Interview by Lara Jensen

Sports fans can access content from any number of media outlets these days, so it can take some fancy maneuvering by marketers to target them effectively. Thus far, the National Hockey League has done pretty well keeping its fans satisfied. For instance, attendance at games has increased by about 1.2 percent this season — and now rivals attendance figures for pro basketball games in the United States. Meanwhile, NHL revenue, already more than $2.6 billion, is expected to rise by 6 percent during the season.

Perry Cooper, senior vice president of digital and direct marketing at the National Hockey League, works hard to keep NHL rinks filled. Recently, he crafted a strategy to gather crucial data from the league’s various consumer touch points to create better-targeted communications. Direct mail, including the league’s merchandise catalog, anchors these efforts. Cooper talked recently with Deliver® about why his strategy is scoring with fans.

Deliver: How is the NHL’s direct marketing program evolving, especially in light of current economic conditions?

Cooper: Our direct program is entirely new, and while this wasn’t specifically in response to the economy, it is helping us weather the downturn better than might be expected. We have a brand-new direct marketing team that is focused on monetizing our customer engagements across all touch points, including our NHL Center Ice network and Shop NHL and live-streaming games on NHL.com.

A big part of the picture is a new relational database that will capture transactional data across many of these NHL businesses. (The database was slated to launch in January.) Previously, the NHL had no defined strategy to capture customer data or to use this information to cultivate relationships. The goal is to be able to customize as much consumer-facing content as possible.

Already, the results from several tests of targeted communications and from our new, more immersive Web site have been impressive. We’re seeing growth across all of our businesses. Part of this is because sports fans are resilient, meaning they still respond to focused marketing during an economic downturn. But also, we’ve been “under-penetrated” until recently. Our direct marketing efforts have put us in a position to be successful right now. In a better economy, we’d be seeing even more of an upturn.

Deliver: Where does mail fit into this new cross-channel marketing initiative?

Cooper: Direct mail is central to our efforts to go deeper into analytics. By looking at data from recency-frequency-monetary value analyses, the multi-source penetration of customers and whether someone is a displaced fan — meaning they don’t live in the state of the team they are a fan of — we believe we can be successful in direct mail.

Having one central repository of customer data, for example, will make it easier to determine the favorite team of our fans. We recently tested a merchandise catalog customized to feature the favorite team of the recipient on the cover. Overall, the results for the customized catalogs were at least 35 percent better than with a generic cover.

Deliver: What does direct mail do better than the NHL’s other marketing efforts?

Cooper: As nice as the Web is, there is a still a big desire among consumers to receive something tangible. We have a very loyal audience that wants to sit down and look at our catalog at their leisure. A lot of those people then go to the Web.

When we’re doing a good job of targeting, the ROI on direct mail is terrific. Which is one reason why we will be increasing the circulation of our catalog by 20 percent to 30 percent in 2009 and delivering a targeted message to more than half of the names.

One of our goals is ensuring that new customers are exposed to our entire portfolio of offerings. So when someone new is acquired through Shop.NHL.com, for example, we will turn around and send him a targeted catalog when this is appropriate. Having a reservoir of names that you can use in as many places as possible is what makes any business successful.

Deliver: Do you have a favorite piece of direct mail that you’ve personally received?

Cooper: I’ve always been a fan of what Land’s End does. Really being able to tell a story and romance a product is something the brand has done well over time. This is something we aspire to do around the right products.

Also, I recently received an insert card from an entertainment magazine asking me to subscribe. I’d been feeling unable to connect with entertainment as much as I’d like. Plus, the price was great and the creative was clever. There was a big, glossy image that hit on all themes in the magazine — music, movies, books and popular culture. That’s really all you need to do: Hit the benefits, hit them hard and make sure the visuals play off of that.

Deliver: Do you have a direct mailer that you hold onto for some reason?

