customer contact management Picture Perfect

Preferred Lease’s new mailing reaches its clients 18 times a year – and the targets actually look forward to receiving every one.

That’s because the reminders are part of a complimentary subscription to Inc. magazine the company sent to all 10,000 of its clients that have taken financing leases, as well as 4,000 of its likeliest “activators” – firms that have contacted Preferred Lease but not yet taken business equipment financing loans.

Each copy of Inc. bears a “Compliments of Preferred Lease” label, with messages from CEO David K. Murray bound in on a quarterly basis. At a cost of $10 for the subscription and personalized bind-in, the program costs less than the $13 clock the leasing firm was using as its previous customer premium.

Through regression analysis, the company selected the 4,000 likely activator firms based on several criteria including business size (those with $350,000 to $500,000 in revenue were targeted), number of employees (typically under 10) and whether they had previously taken financing.

But Preferred Lease’s customer contacts didn’t end with the magazines. Before kicking off the Inc. program, its direct mail efforts consisted of mundane “You have credit available” notices. Their response rate was around 1.5%.

Working with direct marketing strategy firm DMW Worldwide, New York, Preferred Lease generated a personalized welcome letter from Murray, as well as follow-up letters from each of its 88 account managers. The letters incorporated digital photographs of the account manager assigned to each prospect, along with a list of personal data such as hobbies, books read and business accomplishments from surveys each manager filled out.

It was a risky move: The company has a turnover rate of around 15%, making a potential defection by an account manager very real.

Preferred Lease’s senior vice president of marketing Peter Schwartz acknowledges that the idea was a gamble. But the firm’s research showed that clients valued financing turnaround speed and ease of signing the agreement above relationships with individual brokers, and the letter text stressed these attributes.