Where methods and madness converge

opportunity
How do you direct market to savvy direct marketers? Very carefully!

When WebEx, the leader in online meeting applications, tapped Loomis Group to develop an integrated direct mail campaign targeting direct marketers, we faced a unique opportunity. Marketing to a sophisticated audience using methods they themselves employ is a lot like trying to perform magic for a magician; they know all the tricks of the trade. We would need to not only follow the tenets of effective direct marketing, but also craft a campaign powerful enough to impress our peers, make them stop in their tracks and investigate our offer further — a task that's difficult to achieve with any audience.

idea
To come up with a creative concept, we entertained madness. We cut loose in far-flung brainstorms, abandoning all the constraints that traditionally embody direct marketing practices. We freed our minds to explore all the ways we could impress, astound, and engage our targets. It is a step we believe is imperative to move up above the noise of everyday, unsophisticated direct marketing.

One question was at the heart of it all. What would hard-working direct marketers like us appreciate? The answer? An entertaining diversion, of course. One that poked fun at what they do every day, the daunting task of direct marketing! So we came up with The Game of Leads. The theme played off a reality direct marketers know all too well: direct marketing is much like playing a game — one false move, and you lose.

execution
By the time our madness subsided, we'd uncovered a brilliant idea — and it was time to smooth our shirts and pull out all our smart direct marketing methods to help move our idea into action.

When Loomis Group says integrated direct marketing, we mean integrated. Effective direct mail is all about taking out-of-this-world ideas and grounding them with smart methodology that leads the target through the purchasing process; it's about calculating the relevance of the offer and its intrusiveness.

It's also about understanding the ways in which direct marketing can convey a brand and elicit a response. With Loomis Group's help, the WebEx brand had become synonymous with informative yet fun experiences, with offers that speak directly and clearly while delivering an obvious benefit. A past direct marketing campaign delivered fresh, hot results in a real pizza box, which had achieved an 11:1 ROI and won industry awards.

Our campaign perfectly advanced WebEx's brand image with an entertaining yet relevant marketing experience. By developing a game board and characters that our targets come across every day, we found a way to connect directly with our audience and ensure them that they, too, could win at the game of lead generation — just by using WebEx.

And because even the most creative ideas fall flat without smart methodology, we chose, tested, tweaked, retested and delivered two direct response approaches, both of which combined traditional direct mail tricks (multiple placement of calls to action, offer testing and repetition) with engaging interactive direct marketing (e-mails, banner ads, home page buttons, landing pages that included a live game, and referral links):

• Approach 1, for existing WebEx customers and hot prospects: Highly qualified names warranted spending extra cash on a 3D piece using a game box, board and dice that always gave the answer "WebEx - Web Seminar." The idea? Shoot for higher ROI while strengthening loyalty and sales with quality targets, who couldn't help but take notice of the board game and box in their mail slots.
• Approach 2, for rented names: A 2D, multi-fold, self-mailer game board that would still stand out from the normal postcard or letter, but cost less than the full-blown 3D format. The idea? Rented names would likely deliver lower ROI, so we aimed to make the most of a budget.

influence
Magic happens when methods and madness converge. By combining smart direct mail and interactive strategies with brand-inspired, take-notice creative, we delivered an overall response rate of nearly 2%, with 1,893 leads.

"The Game of Leads" didn't just turn heads. The campaign proved that direct marketing can be both an effective lead generator and a valuable brand touchpoint. WebEx enjoyed the lowest cost per lead and the highest seminar registries in our several years together. In addition, our online marketing far surpassed expectations (returning an average conversion rate of .74%, up from a projected .5%), contributing to the overall success of the campaign.

Just goes to show — there's a big difference between overdone junk mail and direct mail done well.