Direct Inspection

Maybe the reason consumers complain so vehemently about direct marketing is not because they dislike it, but because they like it so much, and want it to work better for them.

Fifty-four percent of consumers responded to at least one direct marketing offer in the past six months, and 40 percent made a purchase, according to a survey conducted by research firm Yankelovich Partners and DIRECT Magazine (PROMO’s sister publication). The summer survey is the first independent study to explore consumers’ shopping habits, contact preferences, and attitudes about e-mail and telemarketing lists.

The heaviest users of direct marketing are the biggest complainers, which implies that consumers are offended not by direct marketing per se, only by its shortcomings. High displeasure with direct marketing goes hand-in-hand with high response.

The survey also found that consumers overwhelmingly prefer to be contacted through regular mail. A few consumers are open to phone calls or e-mails from companies they know, and younger consumers are slightly more open to e-mail pitches. Catalogs get the best response, followed by direct-mail pieces. (E-mail, banner ads, direct-response TV, and telemarketing round out the list at a distant third.)

Boston-based Yankelovich Partners conducted the survey in June via Monitor-OmniPlus, 15-minute telephone interviews with 999 respondents to the company’s ongoing in-home surveys. (Respondents are 16 and older and represent the total U.S.)

Most consumers prefer using a single channel to shop and buy, but an important segment — primarily younger shoppers — prefers to have control over a mix.

Heavy users (those who respond to direct mail most frequently) skew higher on education and income. That makes them a more attractive audience, but also more demanding. They’re more adamant about preferring postal-mail pitches than less-educated, lower-earning consumers. They’re also more likely to complain via customer service, and remove their name from lists to improve — not sever — their connection with marketers. Direct marketing purchasers get annoyed when marketers don’t approach them appropriately. Smart marketers use complaints to hone their pitches.

When direct marketing programs are appropriately customized, a substantial number of purchasers are willing to provide personal information and put more data into lists. But direct-marketing buyers are more concerned than the general public about their time, so a flood of marginally relevant offers won’t build a connection. Marketers need to do more with less.

Web is woven in

The Internet has become a hub for high-value consumers. Internet use is the common characteristic of the most active direct-marketing customers, and online consumers are more likely to buy.

Consumers who respond to direct marketing are more likely to be married and have Internet access. They’re more comfortable with technology than non-responders, more likely to seek out product information and bargains, and more likely to describe themselves as smart shoppers (as well as confident, competent, creative, intelligent, optimistic, talented, and well-educated). Consumers who responded to a direct-marketing offer in the last six months (through any channel) were more likely to read or write e-mail; research a person, event, topic or question; check bank account transactions; or access stock quotes online.

But heavy users still shop other channels, too, at roughly the same level as consumers who don’t shop online.

Most consumers (61 percent, skewed older) prefer using a single channel for research and purchase. Twenty-three percent (skewed younger) use different channels, usually in a three-step process: Initial contact (preferably via postal mail), information-gathering (via Web sites and catalogs), and purchase (usually via catalog).

Most consumers don’t want to be approached outside their preferred channel, but the minority who like multiple channels find single-channel direct marketing cumbersome and frustrating. Those consumers — the younger crowd — set the tone for the future. (For example, respondents aged 16 to 37 are 57 percent more likely to prefer to be contacted by an unfamiliar organization through e-mail than those 38 to 56, and nearly four times as likely to want e-mail contact than those older than 57.)

Multichannel shoppers with Internet access overwhelmingly prefer to research items online, but buy via catalog or 800 numbers twice as often as online. (Multichannel users who don’t shop online strongly prefer catalogs for research and are more likely to buy via direct mail.)

Since online consumers are more responsive to direct marketing, the pitch of their dissatisfaction is an octave higher. Winning more support from online shoppers would be a big step in addressing dissatisfaction among consumers in general (and among the highest-value direct-marketing consumers in particular).

Follow through

The research sets three clear priorities for direct marketers:

• Consumer dissatisfaction should be addressed as a marketing issue. The threat of restrictive regulation and legislation is fueled by consumer ire. Certainly, outright abuses must be policed. But marketers must recognize that no amount of p.r. will reverse consumer unhappiness caused by bad marketing. The biggest complainers are the highest-value consumers, who aren’t looking for limits on direct marketing so much as they are looking for better marketing.

• All channels should be improved. No single channel (say, the Internet) will erase the need for all others. The most important channel continues to be postal mail, and the mail system needs a lot of immediate support and improvement. Consumers’ strong preferences — either for a single channel or many — makes all channels important. The viability of direct marketing depends on consumers’ ability to find the channel(s) just right for them.

• Direct marketers need to engage consumers emotionally and executionally. Marketers often ignore consumer complaints in pursuit of the next small increment of lift and response. This sacrifices consumer goodwill in pursuit of short-term gains. As consumers become more active and more powerful, they’ll be able to resist all pitches that don’t connect with them emotionally.

This is the industry’s next frontier: Develop tools to put attitudes and emotions into the databases, so every executional connection carries an emotional connection as well.

This story is adapted from DIRECT Magazine’s August feature, written by Yankelovich Partners president J. Walker Smith and Craig Wood, president of Yankelovich’s Monitor MindBase division. The full direct-Yankelovich report is available online at directmag.com.