campaign and contained a registration form and a flash show. But it was the second mailing a lavish red, quarter-inch-thick, 16-by 22-inch book with a floral design embossed in the thin metal foil stamped on the book’s cover that got people talking and calling. The books, which each cost between $500 and $600 to develop, also came complete with a customized music CD and a specific URL, thisisvolume.com.

In the middle of the book was a 22-by 64-inch centerfold of a work table strewn with photos. The books, which were wholly designed and partially created in-house, arrived in highly personalized, hand-painted boxes. The CD had a musical accompaniment to each passage in the book. Each of the songs referenced the passage in song lyrics or title.

Unilever uses direct mail to help consumers redefine “Real Beauty”

By: Paula Andruss

The buzz surrounding the Dove® Campaign for Real Beauty has been deafening since its inception. Using real women to promote its personal care products has made the Unilever Inc. brand resonate with women around the globe, earning accolades and awards in addition to double-digit sales growth.

Part of a comprehensive marketing effort that includes advertising, billboards, a dedicated Web site, viral films, special events and the Dove Self-Esteem Fund, the 4-year-old campaign is also supported by the “Dove Dimensions” direct mailer. A mini-magazine that’s sent by mail three times a year to approximately 1.8 million households, it’s designed to connect directly with consumers and reinforce the brand’s “real beauty” philosophy through general and product-related articles and promotions.

Though the Campaign for Real Beauty may garner more publicity from its new-media elements, Dove officials and industry insiders agree that the mailer and its editorial format play a crucial role in building brand equity and loyalty among the Dove brand’s target consumers.

Kathy O’Brien, marketing director for Dove, says the Dove Dimensions mailers started as a way to help the brand establish direct communication with its most valuable consumers.

“They allow us to provide real women with brand, product and category information in a more personalized format,” she says. “Dove has found that direct marketing is an effective way to reach loyal consumers. While coupons, FSIs, advertising and public relations efforts reach the general population, Dove Dimensions is a more personal connection to the brand for consumers who have expressed additional interest in Dove products or programming.”

Recipients of the mailer are taken from Unilever’s database of consumers based on previous interactions with the brand, such as entering a Dove contest, participating in a promotion or requesting sample products.

Such direct mail allows Dove to target consumers who have been affected by the campaign and its real-woman imagery, and create an ongoing dialogue with them about the brand as a whole, says David Diamond, partner at Toronto-based marketing consultancy Twenty-Ten Inc.

“Today there’s a trend to create a mega-brand,” Diamond says. “This mailer allows Dove to target the ladies for whom this campaign has made an emotional connection and try to get them to spend their skin-and body-care budget on Dove products, and also have a bias going forward so that when there’s a new Dove product, they’ll try it because they already have this relationship with the company.”

A children’s charity uses the tactile power of direct marketing to move donors

By: Lou Bortone

Imagine arriving at your desk one day and finding a plain white envelope sitting in your inbox. The nondescript piece of mail is devoid of any identifying labels other than some simple text instructing you to fold the envelope in half. You’re curious, so you fold the envelope and feel a little snap. Naturally, you open the envelope, only to discover that you’ve just broken a pencil in two. A note inside reads: “That’s how easy it is to break a child’s arm.”

The note in the envelope with the now-shattered pencil goes on to tell the heartbreaking story of Jeremy, a little boy who had his arm broken by his father not once, but on six different occasions. Jeremy was just 5 years old when his abusive father first broke the boy’s bone using no more force than what it took to snap that pencil.

If you’re surprised and shocked by this powerful message, that’s exactly the response that the NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) was hoping for. As a nonprofit child abuse-prevention organization in the U.K. competing against dozens of other British charities for attention and donations, the NSPCC needed a unique and compelling way to emerge from the clutter and reverse the organization’s falling response rates.

The NSPCC mail piece, created by WWAV Rapp Collins in London, was designed to engage the senses and take advantage of the tactile power of direct marketing. “The campaign targeted people at work, where people are unfamiliar with receiving fundraising appeals,” explains Barney Cockerell, creative director at WWAV Rapp Collins, “so the communication had to cut through. We had to stop people in their tracks and make them act.

“Only once recipients opened the envelope and read the contents would they know that they had just experienced how shockingly easy it is to break a child’s arm,” recounts Cockerell. “We knew that we had to provide an experience that directly connected them with the cause, so we took full advantage of the three dimensions and five senses that we have to play with in direct mail communications.”

