Marketing Communications

428 CHAPTER 13 DIRECT MARKETING

The role of direct and database marketing in achieving higher levels of customer loyalty is

not undisputed. A fair amount of academic research seriously doubts that loyalty schemes,

magazines or other tactical initiatives make much difference. Emotional loyalty is said to be

only a reality when personal interactions take place.^19 Moreover, large-scale and longitudinal

studies have found that the relationship between loyalty and profitability is much weaker than

proponents of CRM and loyalty programmes claim. One study discovered little or no evidence

to support Reichheld’s hypothesis that customers who purchase steadily from a company over

time are cheaper to serve, less price sensitive or effective at bringing in new business by positive

word-of-mouth advertising. Instead of focusing on loyalty alone, a trend among many marketers,

companies will have to measure the relationship between loyalty and profitability in order to

identify the really interesting consumers. To track the performance of its loyalty programme,

one US high-tech corporate service provider set up a costing scheme to measure all costs for

each customer over five years. The results took it by surprise. Half of the customers who had

regularly been buying for at least two years (the company thought these could be called ‘loyal’

customers) barely generated profit, while about half of the most profitable customers were

buying high-margin products in a short time, before completely disappearing.^20

In this world of the Internet and e-mails, the sending of actual letters has been declining. The Belgian Post wanted

to retain the loyalty of its consumers following the mail service organisation’s rebranding exercise. It ran a campaign

aimed at intensifying the emotion of receiving a letter while promoting a tagline: ‘ The Post takes care of it’. The

campaign was based on the idea that it would be great if a famous writer could help you compose a declaration of

love. The Belgian Post hired four celebrities to act as love letter ghost writers for ordinary Belgians. The campaign

immediately received wide media attention, which boosted traffic to the ‘Love Letters’ website. Online you needed

to fill in the name and address of your loved one. Then you saw how the famous writer wrote down the name

of your darling, and you watched the letter being posted and, on Google Maps, winged its way to the address of

that very special person. The next day, the loved one would receive your handwritten letter with a unique URL that

persuaded him or her to watch a video of how the letter came to be. In one month, 22 000 letters were sent. The

‘Love Letters’ website received more than 100 000 unique visitors. This campaign won the Silver John Caples

International Award.^21

business insight

Belgian Post’s ‘Love Letters’ direct mail and online campaign

Direct marketing media and tools

To meet the communications objectives, different direct marketing media and tools can be

used. Two types may be discerned: addressable media and non-addressable media. They are

presented in Figure 13.3.

Although it may seem paradoxical, direct marketing communications can also make use

of mass media or non-addressable media, but the difference with mass communications is

that they are used to generate a direct response among receivers of the message. Direct

response advertising (print, radio, TV, online) makes up an important part of the advertising

activity. Direct response advertising has dominated the online ad business, although in 2012

a shift towards more online branding ads was predicted. A new report from the advertising-

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