MediaMap routinely enjoys a 10% response rate with its weekly e-mail to get journalists to sign up for the firm's source-finding service. But a few months ago, the company decided to invest 20 times what an e-mail promotion costs in a postal direct mail push.
The mailing was small, but it performed so well MediaMap is planning another 50,000- to 75,000-piece drop for February.
MediaMap publishes online directories of journalists. Public relations professionals pay the firm between $995 to $2,295 a year to access them.
To get journalists to register and fill out a profile, the company offers them a service, SourceNet, which seeks out sources for particular stories. Looking for CEOs who don't play golf? Register your query at www.mediamap.com/media, and you'll hear from PR folks who represent those executives.
Of the 175,000 reporters listed in MediaMap's directory, 75,000 have not provided their e-mail addresses. That's because they're a skeptical bunch.
“There's a significant portion of the journalist community that won't give out their e-mail address to anything that smells like marketing,” said Erin Mitchell, director of media services at the Watertown, MA, company.
Still, the prodding by e-mail of 6,000 to 9,000 media players each week was paying off with that 10% response rate — even though it sometimes took three or four e-mails spaced out over months. And the promotions were cheap: $250 per broadcast.
If it ain't broke, why fix it?
“There is a portion of them who are not terribly Web-savvy,” Mitchell said she learned, during informal surveys she conducted. “I had lunch with a columnist from The Boston Globe who said, ‘I get so much mail every day, I take it all home at night and read it. With half the e-mail I get, I just hit the Delete key.’”
So MediaMap decided to go with direct mail to 5,000 people. The campaign cost $5,000.
But how to avoid the piece ending in the circular file among those reporters who might not be as conscientious as the Globe writer?
Be racy. Send them something they might want to pin up above their desks to cause a stir.
MediaMap's agency, Bionic Studio in Newton, MA, sold the firm on a two-part postcard mailing, with creative that centered around provocative questions. The idea of questions made intuitive sense, too, because SourceNet is all about posting queries.
The first postcard asked: “Where have all the straight men gone?”
The second was perforated so that its four sides opened up into smaller cards, which each had a question: “Can jet-lag cause shrinkage?” “Can business people ‘leverage their objectives’ by perfecting the suplex?” “Are you the only person in the meeting who's not hammered?” and “Who cares?”
The call to action were two Web sites (mediamap.com/dm1 and /dm2), developed to measure response to each piece. Journalists could register for SourceNet on the sites.
The response rate to the first postcard was 3.7%, and 4.4% to the second.
“I was thrilled,” Mitchell said. “I would have been happy to get 2% overall. And the mailings generated a viral response — people passed them on to friends.”
Better yet, the response rate showed that just because a writer or editor isn't fond of e-mail doesn't mean they won't go online to get help with stories, Mitchell said.
MediaMap sends no direct mail to PR pros. It did conduct e-mail marketing until it built “a large user base.” Now it relies principally on a PR registration tool wherein reps can post a query on MediaMap's site and have it picked up by other reps. When they retrieve the query, they must register. This results in more than 100 registrations a week.
As for journalists, MediaMap has revamped its site and improved its tools for reporters in preparation for the big winter mailing. And the firm is in preliminary discussions with journalism education center the Poynter Institute to rent a list, and with the Society of Professional Journalists for a possible co-mailing. Plans to reach journalism students while they are still in school may be in the offing, too.