The day after receiving their “pencil packs,” more than 300 office workers in Britain who had received the initial message got a follow up e-mail from the NSPCC. The e-mail reminder encouraged automatic payroll deductions and promised matching funds from the employer.

Despite the shocking nature of the pencil pack device, there were no complaints or reports of recipients being offended. “There’s a fine line between shocking people and offending them,” according to WWAV Rapp Collins Group Communications Director Robert Mayes. “Having worked on NSPCC and many other charities for the best part of 27 years, we have a finely tuned sense of where that line is and how to get close to the edge without crossing it.” Mayes also says that the unmarked envelopes didn’t alarm anyone, even in this more vigilant age of terrorism concerns.

In fact, after the emotionally charged pencil pack campaign, employee payroll giving jumped from 2 percent to 10 percent, with an average monthly gift of 10 pounds sterling, or about 20 U.S. dollars. Even better for the NSPCC, the employers involved doubled that figure.

The campaign garnered a DMA ECHO Gold Award in 2007, but more important, the NSPCC’s pencil pack generated an impressive response rate of 6.8 percent. “This campaign takes the idea of emotional engagement to a new level,” Cockerell says of the success. The DMA calls the piece “brave, original and unique.”

“Every time someone breaks the pencil and reads the headline, they have an immediate and visceral emotional reaction,” reports Cockerell. “Which is exactly what makes people give to charity.”

By: Frank S. Washington

It’s no secret that big companies often don’t do well when making overtures to small businesses. In many instances, their outreach efforts fail not because big businesses don’t have anything worthwhile to offer but because major marketers aren’t very good at holding the attention of small entrepreneurs.

But a recent, award-winning campaign by Verizon did indeed capture the fancy of many small businesses - and earned some notice from the big boys, too, for both its effectiveness and its simplicity.

In fall 2006, the telecom giant began sending out a test mailing of direct mail pieces that bore a striking resemblance to an all-too-familiar office-supply staple - the interoffice envelope. Verizon targeted 11,851 small businesses with the envelopes, which featured the words “INTERNET NOTICE” stripped across the top and the crossed-out names of fictitious previous recipients. A final “name” - “Cable User” - was unobscured, a cue for business owners to “cross out” their cable provider and switch to a high-speed digital subscriber line (DSL) provided by Verizon.

The envelope was accompanied by a cover letter - with the heading “For Speed, For Features, For Price … Verizon Business DSL” - that was signed by Verizon small business marketing director Marquita Carter.

In an interview, Carter explains that Verizon officials settled on the three-month “Interoffice Envelope” campaign after tests suggested its simple familiarity stood a strong chance of cutting through the promotional clutter that confronts many small businesses.

“The iconic look of an interoffice envelope - who’s going to just toss that out?” asks Carter rhetorically. “We tested this approach and got some really strong results. It bettered our control number by 30 percent.”

Carter says a test is part of every direct mail campaign at Verizon. The company sends out two or more different pieces of direct mail and measures which one generates the most calls and conversions to sales. The responses are benchmarked against the control campaign, which is the best campaign from the last direct mail cycle.

By: Paula Andruss

When consumer products manufacturer Combe Inc. wanted to stimulate trial of its Just For Men hair color product, the White Plains, N.Y., company sought a cost-efficient way to deploy a free sample offer to convert potential customers into actual users.

But reaching men who are predisposed to trying a hair color sample can be tricky, and mass-media channels were not delivering the return on investment the company was looking to attain.

So Combe turned to some unique market research to identify the brand’s optimal prospects, as well as the best way to reach them. After testing several vehicles, the company executed a highly targeted direct mail free trial offer that met its goals and budget in ways that most other media simply couldn’t match.

Selling men on a more youthful look is a challenge for Combe, says Shel Smith, partner at Toronto-based target marketing consultancy Twenty-Ten Inc., the agency that helped execute the mailings. Men, Smith points out, have to be of a certain mindset to be open to trying a hair dye.

“They were looking for a very specific consumer,” says Smith. “It was a man between the ages of 35 and 54 who felt his graying hair was holding him back, either at work or in his romantic life. He had a weak perception about his looks and truly believed he was disadvantaged by graying.”

To reach this group, Combe enacted a multimedia marketing effort that included direct-response television, direct mail and advertising in magazines such as Sports Illustrated and Field & Stream.

