By Pamela Oldham

Loyalty marketing has significantly evolved in the last two decades — and there are pitfalls to not keeping up. Marketing guru Jill Griffin, author of the best-selling Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It, How to Keep It, explains how changing your approach to loyalty can help you win more business from the customers you already have.

1. Evolve with Your Customers
Customer needs are changing, constantly evolving, be it business-to-business or business-to-consumer. “Customers can help you stay on top of the ‘value curve’ and help you find ways to deliver exceptional value,” Griffin says. “But you can’t depend on them to spell it out in a focus group. You have to dig for that info.” Find the behaviors of your best customers, understand why customers are walking away from you when they do and put together the pieces of the value puzzle.

2. Keep Up with Loyalty Marketing Trends
Right now, it’s less about redeeming for merchandise and more about access and enhancing experiences — for example, a credit card company giving customers the ability to get great tickets for a major rock concert before they go on sale to the general public. “Bigger retailers are recognizing that customization of experiences is a big deal,” Griffin says. “And the payoff is that customer spending increases significantly over the months following an event.”

3. Identify and Monitor Your Best Customers
Don’t just amass customer data, truly wade through it and make it strategic.
Look at spending. But don’t stop there. Also look at future lifetime value and share of wallet. Marry geographic and income data with that to see if that person has a larger wallet and a larger potential to spend long term. “You want to invest in that potential,” Griffin says. “It’s not just who’s spending the most money with you right now.”

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How Using Mail with Mobile Benefits Marketing Loyalty Programs

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Business author Kenneth W. Gronbach explains how capitalizing on generational shifts is the key to brand survival.

By Bruce Britt

An author and internationally respected demography expert, Kenneth W. Gronbach has spent years crunching numbers to determine how marketers can reach across generational divides to appeal to the broadest audience possible. But statistical calculations aside, Gronbach says, he finds the clearest proof of what works in a much more familiar place: his family’s mailbox.

“[A local retail store] sends coupons to my teenage girls,” says Gronbach, founder and CEO of Connecticut-based KGC Direct. “And they always direct [the girls] to their Web site for more information and additional deals. That’s the way it should be done.” In mixing its marketing media, he says, that local store has found that even Web-savvy young consumers like his daughters enjoy the idea of getting something in the mail addressed to them and are more than happy to respond, especially digitally. It also has discovered the power of what Gronbach insists will be a key to marketing success in coming years: demographics.

The recent author of The Age Curve: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Storm, Gronbach reminds us that, with Baby Boomers moving into retirement and their parents well into old age, direct marketers are going to need a deeper demographic understanding of younger customers if they hope to remain relevant.

With 100 million young American consumers in its ranks, Generation Y — aka the “Millennials” — has replaced the nation’s 78 million Baby Boomers as the largest consumer group. As a result, Gronbach says, many marketing tactics and strategies designed to appeal to the once dominant Boomer generation must now evolve for the younger crowd. (Likewise, marketers who still covet older generations like the Boomers will also have to keep pace with demographic shifts to adjust their messages and media mixes as their targets’ life cycles spin toward the winter years.)

Demographics allow marketers to better segment all of these groups, says Gronbach, and to avoid erroneous assumptions about how to reach them. He cites many brands’ ham-handed efforts at digital marketing to Millennials as a prime example of why demographics are key. “We know absolutely that the Internet is going to play a part in the future of marketing, but we also know there are some built-in land mines,” Gronbach says. “There’s a resistance to advertising on the part of the users of social media sites. If you start jamming things down their throats with pop-ups, or introductions that can’t be shut off, that’s a slippery slope. You’re almost in danger of making enemies.”

On the flip side, Gronbach says, his research shows that traditional forms of direct marketing, most notably direct mail and outdoor advertising, continue to appeal to younger buyers. “With direct marketing and billboards, the habits of the viewer haven’t changed,” insists Gronbach. “No one has taken their mailboxes down, and the outdoor is still right there on the road facing you. Yet for some reason [advertisers and marketers] are missing two of the biggest opportunities.” Everyone checks the mailbox, Gronbach notes in his book, “even the most devoted Internet followers.” His book adds, “Direct marketers and their client companies will be the clear winners in the decades to come, no matter what happens to costs, labor and the generational shifts that lay ahead.”

Youth movement

In anticipation of these changes, Gronbach has spent considerable time sketching profiles of six distinct generations of consumers: the GI Generation (born 1905 to 1924), which includes those who fought in WWII; the Silent Generation (born 1925 to 1944), the children of the Great Depression, including those too young to serve in WWII; the Baby Boomers (born 1945 to 1964); Gen X (born between 1965 and 1984); and Gen Y (born between 1985 and 2004). And finally Generation Z, born 2005 to present.

Gronbach says that the older generations are waning considerably in influence, and the Boomers, though still an economic force, are rapidly retiring. Meanwhile, Gen X, with about 70 million American consumers, is still smaller than the Baby Boomers and lacks the same punch at the cash register.

But Millennials, he says, more than make up for shortcomings in the preceding generations. “Generation Y is going to make themselves felt like no other generation in the history of our nation,” forecasts Gronbach. “They are bright, educated, and they can multitask. They have a social conscience. They don’t see [race].” Barring unexpected economic disaster, Gronbach says, these Millennials will fuel explosions in a wide range of industries, from apparel to car sales.

Problem is, even though Millennials represent the most massive marketing opportunity since the Boomers, members of Gen Y can be tough for brands to reach, Gronbach says. While Gen X is thought to respond to both traditional and new media, members of tech-savvy Gen Y are more fickle. “With the exception of the Internet, Generation Y is not being reached with any kind of media,” Gronbach complains.

Gronbach refers back to his daughters to drive home his point. “Neither of them has ever read a newspaper in their life,” he says. “Neither of my daughters listens to radio. Magazines? They will go online and pick their stuff.”

He adds that television doesn’t fare much better with younger consumers. The classic TV business model, where networks offer “free” entertainment in exchange for viewers watching heaps of 30-second ads, is sputtering.

“It was a good deal, but we’ve gone from five to 10 commercials an hour to as many as they can wedge in,” Gronbach says. “They’ve breached the deal. When people are on Facebook and they can’t get rid of a pop-up, they resist. Internet users don’t transfer the same attitude over from their TV viewing.”

Find what works

Gronbach believes some traditional marketing outlets do have greater potential than others to reach younger consumers. He contends that mail, with its tactile power and potential for personalization and precise targeting, is among those channels that offer cross-generational appeal: “If you mail something to somebody, they get it.”

He adds that direct mail can sometimes act as the Trojan horse that allows marketers to pique Millennials’ interest before making good on the vaunted potential of digital media. “If you have a really good digital presence, a lot of times it’s like an amusement park on a desert island,” Gronbach says. “Either people don’t know you’re there, or they don’t know how to get there. If you want to have some kind of co-promotion between online and direct mail, there’s absolutely nothing better.”

Outdoor media possess the same inescapability as direct mail, he says, and he sees plenty of room for improvement. “Billboards where the images change are a real step in the right direction,” Gronbach says. “I think billboards can speak to the cars. You could actually put a radio signal in the boards, where if someone was interested in the board they could hear a message. There are lots of things you can do.”

He says that marketers must be careful to consider the environmental impact of their vehicles, too, as Millennials tend to be more eco-conscious than older generations of consumers. “Print everything you have on recycled paper, and make sure the recipient knows it,” he says. “Come up with some angle that makes you the friend, not the enemy. It’s not that hard.”

