P3M, an e-marketing services company, recently recorded a nearly 50 percent response rate for a client by using a campaign strategy that blends traditional direct mail with Internet marketing. P3M sends a targeted, three-dimensional package with the customer’s name and a URL on it with the hope of driving that customer to a personalized Web site.
“It’s a bit of a tease,” said Brian Fortune, chief marketing officer at P3M, Los Gatos, CA. “The whole message of that 3-D component is actually to deliver them the unique URL.”
Fortune said P3M generates Web traffic for its clients by using Entice, a direct marketing program developed and implemented by the company. The program is used to customize each phase of the drive, he said, from the personalized direct mail piece to the URL with the person’s name on it. Prospects who respond to the lead are shown a tailored Web presentation promoting a client’s products or services, he said.
During the presentation, P3M, which tracks the prospect’s behavior in real time, sends an e-mail alert to an account manager at the client company, Fortune said. The account manager can go online and further promote the product or service by having an interactive dialogue with the prospect, he said. At the end of the presentation, the customer can schedule an appointment with a sales representative to close the deal.
Remedy Corp., a client of P3M that has used Entice since June, is in the middle of the third phase of an advertising campaign to promote its IT software solutions services to executives. Remedy, Mountain View, CA, aims to reach 600 executives at more than 200 companies. In the first two phases of the four-step campaign, according to Remedy representatives, Remedy sent customized direct mail pieces to 188 people, and 49 percent responded by visiting the personalized Web site.
P3M and Remedy recorded response rates for companies as well. The initial phases of the drive reached 70 companies, and 88 percent responded to the 3-D package, according to representatives from both companies.
Suzan Packee, director of marketing communications at Remedy, reported that the acquisition cost is about $300 per lead.
“When you talk about how much it cost to get a conversation with [an executive],” she said, “I think it’s pretty good.”
While Packee reported that conversion rates for the campaign are incomplete, she said Entice is proving to be effective for Remedy.
“All [Entice] is meant to do is start the dialogue, to get the executive’s attention, get them to respond,” she said. “And it’s up to the company to do the rest.”
Fortune said that of P3M’s 15 active clients, only four are using Entice, which was launched about a year ago. Those four clients, however, have averaged response rates of more than 65 percent, he said.
Conversion rates for P3M clients, Fortune said, have been high as well. He reported that clients have converted into sales 8 percent of the leads provided.
“If you compare that to traditional direct mail, where you mail 1,000 mail shops and get maybe 200 people that ask for information,” he said, “you’re lucky if you convert 2 [percent] of those people that ask to schedule appointments.
“People may look at that 2 percent and say, ‘Great,’ ” he added. “What they should be looking at is the 98 percent refusal rate.”
