Stepping Out: Data helps Spring-Green Lawn Care eliminate two-step sales process

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The lawn-care industry's traditional prospecting methods might kindly be deemed convoluted. A potential supplier calls a lead and requests the opportunity to make a proposal, visits the prospect's home, generates an estimate, returns to the office that evening, calls the prospect back and tries to make the sale.

The close rate on such a tortuous process? “Low,” says James Young, president of Spring-Green Lawn Care Corp.

Spring-Green has been moving toward targeted direct mail since Young joined the company six years ago. His timing was auspicious: In October 2003, shortly before he signed on, the federal do-not-call list went into effect (some states already had registries), limiting marketers' ability to cold-call prospects.

Bringing targeting to Spring-Green's mail efforts has been challenging. Initially, Young gathered the franchisees' data on a one-off basis and conducted a major analysis effort in the fall, which set the priorities for the company's spring marketing initiatives.

But this was a stopgap measure. Young has centralized the data operations for all of Spring-Green's outlets, with feeds coming in near real time. The company has also implemented tools that allow franchise owners to view their data and track the performances of promotions to segments of their files as they happen.

“I am able to say, ‘Here is what we know about your past [campaign] performances,’” Young says. “‘Here is some proprietary methodology about who you should select to mail, and here is the ability to customize offers to those targets.’”

The parent firm itself is invisible in its mailings: Each piece is customized with a local franchisee, an offer and a promotion code. But the ordering and distribution is all done through the corporate headquarters, allowing the 6 million to 8 million pieces a year the company mails to take advantage of economies of scale — a welcome benefit, given that franchisees contribute to the marketing budgets. The bulk of Spring-Green's mail efforts are done in the spring, as part of a three-touch effort, although the company does additional service mailings during the course of the year.

“In direct mail, I only send priced offers,” says Young, adding that the goal is to make the sale with the mailing.

Howdy Neighbor!

While Spring-Green tries to focus on neighbors of existing customers — a strategy that allows it to service clients in cohesive routes — appended household data allows Young to eliminate unlikely prospects, such as those below certain income or home-value levels. It also provides demographic data, including home and plot size, which helps the company set prices on a home-by-home basis without having to make an initial consultative visit.

Spring-Green's data tools also enable the company to mail appropriate offers to each recipient. Empty nesters might respond better to an easy payment plan or a free additional service, while a family with two kids and a dog might receive an offer regarding the company's organic offerings.

Because Young does the bulk of the analysis, there is a certain amount of trust that the franchise owners have to place in his marketing efforts, just as he trusts their ability to provide the actual lawn-care services. But the company also has a marketing committee, which includes elected representatives from the franchisees, serving as conduits between individual operators and management. “It keeps us well rooted,” says Young.

Not that there aren't holdouts. Young estimates that 10% of his franchisees don't have grand aspirations about growing their businesses, and are reluctant to invest in corporate marketing programs.

“They may do some marketing locally, but they aren't aggressive in their growth plan. There isn't much we can do [about this],” he says. "Our focus is on supporting owners who seek to build multi-territory operations that will ultimately require a fleet of trucks. [We want] to help our franchise owners achieve disproportionate marketing share."

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