Cooper: I grew up a big sports fan, so I like sports nostalgia. There’s this direct mail piece from a football helmet maker that showcases collectible mini helmets from the 1970s, and I think it is great. The company must have gotten my name from some football list, but other than that it’s not a very targeted piece. Still, the uniqueness of the helmets and the nostalgia attached to them takes me back to a moment in time, which is why I keep the piece.

Messaging on the outside of shipments offers new approach for marketers

By Sandra Beckwith

While many marketers tuck bounceback ads into product packages sent to customers, a growing number are positioning them on the outside of the box instead — and they’re putting them on packages mailed by others.

Zadspace Inc., a company pioneering the medium, works with marketers to identify which individual customers who have made purchases from its distribution partners — catalog retailers, infomercial product distributors and e-tailers — are best suited to the advertiser’s demographics. Ads for products are affixed next to shipping labels on appropriate packages at the order fulfillment center.

Response rates are ranging from 1 percent to 14 percent, and costs are similar to conventional direct mail pieces, says Todd Outten, Zadspace president and co-founder.

“It’s a unique touch point because it reaches consumers when they’re in a receptive state of mind,” he adds. “They’re expecting the package, making them likely to look at and consider the external message since it’s with a piece from a brand they already trust.”

By Steve Cuno

As one who is all for instant gratification, I love the Internet. I can preview anything, on the spot. If I like the preview, I can download the real thing and revel in it then and there.

Provided, that is, that I never want to download anything besides pictures, video, sound or text. A non-media product—say, that new deodorant my friends are so eager for me to try—is another matter. Outside of sci-fi movies, no computer can download a deodorant preview, much less an entire 3.5-ounce container. Not even sniffing the monitor or rubbing it in an underarm produces the desired result. (Never mind how I know.)

Don’t despair. There is a way to download non-media products at home. With apologies to self-help gurus, this is one time to think inside the box — more specifically, the mailbox.

For instance, a sport jacket recently called out to me from a well-respected mail-order clothier’s Web site. By some miracle, I had lived 55 years without it. Yet I hesitated. I couldn’t quite judge the fabric quality from the photo. Nor was I sure about the color, for, as anyone who has gone on a press check knows, monitors know no universal color code. But, next to the product photo, this savvy merchant had placed a “Request swatch” button. Request I did, and the merchant promptly downloaded the swatch to my mailbox. The day it arrived, I downloaded the rest of the sport jacket.

So here’s a thought. If your marketing strategy depends on letting people kick the tires, so to speak, before making a purchase, maybe you should offer to download a bit of tire to their mailbox.

People who request samples generally make for more qualified prospects, but you needn’t always await a request. Some products lend themselves to a surprise mailbox download. One late advertising guru was known to opine that he wouldn’t consider launching a detergent without sampling to consumers.

Back to that deodorant. You know what the ubiquitous “they” say about old habits. You’ll have a hard time getting brand-loyal people to entrust the well-being of their pits to a new product, no matter how free from underarm angst the sexy people in your ads appear. But if your brand is superior enough to win them over with a trial, sending samples to carefully selected mailboxes might just change those old habits, plus spur word of mouth.

Tracking and cost accounting are important. Distributing samples is about creating customers, not about creating impressions. Include a coupon with each sample. Though not all converted customers will use the coupon, you may be able to extrapolate the number of recipients who later bought your brand from the redeemed coupons.

When you identify a promising target, divide it into three geographic groups. Mail samples to one. Send the same materials, minus the sample, to another. Mail nothing at all to the third. Be sure to target all three areas at the same time to eliminate timing as a factor. (You can account for geographic differences in subsequent testing.) Then, track and compare purchases—in-store, by mail and online—in each geographic region. If sales in the region that received samples outstrip sales in the other two, you’ll have a strong indicator that your sampling program is working.

Weigh the cost of your program against the combined lifetime value (LTV) of acquired customers. If the LTV is higher, chances are your program will be profitable. If the LTV is lower, refine your strategy.