Respect elders

Of course, he urges marketers to do the same when reaching out to older generations, who, despite their diminishing influence and comparatively small numbers, shouldn’t be forgotten. He points out that Boomers, for instance, still wield about $2 trillion in annual buying power and that Gen X still includes nearly 70 million American customers.

In reaching Boomers, he says, marketers should know that they are receptive to multimedia messaging, but respond best to many traditional forms of direct marketing because they are more familiar with them. Retiring at a clip of one every eight seconds, Boomers are more age-conscious and respond well to marketing messages that recognize this. “If you want to sell something to the Boomers, offer up something that will keep them young, because they are going to be playing air guitar in rest homes,” he says.

In some ways, Generation X — composed of those born between 1965 and 1984 — mirrors the Boomers. Gen X was already around by the time the technology revolution of the 1980s and 1990s kicked off, so while its members certainly aren’t tech-averse, they continue to make good targets for multimedia marketing campaigns that blend new media with old.

“Gen X is bilingual,” explains Gronbach. “They speak cyber as a second language — but do not respond to Internet marketing efforts. They are as at home in the cyber world as they are with television and, in some cases, radio. They do not read newspapers at all.”

However, they do read what shows up in their mailboxes, provided they consider the offers genuine and compelling, says Gronbach. “They are very savvy and see through marketing gimmicks,” he warns. “This is an esoteric group with eclectic tastes and an entitled attitude.
They have vexed Madison Avenue for 20 years,” he says, although Gen X “can’t consume at the level of the Boomers who preceded them because they don’t have the critical mass.”

At this point, the same can be said of the GI Generation (86- plus years old) and the tiny Silent Generation (now 66 to 85 years old), says Gronbach. “Their consumption levels have dropped like a stone,” he notes. He says the Silent Generation will pose particular challenges to certain industries because of its small size compared to the GI Generation. “They’re going to disappoint the assisted living facilities, the funeral parlors and the cremation companies,”
Gronbach predicts.

Still, these older consumers shouldn’t be completely forgotten, says Gronbach. And marketers who do seek them out will generally find that they respond best to time-tested marketing methods. “They are devoted newspaper readers, especially the obits,” he points out. “They inhale talk radio and overnight television. They are also direct mail junkies and religiously use coupons and anything else that saves them money, like senior discounts.”

He says they also offer a viable audience for products aimed at kids. “The one real bright spot in their consumption,” says Gronbach, “is called the ‘Bubby Factor:’ They will spend money on their grandkids with a vengeance.”

By the numbers

Of course, Gronbach cautions against making too many assumptions even about older consumers. The hard data, he says, allow for much more educated guesses. And in an age where marketers are more pressed than ever to guess right about consumers’ desires and to demonstrate verifiable results from their campaigns, hard data should be embraced as a CMO’s best friend.

”The behavior of the consumer is very predictable,” says Gronbach. “The Bureau of Labor Statistics has been writing about [demographics] for maybe longer than 30 or 40 years. We know at what ages people buy automobiles, their first houses or the most clothes. We know when consumption peaks. Demographics don’t lie.

Dissecting a Millennial

These kids today They’re confident (at times to the point of arrogance) about their ability to contribute and make a difference in the world.

Attitude Adjustments Huge in both number and potential impact, they’re a sharp departure from Gen X trends and the opposite of Boomer youth behavior.

A bunch of know-it-alls Technology-enabled in every aspect of their lives from where they shop to what they buy, read, cook, eat and watch.

Six Generations of Consumers

GI GENERATION— (born before 1925) Made up of those who lived through and fought in WWII. Also known as “The Greatest Generation” because of its contributions to the second World War. Buying power considered negligible.

SILENT GENERATION — (born 1925 to 1944) Those generally thought to be too young to fight in WWII and those born during the war. The smallest generation of the 20th century as a consequence of low Depression-era birth rates. Buying power considered negligible.

BOOMERS — (born 1945 to 1964) Children of the GI and Silent Generations. The second largest generation (78.2 million Americans) and one of the most coveted, with about $2 trillion in annual buying power.

GEN X — (born 1965 to 1984) Largely children of the Silent Generation, numbering around 69.5 million Americans. Regarded as technologically “bilingual,” but do not respond to Internet marketing efforts.

GEN Y — (born 1985 to 2004) Also known as “Millennials,” “Echo Boomers” and “The Net Generation.” They are the children of the Baby Boomers and the largest generation at 100 million Americans. The most coveted buying group, consuming at a rate of more than five times the Baby Boomers (in adjusted dollars).

GEN Z — (born 2005 to present) With 4,317,000 babies born, 2007 was the largest birth year in U.S. history. Latinos make up about 14 percent of our total population but accounted for more than 25 percent of total babies born in 2007. This new generation is already more than 20 million strong and is sure to be an exciting and challenging market.

Club ABC Tours attracts vacationers with variable data printing

By Sandra Beckwith

After years of promoting travel packages via direct mail catalogs, Club ABC Tours looked for a creative way to generate more bookings among current members, as well as attract new customers. The answer for the Bloomfield, N.J.–based private travel club was to experiment with variable data printing (VDP) with Magjak, a New York provider of printing and one-to-one marketing services.

Club ABC Tours used member buying habits and preferences gleaned from post-travel surveys to segment parts of its customer list for a VDP campaign. It included a series of brochures that featured varying designs, offers, recommended destinations and other content based on members’ travel history with the club.

The personalization strategy generated more than $400,000 in revenue and nearly 150 new members within four weeks of its launch last spring, says John Samuel, Club ABC chief information officer and executive vice president. He adds that VDP is very likely to be incorporated into more of the travel club’s marketing efforts based on this success.

Direct mail top driver for U.S. Olympic Committee fundraising

By Christine Hansen

Despite the grim economy, the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) had its most successful fundraising campaigns in 2009.

More than $9 million net was raised last year through all fundraising channels, and $8.5 million of that was generated through direct mail pieces sent to Team USA supporters, according to Janine Alfano, USOC chief development officer.

“We use direct mail because it has historically been a really big revenue driver,” says Alfano, who adds that USOC mailings typically offer Team USA Olympic branded premium items.

And testing proves these front-end offers are working. “For each mailing, we take segments and test different elements, then compare those elements to the control to see what works best with our donors and fans,” Alfano says. Now that’s the way to support your team.

Marketers for a cutting-edge medical procedure use mail to engage recipients on the sensitive subject of birth control.

By Tanya Irwin

Like most any delicate issue, family planning is an idea that most people choose to discuss in private, at their convenience, with those closest to them. So how does a marketer find a path into that conversation? California-based Conceptus® Inc., developers of the permanent birth control procedure Essure,® is relying on direct mail.

The company, which has maintained steady and effective direct mail communications for years, recently launched a campaign it calls “Push Away the Worries,” targeting oversized postcards at a segment of women whom company officials describe as “busy moms” in their 30s and 40s who’ve been identified as potentially interested in permanent birth control.

Marketing officials at Conceptus® say they chose direct mail largely because it allows recipients to engage with the oft-sensitive information at their convenience and without fear of privacy violations.

