Two years ago when New York ad agency Cyverasia took on the task of driving immigrants to the Fannie Mae Foundation’s Web site, the response rate was about 10%. Today it’s 70%.
The increase is due primarily to space ads showcasing the site’s URL and banners paying off, says John Steere, Cyverasia’s CEO and chief cultural officer.
The Fannie Mae Foundation (www.homebuyingguide.org), Washington, DC, is a nonprofit that provides information to help new immigrants purchase their first home. The Web site offers a free home buying guide in different languages.
The guide includes home ownership facts, such as the importance of credit; defines terms, such as “mortgage lender”; and even explains how to become a U.S. citizen.
“That’s the American Dream: one, to become a U.S. citizen, and two, to buy a home,” Steere says.
Fulfilling that dream contributes handsomely to the economy as well. The foundation estimates that between 1995 and 2010, 1.6 million new immigrants will become first-time home buyers – about 21% of the nation’s total household growth.
Steere’s agency specializes in multicultural interactive campaigns in the native language of target groups. It offers the guide in Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Russian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Haitian-Creole. And now it has found ways to reach people in their mother tongues via the Internet.
Site visitors can download some information, but to receive the entire guide they fill in a form with their address and it’s mailed to them. A central reason for the formerly low response was that immigrants only had the option of ordering by phone, and the phone reps only spoke English. “To speak to this market, you have to speak to them in their language,” Steere says.
All these groups responded well online, but the highest response was from Chinese, Koreans and Vietnamese. Steere isn’t surprised. “I think the households online in these groups are higher than [in the] mainstream population,” he says.
Fannie Mae’s Asian requesters were enticed by banner ads on sites aimed at Asians in North America: “Thinking about buying a home? Contact the Fannie Mae Foundation.” A click on the banner brings up a page where users can register for the guide in the language of their choice.
The other groups were led to the site by the foundation’s prominently displayed URL on space ads in native-language newspapers and magazines. Cyverasia’s parent agency, New York-based Adverasia, handles print advertising.
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