Careful targeting is Rule 1 when it comes to direct mail. Adding the cost of samples to your mailing makes targeting even more crucial. Work with a mailing list broker who can help you avoid sending coffee samples to people whose religion forbids coffee consumption, car polish samples to non–car owners, and beef jerky samples to vegans. Better yet, find one who can help you identify coffee connoisseurs, muscle car buffs and jerky lovers.

People are good at tuning out what’s under their noses. For most of us, a reminder note on the bathroom mirror might as well not even be there after a few days. Amid the dazzle of our high-tech world, it’s important not to overlook a rock-solid resource simply because it has been around for a couple of hundred years. I am often surprised at the solutions a mailbox still provides. We would do well to think inside the box more often.

Steve Cuno heads the RESPONSE Agency in Salt Lake City. He is a popular speaker and is the author of the book Prove It Before You Promote It: How to Take the Guesswork Out of Marketing (John Wiley & Sons). E-mail Steve at steve@responseagency.com. You can read Steve’s blog here.

A few pennies was all it took for COUNTRY to get customers thinking about life insurance.

By Vicki Powers

Life insurance isn’t a simple sale. Who really wants to think about their own mortality? And the information-gathering process is a lengthy one, which means the sales cycle can take months.

Once folks decide on a plan, they’re going to hold onto it for a long time. And that’s exactly what COUNTRY, an Illinois-based insurance and financial services firm, was counting on with its “Grow Your Retirement” campaign.

Financial representatives focused on cross-selling and up selling existing clients. Using a mailer that resembled a large seed packet, they targeted about 30,000 existing clients — aged 35 to 55 — who already bought auto and property insurance from COUNTRY.

A custom window revealed “growing money” artwork, and five shiny pennies hidden inside were offered as “starter seeds” for growing retirement savings. A carefully crafted message encouraged clients to schedule a meeting with a financial representative to learn more about planning their retirement.

The right audience and the right message, together with a creative spin, turned this mailer into a conversation starter — and netted compelling results to boot. It sold more than 2,100 new policies, exceeding the organization’s goal by 166 percent.

While other COUNTRY direct mail campaigns have garnered more responses, the “Grow” piece has been the most successful because it resulted in life policy sales.

“Few people want to talk about life insurance,” says Randy Lorimor, manager of advertising and marketing media at COUNTRY. “This piece, however, turned a serious topic into a light-hearted and eye-catching campaign with tremendous results.”

He adds that direct mail was the only option considered for the “Grow” campaign. “It was the most cost-effective method for us to reach our audience of existing clients,” Lorimar says. “We typically spend from $2 to $3 per piece on our direct mail campaigns. And while some marketers may think this is an outrageous amount, we make it up — and then some — in terms of ROI.”

The Essentials
Company: COUNTRY Financial (headquartered in Bloomington, Ill.)
Theme: “Grow Your Retirement.”
Target audience: 30,000 existing clients aged 35 to 55
Goal: To increase the sale of life insurance policies to existing auto and property policyholders
DM vehicle: A lumpy mailer that housed five “starter seed” pennies
Response rate: More than 2,100 new policies sold, exceeding the organization’s goal by 166 percent.

A marketing chief for the NHL explains how direct mail assists the hockey league in hitting its goals.

Interview by: Lara Jensen

Sports fans can access content from any number of media outlets these days, so it can take some fancy maneuvering by marketers to target them effectively. Thus far, the National Hockey League has done pretty well keeping its fans satisfied. For instance, attendance at games has increased by about 1.2 percent this season — and now rivals attendance figures for pro basketball games in the United States. Meanwhile, NHL revenue, already more than $2.6 billion, is expected to rise by 6 percent during the season.

Perry Cooper, senior vice president of digital and direct marketing at the National Hockey League, works hard to keep NHL rinks filled. Recently, he crafted a strategy to gather crucial data from the league’s various consumer touch points to create better-targeted communications. Direct mail, including the league’s merchandise catalog, anchors these efforts. Cooper talked recently with Deliver® about why his strategy is scoring with fans.