“A family’s decision to opt for permanent birth control is intimate and personal,” says Tracey Moses, vice president of consumer marketing and global branding for Conceptus.® “As such, we chose direct mail for its ability to facilitate a dialogue with women about a sensitive subject in the privacy of their own homes and to complement other media channels. The messaging was designed to get women talking about the options once their families are complete.”

Created in 2008 by San Francisco–based Loomis Group, the current campaign plays up the joys of life after child rearing, of life with, well, fewer worries. !e campaign also seeks to overcome the perceptions of the risks associated with tubal ligations (aka “having tubes tied”), previously the only permanent birth control procedure for women. “Strategically, the campaign sought to deliver the right balance of emotional and rational brand messages,” Moses says.

The front of one of the cards shows a man and woman on a picnic with children playing in the background. Another card shows a man kissing a woman’s cheek. “This moment is ours,” reads the copy for both. “Stop worrying about unplanned pregnancy and start enjoying every moment more.” The back of the cards includes information about Essure,® a less than 10-minute, non-surgical procedure in which a doctor inserts flexible micro-inserts into a woman’s fallopian tubes.

Because the procedure, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2002, is still relatively new to consumers, Moses says direct mail has been integral to introducing Essure® to audiences. “Testing, targeting, tracking and shelf life were important criteria for a product with very little consumer awareness,” she says. “Direct mail enabled us to cost-effectively send multiple versions of the campaign to test various messages, creative elements and product benefits. The metrics against each of these criteria allowed us to continually make adjustments for future campaigns.”

In addition, says Moses, the extended shelf life of direct mail relative to other advertising vehicles made it a strategically compelling tactic, given the lengthy amount of time often invested in family planning. And the company was able to tell a more complete story about its product through mail.

“It served as literature that women could take into physicians’ offices to continue to dialogue about the brand and her decision,” says Moses. “Direct mail also gives Essure® the ability to more carefully target women who (through research) we believed were more likely to take action. We wanted to introduce the brand as another means for women to exert greater control over their birth control options.”

The mail channel doesn’t stand alone. Conceptus® has blended the pieces with other channels — including TV, radio and other forms of print marketing — to create an expansive multichannel echo chamber for its message. And the mailers include phone numbers and also drive recipients to the Essure® Web site for even more information.

According to Moses, direct mail has had a particularly significant impact in the campaign: “To date, the campaign has shown a tremendous ability to motivate women to act via significant call volume increases. We’ve experienced meaningful shifts in awareness in markets supported by direct mail, including increases in the number of physicians performing the procedure and overall unit sales. Anecdotally, we are encouraged by reports from doctors offering insight into the number of women who’ve brought the mail pieces into their offices for consultation.”

Consequently, direct mail will continue to be a central part of the Essure® marketing efforts, Moses says. “Measuring and maximizing the impact of marketing dollars is important, and direct mail has proven to be an effective tactic,” she asserts. “Through our direct mail efforts, we’ve been able to stimulate women’s interest in becoming educated about the Essure® procedure. This, in turn, has positively impacted demand, helped convert sales and stimulated increasingly important peer-to-peer dialogue about permanent birth control.”

Ryan Vero of OfficeMax explains how mail makes the retailer stand out.

By Chantal Tode

Office supply retailer OfficeMax has earned high praise in recent years for carving out well-fitting places for itself across a variety of media. While some of the kudos in recent months have been in response to its digital campaigns, the company also is gaining attention for its work in more traditional channels.

Direct mail initiatives continue to loom particularly large at OfficeMax. For instance, it still offers a variety of catalogs. Also, mail plays a central role in helping the retailer understand specific customer segments. Deliver® reached out to Ryan Vero, executive vice president and chief merchandising officer at OfficeMax, to talk about why mail remains a mainstay in the company’s media mix.

Deliver: Has the economy affected your direct mail marketing efforts?

Vero: Direct mail is one of the areas of marketing to which we have remained committed. That’s because even with the economic downturn, it’s a tremendously effective vehicle for us — and historically has been. Catalogs still are part of the mix, but more recently we’ve been doing a lot of non-catalog direct mailing both for prospecting purposes and to continue the dialog with our small- and large-business customers. Direct mail lets us send targeted communications to specific customer segments in a cost-effective way.

Deliver: What segments are you targeting these days?

Vero: We’re focusing our marketing communications more on our female customers. In general, women control the majority of purchasing for individual consumption, but more important for us, for business consumption, too. However, we noticed that this customer was not being taken care of in the office industry in general. Direct mail gives us the opportunity to send very targeted communications to this customer segment that specifically address her needs. So far, the response rates have been very good.

Deliver: What’s helping you better understand customer needs?

Vero: We’ve updated and refined our modeling efforts in the past year across various customer segments, and even subsegments within these larger groups. It’s helping us better identify the type of offers, communications and messages to send to a particular customer. Working with the customer data provided through our MaxPerks customer loyalty program, we can ascertain a lot about a customer and model them against other customers. This gives us insight into how effectively we have communicated with the customer in the past. We can determine what savings opportunities they’re not taking advantage of, or which ones we should show them. For example, a customer who purchases presentation materials also is likely to need to make copies for those presentations. If those customers aren’t making any copies with us, we can send a relevant direct mail offer with an incentive to try our copying services.

Deliver: Are you getting any surprising responses?

Vero: For years, we’ve been sending out an acquisition letter that comes from me personally. It’s amazing the number of times I get a note back from someone thanking me for sending them a letter and telling me something about their experience with OfficeMax. This is a terrific level of engagement with our customers, and it’s driven by direct mail. In fact, the response to this campaign has increased over time. It’s a reflection of how special it is to get a personalized letter these days.

Deliver: Any other efforts you’re particularly proud of?

Vero: A direct mail campaign we used to bid on the business of a large bank.
We sent top executives a metal suitcase filled with stacks of paper money. The top bill of each pile communicated some of OfficeMax’s services and solutions. Inside there also was an MP3 player loaded with videos we produced of our executives talking about how OfficeMax would serve the bank’s needs. It helped us break through the clutter and get our message in the hands of a number of senior executives at the bank with a targeted communication that spoke directly to them.

Deliver: What new trends do you think will change the way we market?

Vero: I find it inspiring that we’re getting very close to a cost-effective rate for variable data printing for high-volume mailers. There’s been a lot of talk about being able to do true one-to-one direct mail, but so far it’s been more theory than reality. Sure, you could do it from a technological standpoint and get better response rates, but the higher costs meant the return was a lot lower. However, as the costs have compressed and the technology has improved, I’m optimistic that we’re going to achieve true one-to-one marketing on a large-scale basis sooner rather than later.

We reveal four marketing trends likely to get hotter in 2010 – and show you how they can work for brands of any size.

By Anne Stuart

With the direct marketing industry in the grip of a series of upheavals, from the digital revolution to the economic meltdown, figuring out what’s coming next is becoming progressively more difficult. Creating effective strategies based on these expectations is the toughest part of all.

And so, faced with one new challenge after another — from increasing costs for production and materials to rising environmental concerns among consumers — marketers have intensified their push to get ahead of the industry curve. This has led to a massive scramble to determine where the most significant industry trends for next year will emerge.

To help, Deliver® sat down with experts from around the country to attempt to divine what’s in store for direct in 2010. While a number of potential trends were discussed, there were four key areas — targeting, measurement, channel integration and prospecting among baby boomers — that kept coming up as likely hot spots for growth and innovation.

As a result, we decided to take a closer look at these four fields and what possibilities they hold for marketers in the coming year.

