Is print dead? For Automobile Dealer marketing I can address this with the last 12 print/email campaigns we performed with the Automtive ROI Maximizer (ARM) program as well as the results of hundreds of other campaigns utilizing the same behavioral data methodology. Results are based on sale matches; that is, manifest households matched to actual sales recorded in the dealer’s DMS over a 6 week period.
Please note, that behavioral data is the backbone of these direct marketing efforts. These are households who have shown by their actions over the last 30 days that they have been looking at vehicles (presumably, to purchase). For the purpose of this piece, we will call them ‘hand-raisers’.
The emails are targeted directly at these households with hand-raisers using permission-based, opt in addresses. The mail is delivered via postal routes that have the highest concentrations of households with hand-raisers. We call this method, ‘Intelligent Saturation’. This is not quite as targeted, but keeps the postal delivery price down.
The ARM campaigns typically deliver to 30,000 households. This mailing is a large, 22”x26” front and back, color piece. The emails are permission based, opt in and are delivered to 50,000 households at two different times for a total of 100,000 exposures.
With all of that as background, the number of sales matched from manifest to DMS over a 6 week period averages 54% from the mail and 46% from the email.
We need to break these numbers down before we can get into cost efficiencies:
The open rates of the emails are between 5% and 10% on these campaigns (the average email blast to non-opt in is ½%. So, if 5% of the emails are opened, that is 5,000 households who have seen the message. If 10% are opened, 10,000 households have seen the message. If you were using email to market without the behavioral and opt-in methodology, you would be looking at about 500 ‘opens’.
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