Target Marketing To Upscale Customers

There’s more to direct mail advertising than simply sticking a label on a flier and dropping it off at your local post office. Even the most sophisticated direct mail advertising generates miniscule response rates, somewhere in the 1-2% range. That’s because advertising has to accomplish four things before securing the sale:

1) The ad must reach the customer.

2) The customer must open it.

3) The customer must read it.

4) The customer must act on it.

“And each step along the way you lose 95% of your audience,” says Bud Brewer, director of marketing for Massey Services, Inc., Maitland, Fla.

That’s why PCOs must look at direct mail campaigns critically to ensure they get their money’s worth. “Our direct mail strategy is to target specific audiences and then follow-up with telephone calls. We limit our direct mail campaigns to 1,000 pieces in any given mailing,” he says. “We follow-up the mailing with personal phone calls or a personal note to everyone receiving the mailing. We found such a program to be more effective, resulting in a much higher response rate.”

Massey Services utilizes a computer program typically used by real estate appraisers to target its direct mail campaign. “It gives you access to the county tax roles,” Brewer says. “We bought it to help us zero-in on customers in specific economic and geographic ranges.”

Here’s how the system works: By selecting specific criteria, a PCO can gradually pinpoint his or her target market. For instance, Brewer may start out with a list of 20,000 potential customers, but by selecting the following criteria — owner-occupied single-family homes, in a specific ZIP code, valued at more than $150,000, with the homeowner’s phone number listed — he is able to reduce the list to approximately 1,250 entries. “Each criteria lowers the number of potential contacts,” he says, “until you get a universe that you can manage.”

Once Massey Services has identified the customers it wants to approach in a particular market area, it mails a brochure and follows-up with a phone call. “Each phone call is followed by a handwritten note on our letterhead that includes another brochure, along with a salesman’s business card in an envelope. The logo is on each piece in the package, so you’ve imprinted your logo four times on that prospective customer,” he says.

Phone calls will only be made between 9:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. “You don’t want to call when soaps or prime time TV are on,” Brewer warns.

“Our goal is for each service center to have one direct mail campaign per month. In a year, we might mail 500,000 pieces throughout our system. It’s more of a targeted approach, but we expect it to be very effective,” he says. “By taking such an approach, we hope to generate a 5-6% response rate rather than a 1-2% response rate which is typical of most direct mail campaigns.”