Smith has particularly high praise for the impact of direct mail on the Just For Men campaign. “Unlike television, which is very much about brand image, direct mail lets you communicate a lot of information,” he says. “With the trial offer of Just For Men, it allowed Combe to not only physically deliver the sample; it also let them explain to men how to use it and how to follow though with the program.”

By: Lara Jensen
When HGTV launched in 1994, there was some skepticism about the need for a television channel that airs nothing but shows related to homes and gardens.

Today, the cable network reaches 93 million U.S. households and is in the midst of an aggressive marketing expansion that could see the HGTV brand popping up everywhere from mobile phones to stores nationwide.

However, as statistics continue to show a decrease in the amount of time consumers are spending in front of their TVs, HGTV isn’t the only media brand wondering where its future growth will come from.

“As we look forward, we’re tapped out in [traditional] distribution,” says Lori Asbury, senior vice president of marketing, creative and brand strategy for HGTV. “So in order to grow our audience, we need to grow our reach.”

With this goal in mind, HGTV has initiated an aggressive multiplatform strategy that may include ongoing direct mail efforts, the launch of two broadband channels - HGTV KitchenDesign and HGTV BathDesign - and the creation of a marketplace section on HGTV.com where home and garden manufacturers can display their products. “Everywhere that we can touch the consumer is where we want to be,” Asbury says.

HGTV is owned and operated by Scripps Networks, which also owns and operates Food Network and Fine Living, among other media outlets. Scripps Networks is a division within the E.W. Scripps Company news empire.

Currently, HGTV also puts out HGTV Ideas magazine in partnership with newspapers in 23 markets around the country. While some of the papers distribute the magazine as inserts in their pages, others mail it directly to subscribers.

To further broaden its reach, HGTV is pursuing content distribution deals with various Internet and mobile providers. There are also numerous licensing agreements in the works for HGTV-branded merchandise.

Asbury says the goal is to create a “holistic” brand experience, with consumers accessing HGTV on their TVs, the Web and mobile phones and everything circling back to the TV at some point: “Any way that we can allow people to access the brand means we’re enhancing the brand.” Plus, a strong multiplatform brand offers both the potential to drive ratings and a way for the sales force to package HGTV to advertisers.

There’s another reason HGTV wants to plaster its brand everywhere: Competitors “are coming after our category,” Asbury explains, adding that this is why HGTV needs to reach out to consumers, offer the category in as many touchpoints as possible and be the experts in the category.

Another critical area of focus for driving growth at HGTV is the Web, Asbury says. Already, the company operates a companion Web site, HGTV.com, that dominates the online home-and-garden category with 5.2 million unique visitors each month.

“The Internet is the biggest platform for reaching the masses,” Asbury says. It’s also “the quickest and the easiest place for people to go.” And this explains why HGTV is spending over $1 million in interactive media to market Design Star, a new reality TV series in which designers compete to win their own TV show.

The Internet is also “where most of the deals in terms of repurposing our content are being pursued,” Asbury says. The challenge the Internet poses for HGTV and other traditional media companies is significant: How do they derive revenue from online content? “We believe our content has real value, so the goal is not to give away the content, but to sell it,” Asbury says.

However, “HGTV isn’t saying ‘If we can’t monetize it, we won’t do it,’” insists Asbury. Having a multiplatform brand is just too important, given today’s media landscape. But for the network to consider a deal to offer its content online for free, there would have to be some promotional or marketing value in it.

Multiplatform doesn’t just mean giving consumers more ways to watch and read HGTV content, either. Asbury wants to bring the brand into retail, similar to what Food Network is doing with its own line of branded kitchen products, tableware and linens. That line debuts this fall.

Few TV brands have been able to establish a presence for themselves at retail through licensed product. HGTV is currently pursuing “a bunch of different brand extensions,” Asbury says. She adds that the goal of any deal with a retailer would be to make consumers feel more connected to the brand by creating an in-store experience where they could find useful tips and knowledge related to their homes and garden. In turn, she hopes the branded products would drive business back to the network. Asbury expects to announce an arrangement with a major retailer some time this year.

Asbury reiterates that the network is also keeping direct mail in the mix and suggests that HGTV may even expand its mail efforts. “We may bundle direct mail into a bigger campaign in the future,” Asbury says.

Diversification is an age-old strategy and one that HGTV believes can give it a boost during one of the roughest periods television marketing has ever experienced. As Asbury puts it: “If you don’t have all this, you’re dead.”