Flying High
Sure, Duncraft has felt the pinch of the recession. But unlike many direct marketers, the Concord, NH-based seller of birding products is actually doing well, thanks to a flight path toward the Web.
“We’re fortunate in that ours is a home-based activity,” says Sharon Dunn, president of Duncraft Inc. “You’ll see that many of the companies that are staycation-related are holding their own in the marketplace. People who aren’t traveling are investing in their homes and their backyards as an alternative.”
Over the last several years, Duncraft has refined its offline marketing and delved into search and social media to stay in touch with a customer base whose profile really hasn’t changed over the years, says Dunn. The typical bird-loving customer is someone who lives in a suburban or rural area, is well educated and has an income of $75,000 annually. Over 60% of customers are women, and many are empty nesters, love gardening and are environmentally conscious.
The company was started by Dunn’s father, Gilbert Dunn, in 1952, to sell a windowsill clip-on birdfeeder he designed. The product was promoted via space ads in magazines like Better Homes and Gardens and The New York Times gardening section. He ran the business as a one-man shop until Sharon and her brother Michael Dunn, the CEO of the company (who focuses on online development), took over in the early 1970s and transformed it into a direct marketing/manufacturing enterprise.
While the business does have seasonal spurts in the spring and the holidays, Duncraft is active year round, with an 80,000-name house file.
Like most marketers, Duncraft has seen a significant portion of its business migrate online to Duncraft.com. While online orders do spike after a catalog drop, escalating paper and postage costs (as well as a drop in response rates, thanks to the current economy) have led the company to cut back on prospect mailings. This, over several years, dropped catalog circulation from an all-time high of four million down to two million.
Duncraft has also cut the size of the print catalog, downsizing from 56 to 44 pages, printing two editions annually focusing on the core product lines as well as new product.
Online, the majority of Duncraft’s prospecting is done through Google AdWords and its affiliate program. E-mail is used to send promotional mailings to the house file, and trigger e-mails are also sent in response to customer activity.
This spring, Dunn says, the company started dipping its toes into the social media pool, tweeting and setting up a Facebook page to share content and bird images. “We haven’t established the ROI yet. I suspect we may judge that on how many new e-mail addresses we get.”
At the moment, Duncraft is using social media to share information with customers, such as short informational videos on YouTube and its own site about what to look for when purchasing a birdhouse, or why a customer might want to consider buying garden-friendly birdseed.
These days, Duncraft’s in-house call center reps spend a good amount of their time helping facilitate online orders. Dunn notes that they are heavily trained in the product line, which could be quite complex for birding novices. The company also manufactures a number of proprietary products, and folks who work on the manufacturing lines are cross-trained so they can pick inventory to help ship orders during the holiday season.
“We use our staff well,” says Dunn, who describes herself as a “backyard birder” rather than the ambitious type who travels the world to check off a life list of 200 birds they want to observe. Her favorite bird is the wood thrush, not typically found in a yard, but sometimes seen in the woods near her Massachusetts abode.
“There’s a lot of pleasure to be claimed that close to home,” she said.
Sharon Dunn and her grandniece Mayson Kimball grace a catalog cover.