Deliver: How is the NHL’s direct marketing program evolving, especially in light of current economic conditions?

Cooper: Our direct program is entirely new, and while this wasn’t specifically in response to the economy, it is helping us weather the downturn better than might be expected. We have a brand-new direct marketing team that is focused on monetizing our customer engagements across all touch points, including our NHL Center Ice network and Shop NHL and live-streaming games on NHL.com.

A big part of the picture is a new relational database that will capture transactional data across many of these NHL businesses. (The database was slated to launch in January.) Previously, the NHL had no defined strategy to capture customer data or to use this information to cultivate relationships. The goal is to be able to customize as much consumer-facing content as possible.

Already, the results from several tests of targeted communications and from our new, more immersive Web site have been impressive. We’re seeing growth across all of our businesses. Part of this is because sports fans are resilient, meaning they still respond to focused marketing during an economic downturn. But also, we’ve been “under-penetrated” until recently. Our direct marketing efforts have put us in a position to be successful right now. In a better economy, we’d be seeing even more of an upturn.

Deliver: Where does mail fit into this new cross-channel marketing initiative?

Cooper: Direct mail is central to our efforts to go deeper into analytics. By looking at data from recency-frequency-monetary value analyses, the multi-source penetration of customers and whether someone is a displaced fan — meaning they don’t live in the state of the team they are a fan of — we believe we can be successful in direct mail.

Having one central repository of customer data, for example, will make it easier to determine the favorite team of our fans. We recently tested a merchandise catalog customized to feature the favorite team of the recipient on the cover. Overall, the results for the customized catalogs were at least 35 percent better than with a generic cover.

Deliver: What does direct mail do better than the NHL’s other marketing efforts?

Cooper: As nice as the Web is, there is a still a big desire among consumers to receive something tangible. We have a very loyal audience that wants to sit down and look at our catalog at their leisure. A lot of those people then go to the Web.

When we’re doing a good job of targeting, the ROI on direct mail is terrific. Which is one reason why we will be increasing the circulation of our catalog by 20 percent to 30 percent in 2009 and delivering a targeted message to more than half of the names.

One of our goals is ensuring that new customers are exposed to our entire portfolio of offerings. So when someone new is acquired through Shop.NHL.com, for example, we will turn around and send him a targeted catalog when this is appropriate. Having a reservoir of names that you can use in as many places as possible is what makes any business successful.

Deliver: Do you have a favorite piece of direct mail that you’ve personally received?

Cooper: I’ve always been a fan of what Land’s End does. Really being able to tell a story and romance a product is something the brand has done well over time. This is something we aspire to do around the right products.

Also, I recently received an insert card from an entertainment magazine asking me to subscribe. I’d been feeling unable to connect with entertainment as much as I’d like. Plus, the price was great and the creative was clever. There was a big, glossy image that hit on all themes in the magazine — music, movies, books and popular culture. That’s really all you need to do: Hit the benefits, hit them hard and make sure the visuals play off of that.

Deliver: Do you have a direct mailer that you hold onto for some reason?

Cooper: I grew up a big sports fan, so I like sports nostalgia. There’s this direct mail piece from a football helmet maker that showcases collectible mini helmets from the 1970s, and I think it is great. The company must have gotten my name from some football list, but other than that it’s not a very targeted piece. Still, the uniqueness of the helmets and the nostalgia attached to them takes me back to a moment in time, which is why I keep the piece.

What better way to capture the attention of your customers than to incorporate your message into something they’re already opening: their monthly bill

By: Vicki Powers

One of the biggest challenges of marketing is getting recipients to open a direct mail piece. So what better way to capture people’s attention than by inserting a marketing message into a piece that many people are too afraid not to open?

Hence, marketers’ increased attention to the monthly bill.

