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4. Appropriate settings of the products in use will assist an
understanding of what a product is for and suggest how it
might be used/worn or placed. Assume customers have
little imagination. It may well be worth asking for sugges-
tions as to uses for appropriate concepts and publishing the
results (all part of building customer relationships).
Accountability: setting and measuring key performance
indicators and key performance indicator mechanisms
As a ‘how to’ book our focus then moves to how to select, measure
and evaluate the performance of the specialist or specialist
company you select to produce your catalogue. When selecting a
specialist to help with establishing your catalogue, you should be
given clear evidence of their success with other catalogues for
other clients. Test that evidence. Speak to customers. You should
set agreed measures of success. You should then monitor that
achievement.
The bottom line is clearly the number of sales orders placed or
credit sales and the interest generated as an income stream.
Setting a target of the number of new customers the marketing
activity is expected to garner is probably the best challenge. This
should be based on the number of potential targets in the area to be
targeted.
However, as implied in the previous paragraph, there is a need
to analyse the placing of products in the catalogue and the pattern
of purchasing that result from changes in layout as well as the
actual sales. Again, this is the province of the specialist.
Catalogues
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101
The process to achieve such customers may take time and
when set against actual cost of the marketing activities, in the short
term may show a loss. The use of agents operating on a commis-
sion-only basis may offset this by removing some or most of the
costs of distribution and administration. Actual orders value
should be measured and set against the cost of the catalogue and
administration.
What costs will be involved in producing a catalogue?
The eventual achievement is of regular and valuable customers.
Measure actual increase and percentage increase in numbers of
customers. Record over time whether new customers achieve
regular and valuable customer status. Measure cost of marketing
activity versus target. Measure the effect on profit. Catalogues are
expensive to produce. The quality of the catalogue and its layout
will to an extent set the buying feeling of the buyer as favourable
or not. It is impossible here to give a pragmatic quote.
Code of practice
The DMA Code of Practice is very helpful. It is available free –
download it from www.dma.org.uk.
The Code covers the offers and good practice relating to offers,
information that should accompany an offer, fulfilment, quality of
goods, gifts, premiums and awards, prepayments, post and pack-
aging charges and redress by customers.
Special rules relate to minors, credit offers, free offers and
collectibles.
Customer
service
is
also
covered,
including
complaints, rights of customers to withdraw, substitution of prod-
ucts and refunds. The Code includes references to the law as it
applies to catalogues (and direct marketing).
Associated topics
Lists/databases, mail merge – see Chapter 4.
8
Piggy back mailing
WHAT IS PIGGY BACK MAILING?
It is just what it says: an item of literature included ‘piggy back’
with some other firm’s mailing. For example, with a local
authority letter or a gas, water, electricity or telephone bill or a
credit card company (holidays, etc!). A good firm to pick is one
that is regularly sending out mail to customers – catalogue or mail
order firms are usually receptive. There is a belief that firms in the
South are less helpful than ones in the Midlands and the North.
The mailing would include or be itself a voucher or reply card to
place an order or request for a brochure. The term piggy back is not
always used. The terms ‘third party mailings’ or ‘product
dispatch’ are also used. Take care in selecting your piggy back
service provider. For a one-off purchase of say an electric power
shower unit (sent out with an electricity bill!), where repeat
purchases are unlikely, placing an order is sufficient – and to save
time this can be done directly with an installer.
For a service or where repeat purchases are required – selling
water filters for example by sending out a piggy back with a water
bill – then it is worth pursuing those that respond initially but
subsequently decline, so a brochure offer to obtain names and
addresses rather than seeking sales orders may be preferable. You
can add ‘advantage’ by providing an incentive such as a cost
reduction to the unit, or free installation or with a cost reduction
installation.
Piggy Back Mailing
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Servicing offers are another example – annual servicing and
maintenance of your gas boiler – the offer sent out piggy back with
a gas bill, but you need a name and address and an indication of
the make of the boiler. Those that do take up the offer can then be
sent reminders just before the anniversary each year. Piggy back
can deliver a message to a particular utility user – specifically
targeting a customer – in this way.
The advantages of piggy back mailing
It is probably a cheaper alternative than a direct mailing – you
share the cost of postage and use someone else’s list. A piggy back
can add value to the mailshot it accompanies and is thus mutually
beneficial. This is probably why utilities are much more discerning
now in deciding with whom they will ‘piggy back’, seeking clear
beneficial value from an association with you – you will need to
sell them the benefits. Piggy back is often successful because of the
greater precision of targeting and the carrier’s brand provides a
status and quality provenance not available to a firm – particularly
one just starting.
Piggy back is more precisely targeted than door-to-door or
direct mailing to a list. A gas maintenance and service provider
clearly would waste a mailing to a non-gas user; a piggy back offer
to a BT user is better than a general mail out, but when a BT-asso-
ciated offer is sent out on a general mailing, it is not much help to a
customer solely using an NTL cable line (as happens now!).
Piggy back as a part of integrated marketing
A campaign for an electric shower, say, may consist of local news-
paper advertisements through local firms of appliance suppliers
and fitters and two consecutive quarters piggy backs with an elec-
tricity supplier in the same area, followed by telemarketing follow
up for those that made telephone rather than response card replies.
Remember how customers buy and try to match the campaign to
that buying process.
When piggy back has a strategic role
Piggy back can be a useful determinant of initial response to a new
product or service. When you are a start-up firm without
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Direct Marketing
customers, then find someone who already has an extensive list in
your local area and you will soon pick up business using piggy [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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