Notes from NAMP #2

Direct mail in the New Frontier: Here to Stay or Only a Click Away
Speakers: Catherine Carter, Broward Center for the Performing Arts, Ft. Lauderdale, FL; Shelly Felder and Howard Levine, 92nd Street Y, New York City; Rick Lester, Target Resource Group, Woodland Park, CO; Laura Sullivan, Penn State’s Center for the Performing Arts, University Park, PA

In 2006, direct marketers mailed 116 billion pieces of direct mail. Quantity increased by 15% over the previous year, primarily because there is no spam filter to get through or “Do Not Call” list to deal with. Plus many people seem to prefer a tangible, paper offer. Direct mail expenditures in 2006 were $59 billion.

• National response rate for all offers was 2.15%
• On a national average, one year lapsed subscribers had a response rate of 3.3%, traded names 0.14%, rented names 0.05%, and current single ticket buyers 2.6%. It was suggested that it is too expensive to mail to rented names.
• New rule is in place: always step on your offer. Usually you will mail first, then you should follow up with an e-mail solicitation. Houston Ballet sent out a postcard and had a 3% response rate. Then they sent out a postcard and followed up with an e-mail and got a 4.5% response rate.
• Even though people are not responding by mailing in an order form, Target Resource Group has found that people refer to the order panel before they go online. When they removed the order panel, they got a lower response rate.
• A/B test everything. What offers work best, which list segments work, sequence of mailing
• Increase the frequency of your message in front of the target groups which regularly over produce on mailings.
• Nationally 96% of all subscribers come from contacts already in an organization’s database and only 3.5% come from trades, while 0.4% come from rented names. It should be noted that of the 96% of all subscribers within an organization’s database, on average 6% of all subscribers are on the organization’s “do not contact” list.
• We should build a predictive model of people who are likely to respond and then target lists with this predictive model.
• The 92nd Street Y covers events around the country on their website and then they tie it back into their programming. Often other blogs pick up their articles and link back to their website or blog.
• YouTube has now launched a non-profit channel. The 92nd Street Y video was featured as the non-profit video of the week, and had over 100,000 views. YouTube now gives non-profits their own landing page which can be tailored with your graphic identity.
• They also started making restaurant reservations on behalf of their ticket buyers through http://www.opentable.com/.

Notes from NAMP #1

Well I got back from the NAMP conference almost two weeks ago, and I was planning on blogging about all the exciting things I learned. Then I realized I had to move into the house that I closed on three days before the conference. I don't know what I was thinking when I decided to switch jobs and buy a new house all at the same time!

Things are starting to get back to normal so I wanted to share some of the notes I took at the 2007 National Arts Marketing Project Conference in Miami. Below are my notes from the Keynote Speech from J. Walker Smith:

Keynote Address: J. Walker Smith
President, Yankelovich, Inc.
Chapel Hill, NC

• Check out http://www.gethuman.com/
• Marketing is now shifting to the intangibles—you can’t market the product, you have to market the experience. Loews theatres has a program for moms and children to see a movie in a movie theatre. They lower the volume and keep the lights on because its not about the movie, it is about the mother/child experience.
• ¾ of Americans say that they are time starved and the average consumer says their time is worth $1.25 per minute. If you keep them on hold, they will get upset and expect to be compensated. If you keep them on hold, then give them something worth a $1.25 per minute. Try to make all interactions “zero time interactions” with instant gratification. Telemarketing calls better be worth their time otherwise just the act of hanging up the phone on the caller will be deemed as 60 cents worth of wasted time.
• We live in a world where everyone is different. Being different is “cool” because there is no longer anything to conform to. By 2030, 40% of our population will either be Asian, African-American or Hispanic. White people are going away because their birth rates are lower than their death rates. Everyone will be different.
• The control has now shifted to the consumer. If you try to force them into something they don’t like, they will just fix it and then post the solution on the internet. A great example is 20 year old George Hott who figured out how to modify the iPhone to work on platforms other than AT&T, all because his family had a T-mobile family plan and didn’t want to spend more money. He then posted his solution on several websites.
• In 1960, ¾ of people by age 30 had left home, finished school, married, had children and were financially independent. By 2000, only 30% of the population had done these things by age 30. Difference is the only common value today. People want to be treated like individuals and differently. People want intangibles (the experience) to be tailored to them in the marketing and execution. People now expect to be treated as differently as they are.
  Put your consumers in the loop—in 2006, 56% of consumers spent more than 2 hours researching purchases over $100. They want to know all the behind the scenes information.
• One of the reasons that traditional print newspapers are declining is that you can’t get a customized newspaper tailored only to you. But with RSS feeds, you can set up interests and only get information you want and it is sent to you. Put your consumers in total control (chad’s note—is this why subscriptions are failing?). The car manufacturer Scion now manufactures cars that are built to individual and unique specs that consumers send to them via the internet. They will build you a car like none other. Their tagline—“we relinquish all power to you.”
• Meyer Gas sends their consumers a text message to their phones alerting them when gas prices are going to go up so that they can drive down to the station and purchase before the prices increase.