An interesting phenomenon in direct marketing is a concept known as response saturation. The reason I bring this up is several of my clients are experiencing saturation in their direct marketing efforts and it’s not for the offer but by medium.
They have done extremely well in direct mail and have steadily ramped up their purchase but during October/November, the saturation hit a peak and response started to drop. Simultaneously, the radio advertising they were doing was just ramping up and is now producing much better.
This combination was interesting to analyze and considering holiday mail and the general mood of the economy, there is no wonder my client is doing well with radio… which brings me to another point, certain mediums have a great saturation when the offer is applicable to a large part of the population (like mortgage, mattress, and auto)… The more mainstream the offer, the better TV and radio become and the less effective direct mail, telemarketing, sms and email become.
Direct mail works well for things like walk in bath tubs and debt settlement (when the market is not saturated with debtors). Reason being is that these are small segments of the population that are buying medium ticket items infrequently. The only reason cars do well on TV and radio is their price and the fact that everyone needs them (see mattresses)…
It’s interesting to see a product go from niche to main stream during a recession or major shift in consumer spending… this can lead to new better methods of marketing and that is why we always recommend keeping multiple channels open in case the levers of consumption change and the marketing mix must also change.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: direct mail, direct marketing, response saturation
The bigger issue you address is seasonality. Some offers all hit the mailbox at the same time. Some offers have all their competition mail at the same time. For instance diet offers clutter the mail and the airwaves in January.
That said, in general, due to the economy, I’m seeing less mail in the mail stream, meaning less mail in the mail box (save for holiday season). However response rates are down for generalized mailings. Try doing highly personalized data driven mailings with personalized URL’s and custom landing pages and you should see a lift in response.
TV is another great medium, but there some strict rules to follow. Awhile back for Catalog Success Magazine I wrote a series on DRTV as an adjunct to catalog. You can read it here: http://www.catalogsuccess.com/blog/can-drtv-work-you-98163.html (links to the rest of the series can be found on the site too)
Regards,
Jim Gilbert
http://gilbertdirectmarketing.wordpress.com/
Thanks a lot – Definately good to see my blog is actually read by experts. Check back when you can, I will be reading yours now too, hopefully we can educate businesses together and contribute to their success.
Cheers!