Direct Marketing South of the Border: Time To Opt In

Planning to do more consumer marketing south of the border?

No surprise, considering Mexico’s much improved economy. The country’s gross national product is growing at 3.9%—faster than the world average of 3.7% and more than double the U.S. rate of 1.7%.  The Peso has been quite strong (until a recent slide), and the country’s middle class now accounts for more than half the population.  

Of course, you’ve probably long had many customers in Mexico, but may well have taken them for granted. Perhaps you treated them as one demographic—the Mexican market—without knowing much about them as individuals. But Mexican consumers are now as complex as their counterparts in the U.S.  It’s time to learn more about them if you want to reach them through targeted direct marketing.

Lucky for you, Mexico is a data-rich market, so it’s easy to tap into state-of-the-art database marketing—if you know where to find the data. Need to reach married couples? The data exists. Married couples with children? Check. Married couples with children and a monthly income over 50,000 Pesos? Double check.

Whatever your product or service—and whether your Mexican plans call for email, direct mail or other marketing methods—you can’t just rush in and transfer your U.S. campaigns. As with any other country, you must consider cultural mores, as well as fairly new privacy regulations.

Such regulations go hand in hand with the country’s increased wealth, as consumers have a growing desire to protect such data as credit card numbers, online purchase information and even their email addresses.  

Speaking of email, Mexico has essentially adopted an opt-out approach, as with our own CAN-SPAM law. Soany lists you use need to be clean as a whistle—and constantly updated to reflect consumers’ opt-out decisions.

Mexico has also recently enacted broad data privacy legislation that covers all direct marketing campaigns.  However, sophisticated marketers have nothing to fear.  As long as they work with reputable data sources, nothing changes.  The new legislation does place a credible deterrent to prevent unsolicited marketing, which should reduce mail volume from unsavory competition – and possibly translate into even higher response rates. 

So with that in mind, you can deliver the same caliber of targeted brand messages that you do here in the U.S. and ultimately find a more receptive audience as a result. That can only translate into better return on your marketing investment and no better reason to pour yourself a shot of good tequila to toast the outcome if you ask me.

Scott Neuberger is president of Infocore.