MEDIA PROMOTED CONTENT
***No. 1: Top of the chart for New Customer Recruitment – Personalised Mailings Personally addressed mail is still the preferred channel of recruitment for most catalogue and online retailers in the UK. The advantages are numerous: Prospect data can be profiled and targeted to suit the subject matter of each mailing. There is little or no risk of mailings and advertising material going astray or being lost. Existing customers of a brand can be excluded and groups of consumers with low propensity to respond can be suppressed from mailings. Smart mailers increase the value and intensity of their promotions according to the penetration depth of a file. 5yr dormant customers of a brand might be offered 10% off. 10yr dormant customers might be offered 20% off with Free Delivery. One size does not fit all.
The biggest single disadvantage of direct mail as a channel for recruitment is its cost. For the smaller company in particular, amortisation of creative costs across small mailing runs can be a challenge, which is why ‘hitching a ride on MailTrainMedia’ might suit some. Many mailers are still failing to optimise the weight of their mailings too. Why mail a letter format catalogue of 65g when you’re paying for 100g? Equally, why mail a large letter-size catalogue of 180g when you are paying for 250g? This is important when you consider that there is a direct relationship between the number of products featured in a catalogue and the gross sales yield generated by that catalogue.
Q = 9 (Each mailing is personally addressed. Prospect data can be profiled to suit the mailer’s target audience. Lifetime Value of mail-acquired customers is higher than any other channel; S = 10 (Provided that suitable prospect data can be found, volumes can easily be scaled up); C = 6 (But if Royal Mail were able to maintain an Access price of around £100 per ‘000 – 10p each for incremental quantities of ‘Responsible Advertising Mail’ in letter format in the longer term, this score would be 10); R = 10 (Zero risk as the mailer controls release into the postal system and mailing houses don’t tolerate shortfalls in circulation). Score 35.
Scotts results: The Royal Mail ‘Back-to-Business’ incentive for incremental mailings was introduced to compensate for the impact of the pandemic. It has proved beyond any doubt that price reductions in postage cost can result in disproportionate increases in mail volume. In response to an effective discount of 35% on incremental volumes on mailings, in the year to 31st March 2021, Scotts will have increased its mailing volumes by over 22 million pieces, more than a doubling of mailed volume in the previous year. Scotts has increased the size of its database of 0-12-month customers by 50%. This will have a massive impact on the scale of our mailings which will be carried by Royal Mail at full postage price in 2021. Further vindication of this brave but smart strategy deployed by Royal Mail back in April 2020.
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Next month: The ‘Pecking Order’ of affordability for online channels of recruitment.
So has Scotts ‘given away the store’ by sharing this information? We don’t believe so. What we have come to realise is that success lies in the execution of a strategy, not the choice of strategy. It’s how you use each channel of recruitment that makes the difference, not whether you’re aware of the pros and cons. This art icle looks at off line channels for customer recruitment. In the next art icle, we’ll be looking at online recruitment channels
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