Poised for Growth, Pressed for Time
The Case – Poised for Growth, pressed for time
Most owners/CEO’s that take the plunge to go into business for themselves wear a lot of hats. This case was no exception. At 20 months young, they had managed to successfully navigate through the “startup” phase of their business putting together a great recipe for generating low cost sales through Direct Mail. Where they struggled, however, was finding the time to plan and strategize for growth. Their original mail partner provided their lists and produced the mail per the owner’s requirements. All the other elements of their marketing campaigns were left for the owners to put together.
A Full Service Solution = Free to Fly
Generally speaking there are 3 components that dictate the success of a Direct Mail Campaign: Data, Creative, and Salesmanship. Our approach, generally, is to remove most of the burden of the first two so that our clients can focus on Sales. With that in mind, we proposed a plan where we would collaborate on list selection to optimize their current spend, but more importantly, provide data management services and comprehensive reporting that would allow the client to know what’s going on with his marketing without having to dedicate a significant amount of time to it.
Implementation
Despite being a new vertical for Milestone, we were able to create a huge universe of data that would lift their overall results. We started by testing a small amount of our internal modeled data to prove that we knew how to make those selections for them. We immediately began reviewing creatives and searching for lifts in performance. In addition, we collaborated with our modeling partners to build custom models that would not only improve acquisition costs, but provide a predictable, repeatable process that would allow them to grow. After a few months of gaining the confidence of the client, we took over their entire Direct Marketing Program.
The Results
Our overall Cost Per sale number were better from the start, but the real success of this story is in the growth. The month before we came on board, the client had 218 sales on a $57,366 spend. Six months later they had 754 sales on a $188,220 spend.