AARP is going after the Hispanic senior market with a mid-seven-figure initiative.
This year, 4 million of AARP's 130 million direct mail solicitations will be sent to Hispanic seniors, using a bilingual control package that beat the organization's national control by 20%. Previously, the group mailed much lower numbers to this segment.
AARP has plenty of room to expand in this market. When the company did an initial database audit, it found that only 16% of U.S. Hispanics over age 50 were members.
Another program aimed at signing up older African Americans is being expanded from 1.8 million pieces last year to 2.5 million pieces in 2003. This effort will focus more on prospect targeting and less on a total overhaul of the creative.
The new Hispanic control package followed several failed creative tests, including a “glitzy and hip” mailer.
“We're a nonprofit organization,” said Nancy Franklin, director of membership development at AARP, speaking recently at the National Center for Database Marketing conference. “The public doesn't respond to efforts like that from us.”
Spanish-only solicitations also pulled a poor response because Hispanic seniors will occasionally rely on children and grandchildren, who have a better command of English, to read mail and conduct transactions.
The need for clear information was especially germane to this effort. Some Hispanic segments had to be introduced to the organization, and required more information within the letter than the national control.
The community's priorities are also different, and Hispanic-oriented communications tend to focus on financial security and health and insurance services.
However, the cost per thousand pieces for this campaign is roughly three times AARP's usual expenditure. That's due to higher-than-usual list rental fees, database analysis costs and fewer opportunities for economies of scale because of the smaller quantities of mailing pieces. Franklin also attributed the increase to one-time program setup costs.
When AARP sent out bilingual prospecting communications in the past, back-end operations such as Web sites and billing and call centers did not have Spanish-language capabilities. This alienated respondents, said Franklin.
