The second in a series of three articles on contact campaigns by Stu Heinecke.
I just told you how contact campaigns can cure the low response rates many direct marketers
are experiencing. In this installment, we'll examine the critical elements necessary to launch a successful
contact campaign.
Understand the mission You won't be using contact campaigns to reach
a mass audience -- you can't afford to waste this sort of firepower on low-priority prospects. But if
you pay attention to the basics, your contact campaign will give your sales or telemarketing staff the
ability to get in touch with virtually anyone.
Get your list right Contact campaign pieces are generally very
expensive -- you can easily spend tens to hundreds of dollars per unit. So be very selective about who
gets on the list and what their potential is. And don't forget to include present customers who could be
doing more business with you.
Get noticed Your creative must do two things: get you noticed and
demonstrate the quality of your thinking. So your concepts must be bold, captivating, well thought-out
and unexpected, while tieing neatly into your sales message. When I use a personalized cartoon as a
contact piece, for example, I make sure the gag leads to a point of agreement about a need the recipient
faces, so I already have a strong lead-in to my letter and a compelling reason to ask for an appointment
or referral. Contact pieces often warrant exotic production and delivery methods as compared to direct
mail pieces, including elements of hand-work and overnight delivery. Steer clear of outright gifts and
boxed items. Some companies and most government agencies have strict policies against accepting gifts,
and unsolicited boxed items may not make it through some of today's security-conscious mailrooms.
Follow up Since you or your sales or telemarketing reps are the
response mechanism for your contact campaign, it requires your diligent effort to ensure each recipient
is contacted once their campaign piece arrives. Your reps should be trained and prepared with scripts so
they don't waste the recipient's time -- or the sales opportunity once contact has occurred.
Build in flexibility When you're dealing with an important CEO, it is
likely you'll do your bidding through an assistant. Make that assistant your ally by including them in
the campaign. The only way to do that is to build in flexibility, so you can produce additional contact
pieces on demand. If your campaign is alluring, you'll be fielding requests for extras from other
important executives in the target company, which means you're achieving critical visibility. Make sure
you are ready to respond quickly and capitalize.
Define success Your contact campaign is a lot like an introduction from
an insider -- once you get in, you'd better be prepared to sell on the merits of what you have to offer.
Face-to-face meetings and top-down referrals are the gold standard for contact campaign response. And if
you do this right, you can expect those response rates to regularly approach or exceed 80%.
Find out how
one marketer used a lost wallet and 500 guitar cases to lure thousands of visitors to Memphis, and how
another achieved a 100% response to an appointment-generation campaign in
Contact Campaign Gallery, the final installment of this series. If you have a contact success story
you'd like to share with the readers, please contact the author immediately below.
