Finding new prospects
It is a perennial problem for marketers to decide in advance what is going
to be the most effective way of building up lists of prospects. Cost is not the
sole criterion by which to judge the results. Did the most expensive
approach yield the bank of prospects which had the highest conversion
rate to customers? Which approach yielded the best quality leads for each
model range? Often the answers to these questions could only be guess-
work.
In keeping with the overriding spirit of Conquest ‘91, Rover set out to
find the best trawling method while actually generating leads. Experience
with Catalyst had shown that the best quality leads were those who
intended to repurchase in the next few months. On the other hand, longer-
term intentions were useful but nothing like as accurate. In this sense the
best quality information had a very short shelf-life and needed to be fol-
lowed up quickly while it still had value. Therefore the decision was taken
to trawl actively for imminent repurchasers. Emphasis through the
prospecting programme was on developing a controlled two-way relation-
ship with suitable prospects. In order to obtain some comparative results,
a three-pronged approach was adopted to generate ready-qualified leads:
1 Direct response advertising In April–May 1991 advertising appeared in what
were considered to be the most appropriate national newspapers.The message
invited readers to join Rover’s pre-purchase information programme, which
offered the prospect of making the car buying decision easier and more con-
venient. Industry sources estimate that the total spend on such a campaign
would be approximately £200 000.The campaign invited those who were inter-
ested to respond by a Freepost coupon or Freefone. In addition, a gift incentive
was sometimes offered in advertisements, stimulating interest by phrases such
as: ‘... and you could qualify for some unique offers’. Rover was anxious,
however, that the incentive should not be the major motivator for a response,
as serious prospective buyers were sought.
This approach yielded a list of interested prospects estimated by industry
experts to be in the order of 20 000. At the same time, because of the response
mechanism, Rover was able to evaluate which advertisements and which news-
papers produced the most cost-effective responses.
2 Direct mail A variety of lists was selected by matching lifestyles and profiles
of targeted prospects. Some 550 000 names were rented and, after deduplica-
tion, some 500 000 direct mail packs were sent, inviting the recipients to take
part in the Rover pre-purchase campaign. These were not just letters, but also
press endorsements of the product and details of the pre-purchase information
programme and an application form with a response telephone number.
Industry estimates suggest that this would have yielded a further 25,000 replies
at a cost of around 60 pence per mailing pack including personalisation and
postage.
The customer market domain: Managing relationships with buyers 105