Live from DMA09: Best Western Checks Into Transpromo

Print products are still the largest portion of the marketing supply chain, according to recent research from the CMO Council.

And these consumables—such as direct mail, sales literature, brochures and promotional material—can be a serious area of waste for marketers, said Liz Miller, vice president, programs and operations for the CMO Council. To reduce costs, marketers are looking to eliminate unnecessary spending and unneeded use of resources, as well as negotiate tougher terms and better prices, and doing more auditing.

Miller saw this first hand when she worked for the LA Lakers. In the marketing department, there was the notorious room 110, which was filled with close to $30,000 worth of collateral that would never be used. And every month, operations kept ordering more, because marketing didn’t tell them not to, she said.

“We still live in a marketing world filled with silos,” she said.

Marketers must find smarter ways to cut down on waste and better utilize their dwindling marketing budgets. This, says Miller, could include using onserts instead of inserts. In conjunction with InfoPrint, the CMO Council ran a test early this year to see how transpromotional documents would work for Best Western.

The chain of primarily owner-operated properties does the majority of their communications online. The company wasn’t looking to decrease marketing spend that time, but rather redeploy its spend. Their goals for the test was to increase registrations and incremental hotel bookings immediately; increase demand for its branded credit card; and increase visibility for the partner program.

Turning the statements for Best Western’s loyalty program would change how the customer interacted with the statements said Miller, noting that as much as marketers don’t like to admit it, most people throw away statement inserts.

The 100,000-piece test included 50,000 control mailings and 50,000 with the transpromotional text.

The results? Over the control mailing, the transpromotional mailing showed increases of 33% in customer stays, 34% in nights booked, 15% in program registrations, 30% in revenue growth and 500% in branded MasterCard applications (MC offers were only presented to those customers in the test who didn’t already have the card).

Why did the test perform so well? “We used a channel of communications that customer valued,” said Miller, noting that follow-up tests without the CMO Council’s involvement have been conducted.

Miller spoke during a preconference session at DMA09 in San Diego on Sunday. The conference continues through Wednesday.