1. Targeting

If there’s a one-word formula for marketing success next year, it’s “precision,” industry leaders say. Traditionally, of course, the trend has been toward amassing as much information as possible about prospect and customer groups, then bombarding them with offers. But that approach is no longer viable.

According to a recent Winterberry Group report, the organizations struggling hardest are those that have depended most heavily on “batch blast”–style mailings — that is, using the mail as a saturation tool with little or no regard for rich personalization or the particular needs of the individual recipient.

Liz Miller, CMO Council vice president of programs and operations, sums up the trend: “We’re moving away from saying, ‘I want to connect with women who are 34 to 54’ to ‘I want to connect with that particular woman.’”

Such customized approaches are already possible, but to date, have typically included only recipients’ names and, in some cases, their locations. But, Miller says, continuing advancements in database management and variable data printing (VDP) have industry experts predicting more robust personalization techniques in 2010.

Backroads, an active- and adventure-travel company, is already learning the value of tightly focused personalization, especially for generating repeat business. The organization uses automated marketing engine technology from Nimblefish to mail thousands of postcards to past customers that contain not only personalized messages but also photos of regions recipients have traveled to in the past. “The message might say, ‘Barbara, remember Yellowstone in May 2002? Have another memorable trip — and here are three options,’” says Massimo Prioreschi, vice president of sales and marketing for the Berkeley, Calif., company.

Miller says these kinds of highly tailored mail pieces offer a good glimpse of the direction that targeting will continue to take in 2010. “That’s going beyond just putting one person’s name on a piece of paper,” she adds. “It’s saying, ‘We want to give you everything that’s relevant to you right now.’”

2. Measurement/Analysis

While the need to tally ROI has always been essential to marketers, they are more pressed to prove that their campaigns are impacting consumers and generating revenue.

Experts predict that, as measurement tools become more precise, how brands measure the return on their investment is likely to become more complicated. They will have to pay attention to a broader range of data, and companies will have to work even harder to make sure that other parts of the organization operate in conjunction with the marketing department.

The CMO Council’s Miller recommends organizations extend their ROI measurement to the entire marketing supply chain. “Don’t focus on the return at the expense of managing investment costs,” she says. “Map, track, measure and put a dollar amount on everything you do.”

She adds that marketers also will have to improve customer experience, mostly by learning to better mine data. Businesses like Harrah’s Entertainment — owners of 54 casino and hotel properties worldwide — know the value of the detailed data their programs generate. The company’s mail-driven loyalty program, for instance, has allowed its marketers to collect and analyze data on how often program participants visit their properties, how much members contribute to overall gaming revenue and what games of chance they prefer, among other things.

In-depth analysis of members’ behavior lets Harrah’s construct more effective messages, says David Norton, senior vice president and CMO for Harrah’s. “If we know a player has been to past slot tournaments, we’ll make sure he or she gets invited to the next one,” he adds. “If they’ve never come to a mid-week event, we exclude them from mailings about mid-week events because, obviously, they’re not going to respond.”

3. Integration

In 2010, improved integration of channels, such as e-mail, direct mail, billboards and TV, will become more of a focal point for even the most reluctant marketers. “That’s always been a goal, but the economy has made it imperative,” CMO Council’s Miller says.

And even though the past two years brought plenty of dire speculation about — and even premature eulogies for — the future of print marketing, the people who keep an eye on these things insist that traditional channels like direct mail will continue to earn their place at the marketing table in 2010.

“The favorite thing to say in 2008 was that, in 2009, print would be dead because everybody was going to e-mail,” Miller recalls. “That didn’t happen. Actually, both modes of communication took a hit during the past year.”

For that reason, most marketers have found that online channels demonstrate greater value as a complement to direct mail applications, reinforcing the value of integrated programs, according to the Winterberry Group.

Backroads’ Prioreschi says that postcard mailers his company sends also drive recipients to a personalized Web site with several highly targeted offers. “If someone went to Yellowstone, Alaska and Glacier National Park, we know there’s a definite pattern there indicating he or she is a mountain wilderness person,” he adds. Thus, the personalized site might include offers for upcoming trips to the Canadian Rockies or Himalayas, complete with slideshows and videos.

Prioreschi says integration is working well. During one campaign, sales were 50 percent higher among people who received a postcard and clicked through to a personalized site than those who just visited the site on their own.

4. Prospecting

Since World War II, the 18 to 25 age range has been the sweet spot of American marketing. “There was a good reason for that,” says Dr. Ken Dychtwald, founder and CEO of Age Wave, a San Francisco research and consulting firm that specializes in helping companies market to older customers. “Young people historically represented an area of growth because of their willingness to try new things. They were still forming their brand preferences. The idea was that if you captured their hearts at that stage, you had them for life.”

And, of course, the postwar baby boom filled the sweet spot with tens of millions of potential young targets for marketers. Although the baby boomers have since aged, marketing experts say that, in many ways, they still represent a marketing sweet spot for industry innovators. Consequently, many in the industry are predicting a renewed focus on baby boomers in the coming year.

“People should be swooning over the baby boomers as they move out of youth and into middle age,” Dychtwald says. “This is an age group that has traditionally been sidelined, but we’re going to see growth in sectors catering to them.

“Reinvention is normal for this generation,” Dychtwald continues.
“They change careers many more times than their moms and dads did.
They’re willing to try new things. So if you think you can rest on your laurels — if you think you’ve got them for life — you’re wrong. Today, everybody at every stage of life is open to marketing.”

In courting boomers, he says, marketers also are reacting to another growing trend in marketing: the end of brand loyalty and the return to brand experimentation. People are more willing to try new brands than ever — and those over 50 years old are particularly open to these new messages, Dychtwald says. “They’re more likely than any other group to read and respond to catalogs and direct mail pieces,” he adds, citing research from the Direct Marketing Association. “They enjoy reading a good catalog and leafing through their mail looking for deals. Good pitches attract their attention. It’s a mistake not to take direct marketing seriously for mature populations — and the time to start is right now.”

Of course, the same could also be said about any of the other trends marketers are expecting to get bigger in 2010.

Sixteen percent of Volvo Rents’ customers account for 89 percent of the company’s business. As a result, 89 percent of the marketing budget is devoted to that 16 percent.

Interview by Lara Jensen

Talk to anyone who uses Aveda products and you’ll likely discover more than just a casual consumer: Aveda fans border on the fanatical. Perhaps they’ll wax poetic about the sleek, appealing design of the packaging or the distinctive fragrances. They’ll probably also tell you that the products just work so gosh-darned well.

But the thing that really sets Aveda apart in the marketplace is the company’s long-standing commitment to eco-friendly products and practices. The company started as a manufacturer of plant-based hair care products for stylists, but, over the past three decades, the business has blossomed to include a wide range of naturally derived personal-care products, 125 Aveda retail outlets and a growing reputation as a leader in responsible corporate environmental practices.

Aveda points to direct marketing as an essential part of its go-to-market strategy. In 2001, the company began building its first database of customer names and addresses to use for direct mail outreach and, in 2006, it launched Pure Privilege, a customer loyalty program. Here, Rachael Ostrom, director of consumer marketing and advertising for Aveda, discusses the importance of direct for communicating the brand’s eco-friendly message.

Deliver: Why is direct mail a good channel for communicating Aveda’s message?

