Why Didn’t My Campaign Work? An Analysis

Recently one of our members reached out to us and asked for our help regarding a lead generation campaign that failed miserably. First of all, I want to say that we love getting these questions from our community and we are very surprised that our members do not reach out more often. We have a service called “Ask the Experts” for just these kinds of questions, and it is absolutely free to PODi members. So click on the link and ask away! We are here to help.

Now back to the question asked by our member about his unhappy campaign.

The campaign resulted in 0 leads and only 12 people even visited their personalized landing page out of a list of 10,000. Not a good ROI at all! So what went wrong?

The campaign was a postcard with a personalized landing page. It featured a good offer – a $20 gift card for coming to the landing page and filling out four simple questions. It had many of the components that should lead to success but still failed.

Upon reviewing the campaign, it became clear that it failed because the creator did not follow the basic rules of direct marketing. The company fell into the age old trap – if I put someone’s name in bold letters on a direct mail piece and drive them to personalized landing page, suddenly the response will go through the roof.

It has never been like that and never will be. All response in direct marketing is driven by this basic rule:

1. List - 30% of the response is driven by who you send your offer to
2. Offer - 30% is driven by the value of the offer to the recipient
3. Timing - 30% is determined by when you send it – is the customer in the buying window?
4. Creative – 10% depends on the creative elements utilized.

If we apply this rule to our campaign, here is how it fared.

List – The campaign was designed to generate leads for a service to retail chain stores. The postcard was sent to corporate locations and to people at the C-level of decision making for that service. Potentially a good list.

Offer – The gift card offer was good, but it was not highlighted or detailed on the direct mail piece. There was no real reason for anybody to go to the landing page. I was surprised that even 12 people visited. Worse still, the value proposition was so generic – save time and money – it could have been used for any industry, any service. In fact, the direct mail piece only mentioned the actual product/service once. Your client wants to know that YOU know their industry and their unique challenges.

In terms of other persuasive elements, the actual landing page had a great testimonial but it was in paragraph form which few people read. An excerpt of the testimonial should have been on the DM piece to build credibility for the company and then followed up with more detail on the landing page.

The landing page also devoted a huge amount of real estate to the company logo and to a picture of the quoted customer. Neither was what prospects wanted to see.

Timing – This was not a factor as this was a lead generation piece and none of the recipients had every expressed any interest in buying this service from the company.

Creative – The visuals centered on photography of the team who delivers the service. They look like very nice people, but their picture tells me nothing about what their company can actually do for me. Do they understand my business? Do they know the industry? Are they experienced? Do they have the connections to get me the best selection and value? What qualifies these nice looking people to work with me? (Strangely, there were no visuals of the actual product/service – nothing to connect the postcard to the issues being addressed.)

The target audience, C-level decision makers, care more about enhancing their company’s prestige and appearance to their customers, than who actually does the work to make it all happen. With a C-level audience, you need to pitch the solution to a problem they face, not show them the tools you will use.

Neither the imagery nor the copy did the product or the company justice in terms of building credibility.

In summary, always follow the rule of direct marketing and avoid using technology as a crutch. To help our members, we have some great tools in our Application Delivery Council. (Be sure to login first to get member access.)

Start with the Lead Generation Campaign Brief to help organize your thoughts and hone your message. Use the Design Templates for Postcards and Landing Pages to ensure that you include all the important content and don’t forget anything vital. And then deliver the best campaigns possible!

(You’ll also find templates and briefs for Nurture/Loyalty campaigns in the AppD Council.)

Again, we love to hear from you. Call us – we are here to help.

Comments

[Eliot]

Dave, thanks for sharing this analysis, there's certainly a lot we can learn from it. While I can't comment on the creative (as I haven't seen the piece), I must say the offer doesn't sound quite right to me. While a $20 gift card might sound like an attractive incentive to many, I really don't think it's right for this audience. If this was a B2C campaign, then it would be a different story, but 20 bucks isn't really going to grab the attention of a C-level audience.

An offer is always necessary. In this case, what was really needed was a compelling call-to-action, which provided strong value proposition and answered the "why": "Why do I need this service?" "What value will it provide to my business?", and more importantly, "will it make me look good?". The best way to reach your audience is to think like them!

[Mitch Aase]

I'm with Eliot on this one. I don't feel the 20 bucks is compelling. This crowd is often looking for self-actualization.

They want something that speaks to their core beliefs (like global domination).

Live and learn, right?

Mitch Aase
Director of Sales & Marketing
Magicomm, LLC
phone: 978.834.3171 ext: 101
e-mail: mitch@magicomm.biz
web: www.magicomm.biz
fax: 610.808.3986

[Rab Govil]

Based on some of my previous experience regarding offers, I have been amazed by how many C-level people will download something for a gift card. However, I agree with the comments above. It seems like they are more interested in relevant information to help build their business or things to help them improve personally. For example, I have found business books to be a great offer.

I have been proven wrong so many times with these things that the only thing that I can hang my hat on is : Test, Test and more Test!

[Mitch Aase]

Rab,

yes!

Test test test, re-calibrate and then test some more.

[Nic]

I think that is it a great example of what a lot of companies make the mistake of. It is easy for get excited about a new technology such as Personalized Url's, to think that by just simply adding it to a DM campaign that it will bring instant success is a big mistake.

A customer that we work with mailed out 4000 postcards with Personalized Url's that was mailed out to the CEO's corporate companies. The offer though was for a $25 Starbucks gift card if they would sign up for a demo of the product. In short the campaign got less then 1% response rate that I would put down to not being a big enough incentive to get past the gate keeps of these large firms.

However, another customer of ours in offering a I-Phone give away was able to get a 31% lead response on a 7000 postcard with a Personalized URL included.