What can you do with a Saturation list?

Recently our team here at Tri Auto has been partnering with more and more ad agencies.  We offer a behind the scenes service providing all sorts of direct marketing - to make their lives easier and to share our expertise in automotive direct mail.  For many, saturation direct mail is something they don't have a lot of experience with and it helps to have a team behind them that has specialized in it for years.

That being said, I have had the same question twice in the past few days - "Don't you have to hit an entire zip code to use a saturation list?"

The short answer is-no.  In fact you can even target your mail within a zip code using actual demographic info.  So what's the deal?

• Each zip code is broken down into carrier routes.  It's just how it sounds, carriers = your mailman.  So imagine your mailman delivers to your neighborhood, the one down the road and two across the way.  That group of neighborhoods becomes a "carrier route."  It could be 50 homes or over 500, just depends on the market.
• To get the "saturation" discount you only have to hit whole carrier routes.  Some companies are set up better than others to handle this type of list selection.
• So what carrier routes do you choose?  This is where the demographics come in to play.  For each route we can show you the average home value, income and age for the area.  After a quick consultation with you on the market in question we can select the areas for you or you are welcome to do it yourself.

It's as easy as that.  So let's say there are 8,000 people in a zip code but you only want to do 5,000 mailers - no problem!  It is also easy to split those 5,000 mailers over three different zip codes as you like.

The main point of this post is to just let everyone know that saturation lists are becoming more and more effective and easy to use.  Katy Peat is the zip code diva on our team - she not only consults on what areas to mail to but can also share tips on avoiding certain pitfalls and using Marketvision data to help increase response on your future sales using the zip info from past ones.  If you have more questions feel free to email Katy today.

Mailing to Credit Score Lists

The credit score list had become a relic around here until about a month ago. As lenders begin to (slightly) loosen up so does the subprime market. However, credit score lists don't have to be the only way to target these people, here are a few other ideas.

Credit Score Lists

Expense: $$$

Pros: targeting specific scores, weeding out too low scores, ability to make a firm offer of credit on the mailer

Cons: expense, reliability of data (lists are always 2-4 wks old by the time mail hits the home), disclaimer hell-legal fine print required with this list can sometimes take up half the mailer

Income Lists

Expense: $$

Pros: ability to target income ranges for credit purposes, more mail for your dollar, fewer legal hoops with disclaimers and piece restrictions

Cons: data is self reported so is not always highly reliable

Saturation List with Average Income

Expense: $

Pros: very inexpensive/a lot more mail for your money, the typical mail responder is in the credit bracket most dealers would target, you could get in the occasional prime customer as well,

can still address most customers by name (instead of "current resident"), no legal restrictions or disclaimers regarding the list needed

Cons: income information is an average by neighborhood (could be large variances)

In most cases I recommend sticking with the targeted saturation lists. The difference in price can be staggering and the traffic that comes in can be "filtered" by the content of the mailer. That being said, list selection is very unique to each campaign, dealership & market. Please discuss what's best for your specific mailer with your mail specialists (...and yes, the Diva is accepting new clients).

Happy Friday!

Customer Follow Up on Automotive Advertising

We live in an exciting time when it comes to marketing & advertising! There are so many medias and opportunities with which to get out your message, and the end product continues to become more and more creative. I'm the "Diva" when it comes to direct mail, but of course I am a fan of other ways to "touch" people as well. You can't put all your eggs in one basket & the person that responds to a TV ad is not typically the person that also responds to a Direct Mail piece. All that being said today we're not going to talk about your initial piece of marketing, we're going to talk about how you follow up with the people that respond.

Let's pretend you've sent out a mailer (we'll use this media since I know something about it). And here were the results:

312 phone calls 256 registered ups through the door 28 online surveys filled out (w/ contact info, info on trade-in and when they'll be in the market)

This assumes you are giving your market a variety of ways to respond and that you're tracking all the response.

The sale is over and you sold 30 units off the campaign, but what about the other 566 people that responded to your message and didn't buy this weekend? What are you doing with them?

We're finding you should continue to follow up with them using the media they responded to you in.

You got 312 phone calls. By using your call tracking phone numbers you can print off easy reports with the person's name & number. When the sales people have some downtime what not pass out a few pages of calls to all of them and have them do a quick "survey" about their experience when they called in to the dealership. What if you kept a running log from each sale and prior to the next event, your sales department gave them each a call to personally invite them to your special sale? It's extremely personal and you have the knowledge no other dealer in town does--this person prefers to use the phone as a method of contact with your dealership.

Aside from the phone calls you also had a lot of people hitting the floor. True some of them were there for the gifts & others may have just stopped in for a free hot dog, but they probably didn't walk to your dealership. These people are your face to face crowd. They don't mind coming straight into the dealership to check out an offer. Obviously they will probably continue to respond to direct mail, but here something we just found out--they are also likely to be PHONE people. Our kiosks ask for a bit of contact info, email, phone number & a confirmation on the name and address. People walking into dealerships are very likely to add their phone number to their contact info, but very shy about adding an email address. Phone number collection is almost 10 to 1 over email collection from this group. It wouldn't hurt to add the people walking in your door to your "call list" either, that's how they want you to contact them!

Some dealers have a feature on their website that requires visitors to give some info before viewing inventory. We also have begun using personal websites. The person would have a website on their mailer that includes their name. Something like: www.JimSample25.MyNextVehicle.com/test2 so each person's would be unique to them, with their name. They can then fill out basic info for additional offers from the dealership. I'm sure you know where this is going--this group prefers to be communicated to via the Internet. We're finding very few of them are willing to give info on their phone number(s) but are happy to provide you with their emails. The Direct Mail Association just released a surprising statistic--60% of people receiving direct mail prefer to respond online! This is also a different niche of people that are very unlikely to show up to the dealership from your initial message. If you aren't giving them an online option you are likely to miss out on this group altogether.

Now that you have followed up with every lead you received from your last sale, you're probably considering your next campaign. Overall, you now have a list of 596 people in YOUR market, that YOU KNOW respond to direct mail. They may all respond in different ways, but they opened your message, read it and acted. This could be the most valuable list on the planet, and you would be the only one to have it. Start entering every up into your database or keep this info separate in an Excel format. Then be sure to mail to these people exclusively several times a year for "private events." Just consider the possibilities of response on a list like that!

Since it's December it might be a good time to think about how many lead are truly WASTED every year in your dealerships. Perhaps as we enter a new year now is the time to think about a new process that makes sure all the leads you pay for are being worked completely.