When you’re selling a corporate product that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, you need to reach executive buyers (Directors and VPs).

The bad news? There’s no shortage of gatekeepers and roadblocks between you and your quarry, and you’ve got to put your sales rep in the office of a qualified executive, and do it quickly.

So what’s the quickest route to success?

The Birth of a Lumpy Mailer

Regular readers know I’m a fan of lumpy mailers — three dimensional objects (often with a humorous slant) shipped to small, carefully targeted lists. Because they’re clearly not “junk mail” — and they carry an aura of value — lumpy mailers blow right through barriers and onto desks.

In this case, my client was launching eMerchandising software designed to boost the per-cart revenues of large online stores. While we were in the midst of rolling out a largely online “mass media” campaign (nothing’s really “mass media” any more), I discovered our prime mailing list held only 80 names.

The Process

A short list of targets always ignites a “lumpy mailer” fire in my brain, so I started brainstorming ideas. Several scribbled pages later, I’d penciled in three good concepts, and moved onto the research stage — which effectively killed two of my concepts.

The remaining idea involved miniature steel shopping carts, and I was astounded to find them available for less than $7 each (far lower than I expected). A lumpy mailer was born.

I was lucky. I’ve worked with this client for many year (across several companies), and she’s well aware of the door-opening power of a lumpy mailer. You’re sometimes forced to educate clients who resist interesting solutions simply because they’ve never seen them before. In this case, that wasn’t a problem.

The Campaign

Our basic campaign concept played out in an earlier print ad which featured a split headline.

Pointing at the stacked shopping cart was “This is a BroadVision eMerchandising Shopping Cart.” Pointing at the near-empty cart was: “This Isn’t.”

The first run of the print ad offered a white paper, and the ad generated far more leads than expected. Time to breathe a sigh of relief.

After all the other elements hit the market (e-newsletter sponsorship, print, banner ads, PR, etc), we shipped our foot-long shopping carts to targets in large white boxes.

The ready-to-ship cart shorn of some of the accompanying elements.

Each cart carried several supporting pieces — including a foamcore-mounted piece promising the reader they’d never see another empty shopping cart. Also included was a handwritten note from a sales rep promising to get in touch.

That’s a key statement — lumpy mailers can be tailored to generate response, but when you send them to high-value targets, the mailer often paves the way for a near-term contact.

The thinking is simple; cold calling a VP’s office earns you a one-way trip to voice mail. But calling an office that just received a fun, three-dimensional goodie (neatly aligned with your product benefits) lands your sales rep a spot on the VP’s appointment calendar.

Helpful Hint: It’s critical that any followup calls immediately reference the lumpy mailer. Consider featuring a catch phrase in the mailer and to advise sales reps to use that phrase at the start of their call.

Results?

Early reports from sales reps were highly favorable, but because my contact is on maternity leave, I don’t have any numbers (and it’s likely too soon, given the long sales cycle). The sales reps were happy (a rare thing indeed), so the client’s happy, and for the freelancer that’s what counts.

The moral? Much of the marketing world’s attention is focused online, yet the there’s no reason to ignore traditional techniques like lumpy mailers. They work.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

[tags]marketing, direct mail, direct response, direct marketing, lumpy mailer, direct mailer[/tags]