Ostrom: Mail helps us clearly convey the message of sustainability. Our annual holiday mailing, which is typically our most successful all year, is a good example. The most recent piece is designed around several beautiful images of Nepal, while the surrounding copy tells the story of how all the paper used in our holiday gift sets is sustainably sourced from a cooperative in Nepal. We also let recipients know that by purchasing our holiday gift sets, it helps us employ Nepali women and men, preserve 90,000 acres of Himalayan forest, and send the children of 500 Nepali families to school. Sharing that message in detail with customers in their homes is a great way to encourage them to do their holiday shopping with Aveda.

Deliver: Are you sending the same volume of mail as in the past?

Ostrom: We consistently do four major mailings a year: the one around the holidays and three around new product launches, which offer customers free samples when they come into a store. However, we continue to be more targeted with whom we send these pieces. As a result, we’re not sending out as many pieces per campaign. But, because we’re focusing on the customers who are more likely to respond, sales results from the campaigns are at the same level they’ve always been.

Deliver: How else are you improving the efficiency of your program?

Ostrom: With budgets the way they are these days, we’re continually looking at ways to be more efficient. We’re performing data-cleansing processes — including change-of-address updates — quarterly and before new mailings drop. Working with our database company, we also have recently updated our mail model to identify customers with the greatest potential of a repeat purchase. Through this model, we can more accurately predict who is most likely to respond to a mailing.

Deliver: Do you ever get any pushback from consumers about your use of direct mail?

Ostrom: Not really, for a couple of reasons. First, every piece of direct mail we send out lets recipients know that it has been printed using soy ink and on 100-percent post-consumer recycled paper. We also allow customers who would prefer to receive offers and information by e-mail to opt in to our electronic program. When customers sign up for our Pure Privilege loyalty program, they receive a direct mailer with an incentive — 100 bonus points — to provide us with their e-mail address.

Deliver:How are you complementing direct mail with e-mail?

Ostrom: In January, we started a series of promotions for our Pure Privilege members. To optimize the effort’s spend, we’re executing it through a combination of e-mail and direct mail. We’re sending a postcard to a portion of the audience and e-mails to the other portion, tracking the redemption for each method. The messaging for some of the direct mail recipients lets them know that there will be an upcoming e-mail-only promotion, and that if they gave us their e-mail address, they will receive 100 bonus points.

This strategy has been very successful so far. We’ll continue to balance both direct and e-mail, watching closely who is responding to which to make sure we’re using the right medium for the right people.

By Steve Cuno

Quick! Name a car introduced in 1958 that was a commercial failure.

Most people, including those born years later, can answer the question without a hint. (Like, say, it was named after the company founder’s son, and it sort of rhymes with “pretzel”).

Fifty years after its ignominious withdrawal from the market, the car still enjoys top-of-mind awareness. Amazing as that may be, I find this even more stunning: Many marketers still wrongly equate top-of-mind awareness with advertising success. They have allowed the metrics of reach to usurp the metrics of sales.

Consider how many ad agencies brag about “getting your name out there,” “getting noticed,” and the “number of people who remember your product.” If such are the standards of success, then the next advertising awards competition should honor the Pretzel Automobile campaign with a medal for “lifetime achievement.”

Originally, advertising was held to the same standard as salespeople were. Indeed, advertising was invented to stand in for, or extend the reach of, salespeople. The salesperson’s job description hasn’t changed much in 200 years, but advertising’s has. Salespeople who fail to produce sales are summarily dismissed, no matter how many positive impressions they leave behind. Yet advertising is often deemed “successful” based solely on the number of people who are exposed to it or remember it.

Where the problem started

Just how, and when, did marketers become so enamored of the metrics of reach? A clue exists in the origins of advertising agencies themselves. Early ad agencies didn’t sell creative services. They were agents who brokered pages in publications. Needing a metric for pricing, publications began counting subscribers and pass-along readers, and charged advertisers by the thousand. (Later, broadcast stations would measure audience size per time segment, and Web sites would count clicks and views.) By the time agencies added creative services to their offering, number-of-persons-reached had already become an accepted standard.

The standard persists today, and in at least some cases has outlived its usefulness, as an example from early 2009 illustrates. A well-known fast food chain, knowing that sales of its fish sandwich tend to rise during Lent, wanted to boost this year’s sales in that season even higher. Its ad agency produced a video starring a plaque-mounted singing fish that had attained a modest cult following in the 1990s. The agency uploaded the video in hopes it would go viral — and it did. The spot garnered a million hits in four weeks, drew 4,000 members to an online fan site and inspired a host of parodies. The client, agency and trade press hail the video as a success. Yet amid the hoopla, there has been no mention of the video’s effect on fish sandwich sales — which happens to have been the original objective.

It is true that a video cannot generate sales without garnering viewers. Equally true, lots of viewers may lead to lots of sales. May. But to assume as much is naive. History brims with widely recognized, well-remembered campaigns that failed to sell. To name a few: a stomach remedy campaign (think spicy meatballs), a failed new cola formula, a beer that whimsically defined what was manly, an intrusive duck, a fast food spokes-Chihuahua, a lying car salesman and a white mustache. All of these campaigns, I might add, were highly decorated at advertising awards shows.

Why low awareness doesn’t always hurt

As high awareness doesn’t ensure sales success, low awareness doesn’t preclude it. While direct response marketers know that they could reach the masses via the U.S. mail, they resist the urge. Instead, they harness the power of direct mail to ferret out people who are likely to want what’s for sale. Thus, despite a lack of ubiquity on the world stage, direct mail marketers strike gold selling steaks, books, music, computers, kitchen tools, hardware, clothing, heavy equipment, pens, stationery, shoes, intimate apparel, medical supplies, coffins, appliances, motor vehicles, sports equipment, build-it-yourself kits — in fact, just about anything you can name. Not one of these marketers can tell you how many people remember their direct mail. But they can tell you how many orders the last mailing produced.

They can also provide a host of other useful, hard data generally unavailable to those who execute pure awareness marketing. This includes predictive results, cost-per-sale, profitability per individual customer, detailed customer profiles and buying patterns, most-profitable items, best mail dates, winning incentive offers, most-compelling headline, most-persuasive copy, which colors and layouts work best, effectiveness of direct mail contents by the individual piece, strategic value, and more. None of this information is inferred or theoretical. It is grounded by sales and money in the bank.

The metrics of reach have their uses, but they can also lull the unwary into a false sense of security. Top-of-mind awareness is only a success if your goal is top-of-mind awareness. If your goal is sales, perhaps you should measure that instead.

Steve Cuno heads the RESPONSE Agency in Salt Lake City. He is the author of the book Prove It Before You Promote It: How to Take the Guesswork Out of Marketing and a popular convention speaker for the Direct Marketing Association, the American Marketing Association, the James Randi Educational Foundation and others. He can be reached at Steve@ResponseAgency.com.

By Paula Andruss

The recession is over.

That’s right, I said it. Whether you agree, of course, is up to you and the economic indicators you trust. But I’m hardly alone in my declaration. From news journals on Wall Street and politicians in Washington, D.C., to Web sites dedicated to high finance, sightings of economic “green shoots” have abounded, as have suggestions that the worst of the downturn is behind us. And even pessimists who disagree still concede that the slowdown probably won’t continue too much longer.

