Project Overview
This Louisiana client came to us wanting to expand to a new market. This was a new location 60 miles away from the original location. Because of the distance there was zero brand awareness and zero market share. In order to reduce costs while breaking into this new market, we used a personality targeted direct mail approach. We analyzed their existing customers list from the original market to see which personalities were naturally attracted to their brand and messaging. We then found prospective customers with those personalities in the new market and mailed them art targeted toward their personality.
Challenges/Issues
- Zero market share and zero brand awareness
- Direct mail costs
- New Customer costs
Solutions
- Targeted Direct Mail: Every company has a certain share of each market. No one company is going to get every customer in their market. This is why we often see multiple fast food chains located on the same street. People like options and are attracted to different branding and products/services. When breaking into a new market, it is important to first determine if you have good potential customers in that market, and then to directly target those customers first. A good potential customer is someone who has a need for your product and is naturally attracted to your branding. Each personality has a different closing rate. Reaching the customers who are naturally attracted to your branding and are easier to close will make breaking into the market easier for sales people and help fund your expansion efforts. For this client, we analyzed their original location customer list to determine which personalities were most attracted to their branding. We then searched the new market for those personalities. It was determined that the new market had a healthy amount of good prospects that would be easy to close. We started out by mailing 12 personalities. The chart below shows that out of the 12 personalities marketed, 6 personalities performed the highest. This informed the next steps of the marketing plan, and helped us narrow down our marketing list even further to not only quickly enter the market, but also get the most ROI.
- Direct Mail Costs: Breaking into a new market with zero brand awareness and market share can be a daunting task, and normally requires a huge marketing budget. However, with targeted direct mail, we were able to quickly identify the best prospects who would easily allow us to enter the market therefore reducing direct mail costs. Reaching these prospects first made it possible to easily fund further marketing efforts.
- New Customer: Breaking into a market with zero market share and brand awareness requires more marketing dollars to build name awareness and trust, which will naturally lead to a higher customer cost. Our original projections were that the new customer cost would be 15%. However, with our targeted direct mail efforts, we were able to land a new customer cost of 8.5%. With the data received from this initial test, our next steps would be to focus on the 6 highest performing personalities which should bring our new customer cost down to 6%. This is an exciting achievement as normal customers costs are traditionally two to three times higher under normal market share and brand awareness conditions. Being that this was a new market for our Louisiana client, a new customer cost under 6% is amazing. Managing direct mail is a living process. You learn from your results and then make corrections in message and targeting which will result in lower new customer costs.
