was a meeting request, asking the prospect for a half-day of their time for a discussion around compliance issues. direct effective In a follow-up call to the direct mail package, Symantec reached out to each prospect two days after the direct mail was sent out.
That strategy was bolstered by using online “real estate” on Syman-tec.com with a way for prospective customers to go to a landing page that contained details about the survey.
“This goes to the really targeted nature [of the campaign],” Grimes said. “We had so narrowly defined and prequalified who was getting it in the first place.”
BY CAROL KROL
IT’S PRACTICALLY UNHEARD of: a 22% response rate to good, old-fashioned direct mail. How did IT security software company Symantec Corp. accomplish that?
Symantec’s salespeople were tasked to get in the door for face-to-face meetings with decision-makers. This was especially true in one region, where Symantec salespeople said getting appointments was difficult.
“The pipeline in that particular area was not where it needed to be,” said Kim Johnston, VP-sales and marketing operation at Symantec. “Each of our regions has pipelines in place. For new products, especially, they haven’t been sufficient to meet the [sales] targets [we set].”
The solution to the problem began with a simple exercise.
”I’m not going to propose this as earth-shattering, but we started by sitting down with the account team and looked at the accounts we wanted to focus on,” said Jenni Grimes, senior director of the Value Management Office at Symantec, who worked closely with Johnston to implement the lead-generation program for salespeople.
“We did basic data analysis,” Grimes said. That meant answering questions such as: “Do we have the right connections in these accounts? Who do we want to target? Do any patterns emerge? And is there any common pain point?”
“You need to do as much reconnaissance as you can,” she added. “You need to do your homework.”
A few verticals stood out in that analysis. Health care, power and en-
ergy, and financial services were the three areas that emerged as those with a common pain point.
“It was IT compliance. We were grappling with the compliance challenge—the whole IT governance risk and compliance issue,” Johnston said.
Grimes said it was important to approach the prospects with strate-gy-level information that would help them with their business rather than go into an appointment telling the potential customer what Symantec had to offer and sell benefits rather than features.
First, a direct mail piece was created that established Symantec’s track record of helping clients with compliance issues, with analysis and data to back it up.
“We had a narrative about working with organizations for years and helping them deal with compliance,” Grimes said. “That piece was two-day ‘FedExed’ to the recipients.” The package included a cover letter, and an 8½-by-11-inch trifold color piece with charts and analysis.
“We were somewhat provocative in the text,” Grimes said, which read in part, “We suspect you may be having challenges.”
The statistics used in the trifold were from its annual online IT risk management survey of 1,400 current customers. The results presented in the direct mail piece were specific to the target audience, so there were individual versions for: health care, power and energy, and financial services.
“The piece talked about what their peer groups were talking about, not about our products,” Johnston said.
The call to action in the mail piece
That targeted approach paid off. Twenty-two percent of customers and prospects asked for an appointment of some type. Many could not commit to the half-day face-to-face meeting Symantec proposed but were willing to spare an hour by phone or in person.
Symantec used that time with those customers and prospects presenting ideas to discover ways it could help its customers with compliance, including best practices and results from its study that would resonate with a particular customer. Grimes’ team helped create scripts and presentations for the salespeople to deliver to those customers.
Like many b-to-b marketers, Symantec has a nine-to-12-month sales cycle, so while the company is still working with many respondents, it has begun to see some sales.
Grimes said she traces the program’s success in part to setting specific goals.
“Historically, a lot of energy went into the piece itself: seminar, webinar, direct mail, rather than the results needed,” she said.
“It was results-based thinking, not activity-based thinking. When you have that mind-set, you line things up different.”
Cienasoftsells Ethernetproducts
BY MARY ELLEN PODMOLIK formation. “We wanted people to CIENA CORP.’S global customer consider us a specialist in Ethernet base already included major technology,” said Joe Cumello, senior communication service director of global marketing at Ciena. providers, corporations and govern- “We were trying to educate the mental agencies that all rely whole market at once that on the network specialist’s case study we had this technology and systems and software. it was available for people to get.”
But when the company intro- The company looked to Babcock duced new Ethernet products to its & Jenkins to help it craft a direct portfolio in 2007, it knew it had to marketing effort introducing its reframe how the marketplace FlexSelectforEthernet.
viewed them. To soften the market for the mes-
A prospecting campaign had to saging that was to come, Ciena extend the brand, explain the new launched an integrated media cam-products and entice decision-makers paign March 1, 2007, a few weeks be-and recommenders to seek more in- fore it dropped its first piece of mail.
