Hershey's
This year, Mother's Day is receiving a little more attention from candy-by-mail marketer Hershey's Gifts. While the company has long capitalized on traditional chocolate-giving holidays like Valentines Day, Easter and Christmas,
Hershey's has typically not given Mother's Day the full front-page treatment. This year, a 2-pound chocolate Happy Mother's Day greeting card takes up the entire front cover. In addition to holidays, Hershey's Gifts makes edible greeting cards for birthdays, graduations, and other occasions that deserve congratulations or thanks. Customers request their own short message on the famous bars, which are poured into large slabs and embossed with special motifs like tulips for spring or stars for a job well done. This includes corporate gifts, which the company encourages with volume discounts for orders totaling in the thousands of dollars. For the smaller customer, Hershey's has traditionally encouraged higher average orders with premiums such as a Hershey's Bean Bunny, five gold almond bars or a giant Kiss, usually awarded with minimum orders of around $50 or $60. Surprisingly, this new Mother's Day catalog is the first in a long while to offer no purchase incentives. Always an equal-opportunity marketer, Hershey's also uses the Mother's Day catalog to prepare for Father's Day by devoting a quarter-page of the inside back cover to Dad's day in June.
Safe Money Report
Promotions for investment advisory newsletters typically describe the economy's future in either wildly optimistic or pessimistic terms. The former express hope that the next stock market boom is right around the corner, while
the latter often prognosticate eminent economic disaster by fingering negative events in the economy as a sign of more to come. On the pessimistic side comes a promotion from Safe Money Report, which is the first tracked that points towards the recent bankruptcy of Enron as cause for concern. Reading "1,384 Enrons are Now Racing Towards Bankruptcy!," the 24-page magalog's headline hits upon a very real fear among skittish investors, that the Enron debacle is only the first of many debt-related corporate fallouts. Naturally, after connecting with investor's fears, Safe Money Report positions itself as a key to not only avoiding danger but also parlaying such a downturn into massive profits. Copy points to triple digit percentage gains reached during the technology crash of the last few years (the theme of Safe Money Report mailings prior to Enron) as evidence of the insight gained with a subscription to the newsletter. The cash offer is carried over from past mailings, set at $99 or $189 for 12 or 24 issues. The incentives offered also remain, with one or four reports given with 12 or 24 issues, plus two bonus reports for orders made within 10 days. The subjects of the reports have been updated to reflect the current theme with titles such as "Grow Up to 1000% Richer in the Great Money Panic of 2002-2003" and "The Weiss Bank Blacklist."
Doctors Without Borders
The international relief organization Doctors Without Borders has been experimenting with several new freemiums in recent months. A #10 package with personalized address labels featuring the Doctors Without Borders
graphic logo has been the organization's standard bearer for several years. However, new mailings tracked appear to be looking for an alternative to the label package, offering instead new branded freebies like an enclosed bookmark or a refrigerator magnet. The outer envelope teaser has been changed on each of these new efforts to promote the new incentives. All other aspects of these promotions remain unchanged, including the two-page letter, brochure, the Nobel Institute's press release of the Peace Prize conferment, reprint of a New York Times article on Doctors Without Borders' high rating by the American Institute of Philanthropy, and a donation ask ladder of $35/$75/$100/$200/$500/other.
The direct mail pieces appearing in Mail Stream are tracked and analyzed by Paradysz Matera, New York, through its online competitive direct mail and e-mail tracking tool MarketRelevance located at http://www.MarketRelevance.com/newsletter.cfm.