So what do you do when prosperity returns? I raised this to the Harvard Business School’s John Quelch — who recently blogged on marketing after the recession — to get a better handle on how brands can survive the current climate while arming themselves for the recovery. We agreed that you should consider these actions for when the economy bounces back:

• Get up close and personal. One-to-one marketing is a necessity. Use personalized marketing via mail, e-mail and social platforms — and ideally a combination of all three — to stay close to existing customers and reinforce their commitment to your brand.

• Identify customers least affected by the recession. Focus on the recession-resistant part of your market and use the extensive info you have on your existing customers. That way you can come out swinging when recovery arrives.

• Determine how your customer has changed. Consumers have rethought brand loyalties and spending habits. Direct mail is easily measurable, so use your pieces to test which messages they’re responding to now.

• Stick to your core. Evaluate your brands to determine which have suffered least and focus your post-recession resources there. Now is not the time to experiment — wary consumers want what they already know. Put rebranding and expansions on hold until people are more comfortable.

• Rally the troops. Motivate and incentivize your employees to deliver a positive experience for consumers reentering the market. Educate them on any changes you’ve discovered about your customers since the recession began.

• Practice cost-effective courting. Look to social platforms, e-mail and direct mail to drive prospective customers when normalcy returns. Mail catalogs containing extensive information on a suite of products in lieu of one-off promotions.

• Take advantage of the fire sale. Leverage recession-inspired bargains before they vanish. Printers have likely lowered their prices, and contractors are eager, available and ready to deal, so ask for a discount.

• Get moving — now. Boost your marketing efforts now. If you wait for a proclamation that the rebound is officially here, you already will be behind. People will think of you first if you’re out there when the economy does pick up.

Paula Andruss is a Cincinnati-based freelance writer. Her work has appeared in Marketing News, Crain’s Chicago Business, WomensWallStreet.com and Work.com, among other places. She also runs her own Web site, paulaandruss.com.

By Paula Andruss

Few businesspeople dispute the importance of consumer research to a marketing plan, but rare indeed is the industry leader that chooses to reposition an entire brand based on a study.

However, office-supply giant OfficeMax is poised to do just that.

Driven by new research on customers’ shopping experiences and expectations, the Illinois-based retailer has launched a comprehensive marketing and brand repositioning effort aimed primarily at the company’s newly defined target audience: women.

The national campaign — titled “Life is Beautiful, Work Can Be Too™” — was crafted in response to recent OfficeMax findings that showed that women either control or influence the vast majority of office-product purchases in the retail and B-to-B arenas. As a result, in a marketing world still reluctant to trust statistical measurements to drive campaigns, OfficeMax is proving that a data-driven approach can yield new strategies (and perhaps huge dividends) for brands willing to trust the numbers.

“Our research findings helped us forge a new perspective on the role women play,” says Ryan Vero, OfficeMax executive vice-president and chief merchandising officer. “This is not an exclusionary approach, but a focus that allows us to concentrate on a key audience while still attracting and serving all.”

The campaign is designed to offer women creative, intimate shopping experiences and new private-label product lines. The decision to focus more on women shoppers stems from wide-ranging research the company conducted a few years ago that showed that women either directly control or exert significant influence over about 85 percent of purchases in retail and business-to-business channels.

Prior to the study, the company was like other industry peers, in that they tend to market to a much broader, much less defined audience of business customers, says Vero.

But after looking at traditional market research -– and, more critically, at responses from an OfficeMax-sponsored survey of 5,000 women customers — the retailer decided to reconsider its focus. As part of this change, the company launched in December its “Life is Beautiful, Work Can Be Too” campaign, which is designed to combat the stereotype of the workplace as dull. “An estimated 80 million Americans work in drab cubicles,” he says. “Workers are starved for inspiration and need new outlets of expression. The ‘Life is Beautiful, Work Can Be Too’ campaign is intended to provide inspiration and counter negative work stereotypes.”

A major component of the campaign is an overhaul of the company’s branded Maxi Catalog, which has been revamped into a stylish, magazine-like publication that features a black, glossy cover, sleek photography, tabbed stickers to mark items of interest and flower-and-vine graphics that tie back to the advertising campaign. Seven versions of the Maxi Catalog went out to more than one million B2B and B2C targets. And page count in the publication was beefed up from 1,000 to 1,100. “Our catalog is modern, stylish and beautiful, featuring attractive photography, elegant layouts and recognizable tools like tabbed stickers,” boasts Vero. “We designed it to present our products and services in a way that will resonate with our women customers.” Vero says this was also driven by data, as the OfficeMax study of women consumers showed that they craved more creative shopping experiences, even within the pages of the catalog.

New, more sophisticated efforts show a growing respect for the gay and lesbian audience – and its buying power

By Anne Stuart

With sales down and its product line not generating the excitement it once did, car maker Saturn decided that it needed to overhaul not only its cars, but also its marketing focus. Even as the company dedicated itself to a “product renaissance” starting in 2006, it was also looking to make a bigger splash as a major marketer, seeking out new audiences that would show loyalty to the brand and evangelize on its behalf.

It didn’t take long before the automaker realized that the buying attitudes and behavior it was seeking abounded in at least one audience that also seemed heavily drawn to Saturn’s new line: the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) community. “We’d dabbled in working with this demographic group for a couple of years, and we had more and more [GLBT] customers coming into the showrooms,” explains Ross Bird, who was an assistant divisional marketing manager for Saturn during the lineup overhaul. “From a finance standpoint, they tended to be good customers with good credit. More important, they seemed like a loyal group of customers. Once you sold them, they’d come back — and they’d bring friends.”

In overseeing Saturn’s integrated push to communicate with GLBT consumers — an effort that blended direct mail with event planning and other marketing outlets — Bird also witnessed firsthand what an increasing number of big-brand marketers now realize: namely, that the GLBT community is a consumer force that cannot be denied.

While it’s still a niche market — researchers estimate that the GLBT audience represents about 6 to 7 percent of the total U.S. adult population, or about 15.3 million adults — it’s a particularly influential one, with gay men and lesbians in particular wielding enviable buying power. Overall, market projections suggest that this adds up to $712 billion in annual purchasing power.

And those numbers have never been more important than they are right now. “As a community, we seem to be a little more immune to the economic downturn,” notes David Posegay, advertising director for the magazines Out and The Advocate. “It may be because so many of us are professionals with dual incomes and no children.”

For all those reasons, dozens of industries — from automakers to airlines, credit cards to companies, banks to breweries and beyond — are trying to tap into this lucrative market. As they do, they are realizing that it takes more than showing a same-sex couple in ads or pasting a rainbow flag, the unofficial banner of the GLBT community, on a mail sample. “The (companies) that communicate to GLBTs authentically are being rewarded with market share,” says Andy Bagnall, vice president and account director for Prime Access, a New York City–based multicultural advertising agency that has run many GLBT campaigns.

Saturn’s Story

Saturn was determined to be one of those companies. A while back, the automaker partnered with Atlanta-based Gaywheels.com, a gay-friendly car information site, to participate in the Atlanta Pride Festival and Orlando’s Gay Days®* Spread out over several days, each festival attracted thousands of attendees from the Southeast and beyond.

At both, Saturn sponsored parade floats and pool parties, handed out T-shirts with the slogan “Does your ride reflect your pride?” and took hundreds of pictures, which attendees could later order in commemorative frames via Gaywheels.com.