Banner ads, webinars and e-newsletters were used to set the stage, and all used the tagline “Now arriving.”
Later that month, a simple intrigue piece of mail landed on the desks of 16,957 decision-makers and recommenders worldwide. Polybagged and designed to resemble an airline boarding pass, the mailer didn’t offer any details about the new Ethernet architecture, just that it had arrived.
Recipients were directed to a microsite ( www.ethernetnow.com) and could use a personal PIN supplied in the mailer to learn more details. On that microsite, the only personal information they were asked
Do your PREsearch
and you’ll improve
your response
BY PETER MEYERS
PREsearch (noun): 1. The identification, analysis and segmentation of a target market before launching a direct marketing campaign. 2. A made-up word.
KNOWING YOUR AUDIENCE before unleashing a direct marketing campaign can be a key driver to successful response and can greatly increase the number of consumers reached who are willing to buy and try your product. A carefully planned PREsearch strategy can help direct marketers optimize their audience, find the most valuable consumer groups and determine the best creative tactic to motivate the target audience.
With rising costs of mailing and an uncertain economy, inefficient direct mail campaigns can wreak havoc on a budget’s bottom line. Direct marketers embarking on a response campaign often arrive at an all too familiar crossroad—where do you find a sizable group of consumers who will also be interested enough in the product to provide a sustainable sample, all in a time- and cost-efficient package?
Let’s examine two common but flawed approaches to this quandary. In the first approach, marketers take a narrow focus, targeting the group with likely key responders. They might, for example, identify a group of country club golfers who might consider sampling a new golf ball. As you might have guessed, the marketers receive a fantastic response from this very targeted group. Unfortunately, this se- PETER MEYERS lect group is too small and not a sustainable sample. is VP-marketing at
Marketers using a different approach decide to ICOM Information widen the target group to likely and unlikely respon- & Communications. ders, hoping to acquire a sustainable sample. He can be reached Instead of asking just the golfers, the second at pmeyers@ approach also targets swimmers, tennis players and i-com.com. all other members of the country club—again looking for those willing to try or buy the new golf ball. In addition to the eager golfers, other members with an interest in golf respond, creating a larger and more sustainable response pool. But this approach is not perfect either. The cost associated with targeting such a large audience is exorbitant; and, with such a broadly defined target, the ROI was well below expectations.
High costs and unsatisfactory results from these two scenarios leave direct marketers searching for a new, more efficient approach to drive program performance.
Calculated market analysis prior to launching a campaign can greatly increase your chances of targeting a sustainable market segment without compromising response or cost of acquisition. Front-end research can account for as little as 15% of your total campaign budget. The minor investment can pay big dividends in delivering critical information about your most valuable consumer targets and the best creative tactics to motivate these segments to try and buy your product.
Online communication is an ideal time- and cost-friendly PREsearch method to identify and optimize your audience. A carefully crafted online survey to a randomly selected group of households is an excellent place to begin. The survey should be brief and the questions should center on two important elements of your product campaign: the message and the creative. Households that don’t respond at all or respond negatively about the product are eliminated from the direct mail campaign prospect list.
This type of PREsearch can greatly increase the efficiency of a direct mail campaign. It not only weeds out the households that are least likely to respond but also gives the marketer pertinent information about the ideal message and creative to engage the optimized audience. For example, an online survey to all country club members would not only deliver an optimized audience of those interested in golf balls but could also determine whether they like golf balls that are “long-distance” or “soft-core.”
Optimizing your audience with front-end tactics ensures that you will be talking to the right audience with the right message and creative when you launch your direct campaign. In these changing times, it’s an excellent way to drive superior marketing program performance in a cost-effective way.
to input was how soon they would make a purchase and their role in their organization. Those who went on the site could access white papers and product information.
Three weeks after that, another mailer arrived—this one in a red poly-bag and much more detailed in its explanation of the architecture. Again, recipients were invited to visit the microsite, using an enclosed PIN number.
Finally, three to four weeks later,
Ciena sent e-mails to 7,000 people— those on the original list for which it had addresses—asking them to visit the microsite.
The campaign generated an overall response rate of 7%, a registration rate of 4.25% and produced 721 unique leads. Of those leads, 74 asked to be contacted immediately. More than 75% of all responders opted to keep receiving materials from Ciena.
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