Up Close and Personal

Posted on by Chief Marketer Staff

Even though it can be a relatively expensive proposition for mass marketers, direct mail has become a viable option as the volume of available information about consumers’ lifestyles, buying habits, and wants continues to mount.

Consumer information is flowing in from retail transactional databases, self-reported surveys, and promotional vehicles such as sweeps, personalized coupons, and rebates that require responses.

Marketers, therefore, are more assured of reaching their top prospects and making their efforts more valuable. It’s more cost-effective to build sales off existing customers than to go after competing brand-buyers or new prospects, says Chris Hulse, president of Madison Direct, Greenwich, CT.

“I think we are seeing a fundamental shift in how people are using mail. Your `frequent loyals’ are where your first increases in business are going to come from,” Hulse adds.

Brands from cigarettes to Cadillacs are fostering special relationships with top customers via the postal system. Here’s a look at recent efforts that get a stamp of approval.

Random Focus

Lucky Strike cigarettes is a brand with a lot of heritage. But the 21-to-30-year-old male smokers who the brand wants to win over often think of Luckies as their grandfather’s cigarette. Louisville-based parent company Brown & Williamson is testing various new ideas for Lucky Filters in mailings, which it follows up with focus groups.

Most B&W brand mailings have a transaction-slant, aimed at generating incremental volume as well as recall. They’ll use consumer models based on data factors including coupon redemption, demographics, and lifestyle to target both franchise and competitive smokers, says B&W direct mail division vp John Heironimus.

Lucky Filters – available for two years in select markets – is floating “communication” mailings to test image ideas with random samples of known smokers over 21. Four weeks after a mailing, focus groups are held with some of the recipients to find out how the communication affected their impression of the brand. One of six mailings sent recently featured a sound chip and pop-up figures in a bar-room setting, aiming for a contempoary urban feel, says Heironimus.

“How we use that image (or others) will depend on what we decide to do with the brand as a whole,” he adds.

Preferred Stock

To launch a preferred-guest program in February, White Plains, NY-based Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. drew on databases from airline and credit-card marketing partners it gained by buying the Westin and Sheraton hotel chains.

With six lodging brands and 660 hotels, Starwood wanted to fold the preferred-guest programs of its latest acquisitions into its own, but needed to retain the former’s best customers while introducing the Starwood brand worldwide.

Airline partners helped the chain identify high-potential acquisition targets, and the credit cards provided lists of people who spend a lot of money at the hotels. “We used Westin’s and Sheraton’s databases to look at guests’ aggregate spending,” says Bill Baker, group vp at Minneapolis-based Lacek Group, which handled.

Prospects were mailed a kit with terms and guest credentials and a Starwood preferred-guest card. In addition to one million members inherited from the earlier programs, the effort as of June had enrolled one million more – which had been the goal for all of 1999, says Baker.

Smoke Signals

R.J. Reynolds’ Doral Cigarettes encourages interaction and back-and-forth communication with smokers through its five-year-old Doral & Co. Across America magazine. The news magazine-style quarterly might ask recipients to write about how they celebrated the Fourth of July, or send in letters and pictures on a particular topic. Letters run in the magazine, where readers might also get inside tips on upcoming promos or earn double chances on sweeps.

The brand seems to have made a connection with its core audience, comprised of 30-plus-year-olds from “heartland America.” Doral loyalists provide up to one million pictures and letters a year, says Doral vp-marketing Doug Shouse.

“We are trying to create a strong relationship with our consumers using a very personal approach. We show the people behind the products, and those who smoke the product,” he says.

With a length of 12 to 16 pages, Across America is closely integrated with Doral’s other marketing efforts, so magazine recipients will be invited to participate in the Doral Celebration event, for example.

While the magazine goes to people who identify Doral as their brand or who claim to smoke it on occasion, the program also seeks to find competitive smokers through address panels and toll-free numbers on cigarette packs or promotional materials.

“We want smokers to request to belong to this program,” says Dave Ianco, senior vp-marketing for Winston-Salem, NC-based RJR. “It’s up to them to sign up, and then they have the opportunity to opt in or opt out. This adds to its effectiveness and efficiency.”

The Cadillac of Mailers

In its Breakaway America program, Warren-MI-based Cadillac sought to reward owner loyalty and entice test drives of the car’s DeVille model through a mailing to 337,000 known owners.

In a June mail drop last year, owners were offered a free 64-inch Cadillac umbrella and – for those who visited a dealer to test drive the DeVille – a free oil change, lube, and filter. DraftWorldwide, Chicago, handled the offer, which was good for three months.

“This was the first time a Cadillac brand had done a true reward mailing to the owners,” says DraftWorldwide vp-group account director Kristi Van den Bosch.

The personalized, elegantly styled mailing, which went to owners of 1991-through-1998 models of De Villes and Fleetwoods, sparked more than 300 letters of thanks from owners, says Van den Bosch.

Artful Shaw’s

In an account-specific promo with Shaw’s Supermarkets, Minneapolis-based Old El Paso indexed the chain’s stores based on the demographic makeup of their marketing areas, volumes, and sales of the brand. Households in markets surrounding the top 50 stores received mailings with a meal-solution offer of Old El Paso and Shaw’s-brand Mexican foods.

Shaw’s doesn’t track scanned consumer sales through the register, so Pillsbury-owned Old El Paso used data compiled by Spectra Marketing, Chicago, and mailing lists developed by Cox Direct, Largo, FL, according to Jeff Griot, vp-marketing at MAI, Inc., the Framingham, MA-based marketer and food broker that handled the effort.

Spectra created a “demand index” of stores based on high usage of Old El Paso products “to identify the best communities and store locations,” says Griot. Cox developed a targeted mailing list for the stores, weighting mailings to stores’ volumes. A mailer went to 45,500 customers with a shopping-bag visual theme to reward Shaw’s best customers, and drove category and brand sales, says Griot.

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