Festival-goers could also visit Saturn’s tents to check out the new models — and fill out survey cards indicating their interest in learning more about them. Marketers sent the cards to Saturn dealers in attendees’ hometowns, and those dealers followed up with customized mailed invitations to visit.

The effort generated an uptick in car sales, but more important, it proved that Saturn could influence brand perception among a coveted group of buyers. “The overwhelming conclusion was that it was a huge success in terms of connecting with that group in a non-traditional way and changing its perception of the brand,” says Bird, now a regional GM distribution manager. “We heard comments like, ‘We never considered Saturn before, but now you’re on our list.’”

Bird also gives credit to Saturn’s partnership with Gaywheels.com and its founder, Joe LaMuraglia, who connected the automaker with festival organizers, designed an integrated ad campaign and promoted Saturn’s activities on the Web site before and after the events. “He opened a lot of doors for us, giving us instant credibility with this audience,” recalls Bird.

LaMuraglia says it’s impossible to overestimate the importance of that credibility. “You’re dealing with very savvy consumers,” he says of the GLBT community. “If you do it without any thought, if you do it wrong, it’s going to backfire on you.”

How DeVry University used direct mail to anchor an aggressive multimedia enrollment campaign.

By: Bruce Britt

DeVry Interview

In the midst of celebrating the 75th anniversary of DeVry University during the 2006-2007 school year, officials at the university took stock of its recent history and, while they found good cause to uncork the bubbly, they also found reasons for concern.

Chief among them was that, despite enrollment of more than 65,000 students at its 92 locations throughout the United States and Canada, Illinois-based DeVry still had something of an image problem: The school was combating the misconception that it is a technical/vocation school, rather than the fully accredited university it really is. DeVry also wanted to increase its market share within the high-stakes adult education space. “We’re competing against the 800-pound gorilla,” says Lisa Iannuzzelli, the DeVry University senior director of marketing, referring to the heavily marketed Arizona university noted for its online offerings. “Typically, they’re even more aggressive in their marketing than we are. Then there’s also competition from all the local state schools and colleges. (It’s) a challenge.”

In a bid to polish its image and promote its value, DeVry joined with a Chicago-based brand builder to craft a new, integrated marketing campaign complete with a punchy slogan – “We major in careers” – emphasizing the university’s competitive advantage. At the center of the campaign was DeVry’s “Real Stories” series – a string of testimonials from happily employed DeVry grads, students and faculty.

“We felt that the best way for people to learn about DeVry, and hear about how people can get careers, was from our students, alumni, employers and faculty.” Iannuzzelli says. “That has become a big focus, letting those people be our spokesperson and tell our story for us.”

A major player in direct marketing, the school refreshed its mail campaign considerable. First, the university printed branded mailing envelopes featuring the red/royal blue color scheme of the DeVry Web site. The mailings gave continuity to messages being transmitted online.

Next, the university whipped up standard format pitch letters that included an interactive questionnaire embossed with the school’s “We major in careers” tag line. The letter touted findings that suggest that the best-paying, fastest –growing jobs today are in business, engineering and applied sciences. “Just what we teach at DeVry,” the letter effused before delivering the facts about DeVry’s 90-percent grad employment rate.

The accompanying questionnaire posed four questions, including one that asked directly, “Would you like to make $30,000 to $46,000 right out of school?”

Explains Iannuzzelli: “Typically, we get consumers interested in learning more about DeVry, then we get them to provide us with contact information. Our recruiters will follow up with them, tell them more about our offerings, and work them through the admissions process if they’re interested.”

Though the pitch letters would be delivered to existing consumers in DeVry’s mailing database, the school also employed the assistance of an independent source. “We work with a list broker who selects the list for us,” says Iannuzzelli. “It’s various lists that we feel have our target audience.”

Once the pitch mailers were set to go, DeVry cast its net wide. The university launched a series of nationwide mailings in January 2008, with subsequent deliveries being implemented in February, April and June. By the arrival of summer 2008, DeVry had circulated more than 1.8 million pieces of direct mail. “We blanketed the country, but we heavily focused on areas where we have a physical location,” explains Iannuzzelli. Like the questionnaire, all the pieces were emblazoned with the “We major in careers” tag line.

But direct mail was just one piece of DeVry’s massive campaign puzzle. The university created five television ads, including a self-styled “anthem spot” featuring a Utopian variety of students discussing their DeVry experiences. Four additional TV spots showcased alumni talking up DeVry’s business, degree completion, game and simulation, and Web graphic design programs. “We had offers in our TV ads, like our ‘DeVry’s Guide to 49 Hot Careers’ booklet, that we gave out to prospective students,” Iannuzzelli says.

The university targeted young men by placing ads in edgy, male-oriented “lad books,” in eclectic music magazines and in computer publications. To lure older women, DeVry took out ads in lifestyle, health and fashion magazines.

For the print phase of the campaign, DeVry appealed to consumers across all kinds of demographic lines. In one ad, a 32-year-old female DeVry grad explains how her recent business administration degree eased her entry into a human resources management career. In another, a 38-yearold mother touts DeVry’s financial aid department, telling readers “even with five kids, you can afford to go to college.” Still another print piece features a 26-year-old man relating his experience in the school’s gaming and simulation program. “Womb to tomb, I’ll be a gamer ’til I die,” he gushes with convincing hip-hop bravado. In fine-print copy in all the ads, DeVry offers its grad employment stats and accreditation info.

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?

By: Paul Gillin

If you’re like most direct marketers, you think your job is to find prospects and turn them into sales leads. But if you’re aiming your messages exclusively at buyers, you’re missing an opportunity to impact your company’s sales in broader ways as well as the chance to raise your own visibility as a marketing strategist.

That opportunity is “influencers.” They’re the people who drive sales without ever signing a check. They are the one American in 10 who, as one popular 2003 book pointed out, direct the other nine on decisions that range from which political candidate to support to which fast-food joint to pig out at. Too often, though, these tastemakers are as ignored by marketers as they are influential on consumers.

Influencers often don’t buy a product — but they usually know so much about it that they have won over the ears of prospective buyers. They’re the people who customers turn to when it’s time to make a decision.

You probably think you already know who the influencers are, but chances are you don’t. Many experts assert that most marketers know fewer than 20 percent of the people who affect sales. Marketers too often assume that they should go after the media or the top-tier industry analysts. But in doing so, they miss the point entirely. Those sources can be influential, sure, but they usually have little impact on the final purchase decision.

No, marketers need to be exploring the real universe of influencers, whose ranks include channel players and venture capitalists and government agencies and systems integrators. In most cases, influencers are trusted resources who tell buyers what are the safe choices to make, or who define the environment for making that choice. Recruit them to your side and you’ve made the sales job a whole lot easier.

Of course, you have to first realize that enlisting them is indeed part of your job, that your goal is to foster ties between them and your brand by engaging the influencers about issues that matter to your mutual customers and them. Unfortunately, most direct marketers don’t get involved in this kind of relationship-building at all. That’s where your opportunity is.

I suggest that you start by collaborating with your senior sales and marketing managers to identify a group of influencers — management consultants, for example — whom you aren’t currently targeting. Prepare a personalized letter inviting them to an intimate dinner with a few of your senior executives. Get your CEO to sign it. Send the package Express Mail, along with a small gift. Then follow up personally by phone.

And by all means, own the relationship.

