$55,000 Mailing Boosts Firm’s ROI

A $55,000 mailing centering on a red car just went into the black. Reynolds and Reynolds, an information services company serving the automotive market, recouped its investment after closing the fourth sale generated by a November-December campaign.

The Dayton, OH firm still has 84 hot leads from the 100 responses the 5,466-piece mailing produced, said account manager Kimberly Bird. The mailing went out in two mid-month drops, to allow Reynolds’ call center to ramp up and handle the responses efficiently.

At first blush, $10 per piece might seem excessive. Even though the campaign encompassed three separate mailings to each prospect, the first and last efforts were postcards.

The bulk of the budget was eaten up by a dimensional package which included a box containing a letter, a reply card and prepaid envelope, a magnifying glass and a flat paper car. Through the magic of strategically placed rubber bands, the car pops up into a three-dimensional vehicle when the magnifying glass is lifted off.

The car is cute, but the magnifying glass is essential. When a recipient — the principal of a high-volume auto retailer that already uses at least one of Reynolds and Reynolds’ efficiency products — opened the box, only the top of the car was visible through a die-cut hole in a cardboard sheet. Written atop the car were the words “Look closely! What you don’t know can hurt you.”

Those words were large enough to be read with the naked eye. But the rest of the car was covered with 10 “profit leaks” — practices common in the retail auto industry that drain cash off the bottom line. They were set in 5-point type (to compare, this article is printed in 11-point).

The letter contained a toll-free number, and the reply card offered a chance to receive more information on the “Proven for Profitability — Vehicle Cost Management” service, or to schedule a free efficiency consultation with a Reynolds and Reynolds employee.

The mailing lays out bottom-line benefits right from the start. The profit leaks detailed on the car include a retailer’s failure to move financing responsibility for a newly sold car from the dealer immediately to the consumer; and forgetting to include optional features in the price of models sold off the showroom floor. Reynolds and Reynolds estimates that plugging these profit leaks can add $150 per car sold to a dealer’s bottom line — and uses that information in its pitch letter.

The package was designed by B/R/C Marketing of Dayton, and the car itself was created by Structural Graphics, a design and product firm in Essex, CT that specializes in three-dimensional print material.