Fulfilling Ideas
Fulfillment executives give their views on the Internet, targeting, sweepstakes, and prize deficiencies.
They’re the people who collect and process all those sweepstakes entries, and send out the prizes. They examine all the proofs of purchase and mail the rebate checks. They clean up the databases and clear the warehouses of all the premiums nobody wanted. They’re the fulfillment folks, and they often feel misunderstood and under-appreciated.
“It’s an age-old story,” says Mark Shevitz of SJI Fulfillment in St. Louis. “A company puts together an e-commerce site. It spends a lot of time determining what it’s going to look like and what the products are going to be. It gets it ready to go in 30 days, and then someone says, `Who’s doing the fulfillment?'”
Jay Catlin of Rightside Up in Van Nuys, CA, says marketers pay too little attention to the culmination of their programs. “Companies’ marketing departments are understaffed,” he explains. “A lot of times, there are only one or two people responsible for a great deal of marketing activity.”
Rarely, then, do marketing execs have the luxury of calling their fulfillment vendors, their final links to consumers, as it were, to learn what’s working well, what not so well, and what’s on the promotional horizon. promo did find the time polling some of the country’s top fulfillment executives to learn what’s up on the back end.
NUTS ABOUT THE NET
One thing you definitely should know about your fulfillment company is that, most probably these days, it is not going to die without your account. Fulfillment houses are brimming with business thanks to everybody’s favorite economy-pumper, the Internet.
“It’s a great time to be in the fulfillment business,” says Shevitz. “Our Web orders are doubling.”
And he’s not referring to just e-commerce purchase orders, but to online sweepstakes, game, and contest entries as well. “We’re still doing sweeps, but it’s a whole different type of sweeps. People are more likely to enter when they can do it at their desk at work, without having to mail anything.”
Maxwell Anderson of Promotion Activators in Buffalo Grove, IL, says that Internet programs “are by far the biggest thing affecting our business.” The action is coming from start-up Internet business looking to draw people to their sites, he says, but also from traditional companies using the Net as an alternative means of entry for sweeps and contests.
Problems from computer hackers who found ways to enter thousands of times at the push of a button seem to be subsiding. “It’s not difficult to limit entries to one per household or e-mail address and to check it,” says Anderson. “And some clients are devising ways to do instant win games on the Net.”
Rebate and premium programs are still a tough go on the Web, since proofs of purchase for packaged goods programs still must be sent through the mails. And while online sampling services are still dealing with numerous challenges, individual companies appear to be proceeding with the method. “We’re seeing a lot of sampling programs online from HBA companies,” says Jack Lee of Right Choice in Maple Grove, MN.
Fulfillment companies find the Internet to be a dream tool for database-building – and not just for ease of collection, but data quality. “It’s no problem getting consumers to answer five or six questions, and they have no reason not to be honest. It’s just them and their computers,” says Lee. “I think it’s a much better method than the phone survey. When people are talking to telemarketers on the phone, they have a tendency to tell them what they think they want to hear.”
Shevitz cautions, however, that Web-derived data may not always be squeaky clean. “You have to be careful about Internet addresses,” he says. “You could have one that is used by five different people.”
He notes that data collection through interactive phone services could be even more valuable. “When you have people using the touch-pads of their phones to answer questions, they’re doing your data entry for you.”
OFF TARGET?
While all the consumer data available through interactive media makes the prospect of targeted programs more tantalizing, the overflow of Net business backing up fulfillment houses makes execution a distant hope for many marketers.
“Targeted programs can be highly efficient and productive. You can increase response rates with a lower volume of offers,” says Mark Lenss, president of Minneapolis-based promotion agency McCracken Brooks Maier. “But when you have a program where you’re talking about processing 100,000 pieces or less, the PMCs and Young Americas aren’t interested in handling them.”
That led the former McCracken Brooks to acquire Maier Marketing, another Minneapolis agency whose small fulfillment operation drew the True North unit’s interest.
“When we started our agency, we saw early on there was a need for better quality and timing on some of those back-end services,” says Maier Marketing’s Matt Maier. “To get some of our smaller programs done, we’d end up relying on temps and third parties that didn’t bring the same priorities to the projects that we did. So we started our own operation and put our account people in charge of seeing their projects through.”
The operation will continue in a larger warehouse when McCracken Brooks and Maier, who finalized their deal only in late September, come together in their new, expanded Minneapolis headquarters.
HOT STUFF
Internet aside, what kinds of programs are hot and look to keep steaming in the near future? We ask the back-end boys.
“Clubs and loyalty programs have grown 50 percent for us in the last 24 months,” responds Shevitz. “Companies are starting to work them harder, because the possibilities of what you could do with them is infinite.”
The goal for most of his clients, Shevitz says, is ferreting out the most loyal of the loyal. “It used to be all database. It used to be a collectibles industry thing. But now it’s working for any kind of company of any size. They’re saying, `How can we turn this into incremental sales?'”
At the Riverton, NJ, offices of Marketing Masters, it’s sweepstakes that rule the day – belligerent state attorneys general notwithstanding. “Sweeps are hot as a pistol,” says company president Mickey Straff, “and I don’t see any let-up at all.”
What Straff does not see, though, is any big movement of sweepstakes programs to the Internet. “I’m not in love with Internet sweeps,” he says. “The whole idea of a sweepstakes is gaining name recognition – having people take the time to take in your brand, write it down, and send in an entry. That’s taken away on the Internet, where people surf around looking for offers and can enter without taking much notice of who the sponsor is.”
Travel prizes have been getting the best response from consumers, notes Straff, eclipsed only by the ever-popular cash award. (“Offer $100,000 and I guarantee you’ll double or triple your response.”) In the wide-ranging prize pool, he sees a strong trend toward companies offering one gigantic prize and a lot of eensie-weensie prizes.
Terry Cunningham of Cottonwood Enterprises in Bozeman, MT, observes the same trend, and thinks marketers should take a second look at their offers. “We deal with a lot of prizes that are so low-end,” he says, “consumers think they’re not worth the 33 cents for a stamp.”
Cunningham advises marketers to design prize packages with multiple levels, providing consumers several opportunities to enter. He also advocates using contests with skill components as a way of honing in on targets and making better prizes affordable. But if you’re married to the sweeps,he suggests taking care to select prizes that appeal to targets’ lifestyles as a way to raise a program’s visibility and results.
Go and be fulfilled.