Follow up with more targeted mailings and more get-togethers. Send them your direct marketing materials and ask their comments. You probably won’t work magic in the first meeting, but if you’re persistent and consistent, over the next 12 to 18 months you’ll build a relationship. That will pay off handsomely when prospects start calling up your sales staff asking about products that the influencer recommended to them.

What’s more, you may well find that, in your office, your efforts have created a new influencer: you.

Paul Gillin is the principal of Paul Gillin Communications, in Framingham, Mass. His is also author of The New Influencers: A Marketer’s Guide to Social Media.

The Asian-American Market

By: Vicki Powers

Despite the tremendous upside to ethnic marketing, marketers have been rather slow to embrace it, perhaps viewing it as fraught with perils and pitfalls. But that’s starting to change. Even as they are making careful inroads into the Hispanic market, marketers are also turning their attention to Asian Americans.

And no wonder: although Asians only represent 5 percent of the U.S. population, they are among the most educated and affluent U.S. consumers. But the Asian-American market, with its multiple sub-groups and diverse languages, remains a challenge to most marketers.

Because so many companies don’t address the Asian-American market directly, the opportunities to build relationships and cultivate loyalty abound. Indeed, according to Saul Gitlin, EVP of strategic services at Kang & Lee Advertising, Asian Americans may represent one of the true “last frontiers” of first-mover advantage for brands in the United States. “(This market) offers a fairly uncluttered environment,” says Gitlin.

Youth Must Be Served

Looking to court younger targets? As a group, Asian Americans are one of the youngest slices of the U.S. market. Census figures show that the median age among Asian Americans is 34.8 years. Meanwhile, the rest of the U.S. population has a median age of 36.2 years.

Spreading the Wealth

Though they are largely concentrated in three states — California, Texas and New York— Asian American consumers nonetheless wield significant spending power. According to a University of Georgia study, Asian Americans spent $459 billion on products and services in 2007.

Open to Suggestion

Marketers should seriously consider direct mail when reaching out to Asian Americans. Even though Asian Americans are more likely to buy luxury electronic items and keep up with advances in electronic communications, they’re also affected by direct mail. Direct mail influences 22 percent of product purchases for Asian- American respondents.

Brain Power Meets Buying Power

Educated consumers are almost always a coveted group, and Asian Americans tend to be among the most schooled customers in the United States. About 48 percent of Asian Americans have earned a bachelor’s degree. Meanwhile, they are also the most affluent group of Americans, with a median household income of $63,900.

Hot Wired

Asian American consumers are among the most active in the digital world. For instance, e-mail use on mobile phones is higher among Asian Americans than among any other group. Nearly 52 percent of Asian American adults who use the Internet bank online — as compared to 47 percent of the rest of the U.S. adult population.

Direct marketing helps retailers win over new consumers without losing focus on the old ones

By: Lara Jensen

With competition for the consumer’s attention coming from all sides these days, retailers in search of new customers are facing more obstacles than ever before.

As traditional advertising vehicles like TV and print ads continue to reach progressively smaller audiences, “it is going to be harder for marketers to find new audiences going forward,” predicts Kevin Hillstrom, president of MineThatData, a consultancy in Seattle.

And for all its vaunted reach, the Internet isn’t always the best answer for acquiring new customers. “The Internet is good for finding existing customers who are at a certain point in the purchasing cycle where they are ready to buy from you again,” says Hillstrom.

When reaching out to customers who may have never heard of a particular brand, the answer is often less high-tech. Direct mail vehicles such as catalogs allow marketers to pick and choose whom they want to mail to, providing a viable way “to speak to an audience that has never bought from you and stimulate or create demand,” explains Hillstrom.

In 2007, for instance, Toys“R”Us Inc. tripled the circulation of its Toy Guide for Differently-Abled Kids to 3 million as part of an ongoing strategy to differentiate itself from other toy retailers. Although the toy store has produced the guide for more than a decade, the decision to push it more aggressively this year was made because Toys“R”Us wanted the guide available in its stores year-round, instead of just during the holidays, according to Bob Friedland, public relations manager at Toys“R”Us Inc. The guide is also being mailed to customers and distributed to national organizations for children with disabilities. The toys in the guide have been selected and evaluated by the National Lekotek Center, a division of Anixter Center that works with children with disabilities.

This isn’t only a print effort, however. The guide is also available for download from a special Web site. In September, Toys“R”Us stores were also enlisted to promote the guide via dedicated boutiques showcasing products from the guide.

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.”

For publisher Dawn Codd, making direct mail magazines more eco-friendly is the right thing to do for the planet and for her business

By: Anne Stuart

Dawn Codd firmly believes that her three direct mail lifestyle magazines all stuffed with special offers, restaurant reviews and events listings bring plenty of value to the 97,000 readers in the upscale communities that the magazines target.

But the Washington, D.C.-based publisher also knows that, in an era of ever-increasing ecological awareness, some recipients may view direct mail publications as a waste of precious natural resources. For that reason and because she and her partners personally support environmental causes Codd wanted to reduce both that perception and the size of her company’s “footprint” on the earth. “Our beliefs are why we did what we did,” she says.

What they did was adopt an aggressively conservation-oriented approach to producing the trio of publications: City Living Source (citylivingsource.com), for households in D.C.; City Living Source-Baltimore (citylivingbaltimore.com), for similarly well-heeled readers in that city; and Howard County Living (howardliving.com), for residents of an affluent suburban area in central Maryland. (Each publication goes to about 32,000 readers six times a year.)

Beginning with their January 2008 issues, all three magazines have become significantly more eco-friendly. That’s a change that involves more than simply adding green content although there’s more of that these days, too. Codd has focused on producing the magazines as cleanly and greenly as possible. “Everything about our business is about recycling and sustainability,” she says.

Specifically, the publications are printed only on Forest Stewardship Council-certified paper, meaning that it’s from timber grown and harvested according to the international forest-management association’s strict environmental standards. In addition, Codd recently switched to a new printer that uses soy-based ink, an alcohol-free press operation and a filmless, all-digital printing process that eliminates the need for silver and chemicals. “That’s all more healthful for readers and for the environment,” says Codd, who has promoted the printer’s techniques in print and online.

But what she hasn’t publicly emphasized is what those changes are costing her young business: an additional $1,000 per issue for each magazine. That’s an expense that she’s not passing on to advertisers until next year: “[Going green] was so important because of our personal beliefs that we were going to do it no matter what,” she says. “Our advertising rates will go up as our circulation goes up. And our circulation is growing pretty fast.”

That’s the case even though the publications specifically instruct readers how to get off the mailing list. Codd says that her company typically receives about one opt-out request per issue; in contrast, she says, “We’ve got people e-mailing every day asking to be put on the list.” She attributes that demand to each 24-page publication’s mix of local incentives, event listings and content that now includes advertiser advice on topics such as improving window insulation, buying organic fabrics and bicycling to work.

Codd’s publications also offer “virtual” incentives online, allowing readers to sign up to receive coupons and other offers via their cell phones. The incentives are specially formatted to fit on a mobile phone’s display screen; to redeem one, a consumer just shows the screen to a participating merchant. The process obviously eliminates the need to print, carry, redeem and recycle paper coupons.

Has anybody noticed one publisher’s efforts to tell the world that “green is good”? Codd says yes. “People have actually sent thank-you notes by e-mail, saying it’s great that we made the change,” she says. And any time a recipient of a direct mail piece personally thanks the marketer who sent it, that’s a pretty strong indicator that the message is getting across.