70% response? Impossible! (or not?)
This direct marketing campaign happened when B2B eCommerce was the really sexy thing in IT.
Everyone was talking about it, and Ariba were the hot company within this particular technology.
The problem was that Ariba wanted to sell to big companies (Times Top 200, typically), their software was a big ticket item (for large companies it would have been a fairly substantial investment) and Ariba were new to the UK. They also wanted to talk at a high level (Finance Director).
Over a period, we jointly devised the idea of a remote-control car, branded and boxed, and a theme – ‘You can’t have power without control’ – to link the creative to the Ariba product. (’Control your spending, get better value from every pound you spend’).
WildWest sourced the car via a German company who manufactured in Hong Kong. We sent artwork for them to brand the car, which included the Ariba phone no. We thought we would have done a job even if we got the car onto an office shelf.
The key idea though, (the ’sting’, if you like) was that the recipient didn’t get the controller for the car until he returned a card – didn’t have to do anything else, though there were options to sign up for a seminar or request a meeting. The controller was similarly packaged and as soon as the card came back, it was sent off.
All this happened pre-Christmas (November) and there was a fantastic response – something like 60% in three days! There was telephone follow up just in case anyone was embarassed or had guidelines that didn’t allow them to accept (we would then send a donation to charity on their behalf). That allowed us to check whether the message had got across, if they remembered Ariba and what business they were in – all were great numbers.
We sent out about 240 of the cars. Final response was over 70%.
It wasn’t cheap. The whole exercise cost about 45k, but that was about the price of a dps in the FT – which was one of the other options considered.
Best of all was that Ariba got six sales direct from the campaign which paid for itself many times over.