J. Ricky Arriola, president of direct marketing firm InktelDirect, spoke to DIRECT from his office in Miami Lakes, FL, about the growth of the Hispanic market and reaching this audience online.
DIRECT: Why market to Hispanic people online?
ARRIOLA: Two reasons. First, the Hispanic population is growing at a huge rate. It's now 12.5% of the [U.S.] population and represents $500 billion in consumer purchasing power. Second, although they were late adopters to the Internet, they've made up for lost time. Now, 11% of online users are Hispanic.
DIRECT: What does that mean for marketers?
ARRIOLA: There is a very large segment of eyeballs on the Internet who are Hispanic. They are coming online at three times the rate of the non-Hispanic population, according to Score Networks.
DIRECT: So are marketers leaping to leverage this under-served market?
ARRIOLA: They've been slow to grasp the opportunity. The overall ad budget for Fortune 500 companies targeted for the Hispanic segment is 2%. If you measure that against the Hispanic population, there's a lot of room to grow.
DIRECT: Are there e-mail lists for this group available?
ARRIOLA: There are not a lot. We can get the prospect lists we're after for our clients, but most of the lists available are compiled.
DIRECT: What's the source of the names available?
ARRIOLA: The lists we've worked with have been derived from ZIP codes and geographic areas. It tends to be very broad, like here's a list of Spanish-speaking people in California who own homes.
DIRECT: Companies aren't putting their names up for rental?
ARRIOLA: The companies that have been able to develop response lists still haven't milked the list for themselves and they want to do that before they try to monetize it. There's definitely an opportunity for someone to develop a database of the U.S. Hispanic population.
DIRECT: Which marketers understand how to reach this market?
ARRIOLA: The automobile companies do. They have a lot of Spanish-language Web sites and collateral material for those who choose to get their information in Spanish. The Big Three automakers put a fair amount of effort into putting marketing messages into Spanish that take into account cultural sensitivity. And they try to develop campaigns and messages that take into account decision-making and buying behavior unique to this market.
DIRECT: But automakers are unusual?
ARRIOLA: Yes. There's still a lag. If you're a bank, you have to offer online banking in Spanish. Any company that's not doing this is not serving its customer well. If you are a company that can serve customers in the language they want, you're going to have the customers' loyalty.
DIRECT: Is it enough to present marketing materials in Spanish?
ARRIOLA: That's just the first level — the realization that a company has a big customer base that speaks Spanish and has to adopt its marketing program to them. The second level is looking at the cultural differences between English speakers and Spanish speakers and being sensitive to the fact that there are dozens of Spanish speakers from dozens of different countries, unique cultures and dialects coming together in the U.S. melting pot. The marketing has to be developed in such a way that it can reach a majority of the audience.
DIRECT: Can you give me an example?
ARRIOLA: A financial services client of ours went through that first level and developed in-language using mail, telemarketing and e-mail programs to sell its credit cards and mortgage refinancing. In the second level, the company had to be sensitive and react to certain factors unique to the audience. For example, many recent immigrants don't know what credit is. The company used a series of e-mail messages to explain. The first was an educational piece explaining credit. The second e-mail invited them to take a look at the site. And the third was a solicitation. E-mail is a great vehicle for this education process.
DIRECT: What were the results?
ARRIOLA: The company engaged in a lot of trial and error, but over time, the conversion rates were three to five times greater than the general non-Hispanic marketing campaign. Because the Hispanic market isn't being communicated with by companies in-language, the ones that are doing it are enjoying a lot of success.
DIRECT: It rises above spam?
ARRIOLA: Yes, those e-mails get opened.