Indeed, the monthly invoice is getting a full-on marketing makeover. Increasingly, marketers are realizing that all that white space on these must-read documents offers cross- selling and up-selling opportunities without threatening to increase delivery costs.

Research compiled by marketing experts and business consultants reveals that 95 percent of customers open their monthly statements at least once, and the average consumer spends up to three minutes reading his or her bill. No wonder many observers predict that “transpromotional” mail the newly coined term for pieces that include relevant marketing messages on transactional documents is expected to increase by a compound annual rate of 91 percent by 2010.

“If there is relevant, exciting and interesting information on those statements, then those companies gain eye- ball time and consideration to change customers’ behavior,” says E. Scott Wagner, manager of worldwide marketing for continuous - feed products at Xerox. The rate of return on personalized communication is usually three to five times that of generic direct mail campaigns, says Wagner.

Taking Action

One group using the new marketing approach is the Ford Motor Company automotive finance unit, Ford Motor Credit. In 2006, the division replaced its traditional monthly leasing invoice and inserts with a transpromo initiative using full- color, customizable invoices designed around the car brand that a customer drives. The goal: increasing sales of its Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda and Volvo vehicles.

Ford Credit uses its monthly invoices to communicate with customers on everything from vehicle service schedules to special financing offers and new vehicle promotions. Guided by info gleaned from customers, Ford Credit tailors statements with marketing messages and promotional offers targeted to its customers’ buying preferences and patterns.

The declining cost of color printing and the increasing quality and speed of printouts influenced the division’s switch from preprinted, company-branded paper. The division prints about 175,000 statements daily or about 42 million invoices each year. Ford Credit saves significantly on postage costs by reducing the number of inserts inside invoices and consolidating mailings. Although Ford executives don’t reveal specifics, they say the transpromo initiative is meeting the company’s expectations in terms of returns.

Today’s printing technology lets you communicate one-to-one with your entire customer base

By: W. Eric Martin

Sometimes it’s OK to be a little more personal.

Variable data printing has allowed printers to personalize documents on a one-on-one basis for more than a decade. But now, thanks to advances in data mining and collection, it’s really taking off.

“The biggest advances have come in data-mining information and how you can look at shopping histories and demographics for particular areas,” says Jeff Hayzlett, CMO of Kodak’s Graphic Communications Group. Digital printers allow companies to use this data to tailor their pitches to the past behavior of customers. “Instead of ‘Dear Jeff,’ now you can say ‘Dear Jeff, you bought X and now let’s tell you about Y,’” he says.

It’s no surprise that businesses want to make their communications with customers more intimate. “By personalizing their messages, businesses create better stickiness for their customers, which allows them to get a better rate of response and better ROI,” says Hayzlett.

What’s more, prospects actually like it when you get more personal. Frank Romano, co-author of Personalized & Database Printing: The Complete Guide, reports a 500-percent increase in response rates when marketing pitches are customized with information about recipients’ buying habits, hobbies, pets, you name it. Even more impressive, personalization increases order size by 25 percent and repeat orders by a whopping 50 percent.

Hair salons in the Fantastic Sams chain, for instance, send out color postcards every six weeks using data captured at the point of sale to lure back previous customers. The cards are customized by salon, by gender and by individual guest activity.

According to Bart Foreman, president of Group 3 Marketing, which develops marketing campaigns for Fantastic Sams, one campaign that consisted of 1,135 pieces costs roughly $500 and netted a 36-percent response, resulting in an advertising-to-sales ratio of more than $14 for every dollar invested.

To take advantage of variable data printing, businesses need to bring together digital printing technology - whether their own or an outside printer’s - and customer data. The personalization is limited only by the amount of data you’ve collected and your ability to use that data in creative ways.

For example, Wolverine Shoes, which makes work boots and outdoor boots, sent out personalized postcards to 50,000 buyers of similar products. The cards featured a full-color, customized map showing where the recipient could purchase Wolverine brand products. “It’s a great use of data merging in a printed piece to create action,” says Hayzlett.