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One-on-One Gets Double Digit Results
Last weekend I flew to Turkey to give a speech on one-to-one marketing. I was invited by Xerox to speak at the Marketingist Conference and Exhibition. Also speaking at Xerox’s booth/theater was Rafi Albo, managing director of SegMarketing, an Israel-based marketing agency. Albo discussed what he calls data creative: Starting with customer data to generate the creative of one-to-one campaigns.
“You need to think creatively about data,” he said during his presentation. “Data is the language of real customer behavior.”
Here, two examples Albo cited:
1. A major cosmetics retailer examined its data and learned that 90 percent of customers coming into its stores during the last half hour of operations spent far more than shoppers coming into the stores at any other time of day. The data suggested that women with busy daytime schedules were rushing into the store at the end of the day to buy what they needed, so the retailer created a nighttime event to reward top customers in that category for their patronage. Working with loyalty program and sales data, the company compiled a list of its top 3,000 customers and sent them a one-to-one campaign inviting them to an after-hours “white night” special event. Each invitation included one to three offers customized to the recipient based on purchase history—many of the offers were incentives to try products the customers hadn’t yet purchased.
The invitation-only event ran from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Attendees enjoyed wine and cheese, and could bring one guest. The average basket size during the event was four times higher that the retailer’s normal basket size. The company had its best sales quarter ever as a result of the promotion.
2. President of fashion retailer Factory 54 had a choice of two direct mail pieces—same messaging, but one sealed with a ribbon actually laced through the card. The latter was more engaging, but was also more costly. The company president selected it anyway, because he knew customers would appreciate it. They did. The direct mail campaign, which included custom offers based on known brand preferences gleaned from customer data, generated a more than 50 percent response rate. Most direct mail campaigns are lucky to get a 3 percent response rate.
These are the types of examples that help to explain the value of one to one. The numbers speak for themselves.
Thanks.
So, is that possible to reach 50% response rate above everyday 1-3% like that Israeli-based retail shop? Of course, yes. But you got to know your client well enough to elicit a "Yes" as opposed to a "No". Look, apriori, it's a 50:50 "Yes" to any pitch. The key is to recognise the relevance level and a hidden desire. If you hit it right, you got it with your money in the bank. So, you got to take on customer hot buttons like the items bought or how frequently it happened. It may come as from the personal knowledge of your clientele like probably in case with the above retailer or their behaviours carefully stored in your database. On a large scale, it's an issue of modeling or scoring the potential respondents pushing those hot buttons or variables if you will. The result is the custom pitch that may well score 40-50% and sometimes even more. Here's some amount of enigma or hidden desires coming out so that if cracked. it may give you that magic "50% +" , the pinnacle of target marketing. Now, guess who's that lucky?
Timm,
Thanks for your question. They only used the card with the ribbon, so there's no other results to share. But it wasn't the ribbon that generated the response rate; it was the customization. The ribbon was just the icing on the cake, so to speak. What I thought was interesting was that the company president was willing to spend the extra money to help increase the wow factor for his customers.
What was response rate for the factory 54 card without the ribbon? I'm willing to guess it would be more than 3%.