How Not to Generate Leads
Never Hire a General Agency to Do Your Direct. NEVER! On March 8, 2007, I explored Wal-Mart’s new strategy of stocking upscale designer merchandise to compete with Target, J.C. Penney and Kohl’s. The title of the story: “Your Customers:
May 2007 By Denny Hatch
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In the News
Private Cash Offer $500Dear Denison Hatch,
Recently, the level of sophistication and craftsmanship in every type of vehicle has surged upward. The luxury market, perhaps more than any other, leads the charge. So to stay ahead of raised expectations, Lincoln has raised the bar.
The quest to remain a leader begins in the pages of the enclosed portfolio. The new 2007 Lincoln MKX crossover. The new 2007 Lincoln Navigator and Navigator L SUVs. The new Lincoln 2007 MKZ sedan. And the Lincoln Mark LT. Each luxury vehicle adheres to strict principles of precision, technology and comfort. Additionally, each imparts a new energy to the brand that practically invented luxury and is now taking it to the next level.
—Michael Richards, general marketing manager. Letter received on May 18, 2007.
Does customer service experience qualify him to oversee a direct marketing lead-generation campaign for Lincoln cars?
Hardly.
Richards sent me a mailing so humongous—a 10˝ x 15 1⁄2 ˝ four-color outer envelope—that it dominated everything that had come through the mail slot.
Inside the carrier envelope were two elements: a giant 20-page, four-color brochure on heavy paper stock and a 9 1⁄2˝ x 15˝ white card stock piece with a letter on the right side and a $500 certificate on the left.
In this behemoth of a mailing, Michael Richards did not ask me to order a 4x4 Navigator or offer to let me charge $44,985 to my credit card.
That is the only thing he did right.
John Miglautsch and the Question of When
Whatever electronic trail you have left behind over the course of your life will be recorded in some database or other and follow you beyond the grave.
By aggregating all the information on you and your family, database marketers can assemble elegant electronic dossiers —income, demographics, behavior, credit score, product preferences, presence of children, illnesses, criminal records and career moves, to name a few.
As a result, it is possible to predict with profitable accuracy the things you are likely to buy and can afford to pay for.
John Miglautsch of Miglautsch Marketing in Hartland, Wis. is a very savvy database marketer who I have known for a long time.
Many years ago, it was Miglautsch who alerted me to the ultimate one-word imponderable of direct marketing:
When?
For example, Miglautsch described how periodically he would receive mailings from automobile manufacturers—Acura, Toyota, Jeep, GM and others. In his income bracket and ZIP code—combined with the layers of information contained in his electronic dossier found in databases that were rocketing around the country several hundred times a day—he certainly was a candidate for a new vehicle every few years.
But at the time, he had an old Volvo to which he was deeply attached. Although it had mileage in the six figures, Miglautsch spent a ton of money over the years keeping it in pristine condition. It ran beautifully and he had absolutely no intention of getting rid of it.
Takeaway Points to Consider:
* Lead-generation marketing is a unique animal, unlike other direct.* Clearly, Lincoln’s Michael Richards and the agency that executed this effort were in way over their heads.
* Bob Hacker has said that if you spend too much on the first mailing in a lead-gen series, you will lose money.
* In lead-gen efforts, it is essential to focus on the offer, not the product. If you tell the complete product story in the initial piece, you have nothing new to say in follow-up communications.
* The only object of lead generation is to get the prospect to say yes to the next step.
* Never hire a general agency to do your direct marketing.
* Never let a customer service manager oversee your direct marketing.
* In marketing, the three most important words are “Arithmetic,” “Arithmetic” and “Arithmetic.”
* “Every time we get creative, we lose money.”
—Ed McCabe, former CEO of RCA Record Club
Web Sites Related to Today's Edition:
Lincoln.com—The Official Home of Lincoln Vehicleshttp://www.lincoln.com/
Lincoln Dream Story Videos
www.mydream.tv
Companies Mentioned:
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