A trade association for hunting enthusiasts and gun manufacturers is ramping up its grant-making efforts to urge individual states to take advantage of direct and social marketing techniques to promote license renewals.
Earlier this year, the National Shooting Sports Foundation Inc. awarded a $35,000 grant to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to design and launch a plain black and white postcard mailing to remind recipients to renew their hunting licenses. That mailing received a 2.3% response rate, says Jim Curcuruto, the group’s director for industry research and analysis.
Because of that mailing, New York got 777 hunters to renew their $61.50 licenses. This effort brought in revenue of $47,786 and cost the agency only $15,658 for printing and mailing. This resulted in a net gain of $32,128, says Curcuruto, who previously worked in the list brokerage and management industry.
Curcuruto attributes the results to the plainness and official look of the postcards. Fancier-looking mail pieces are more likely to be discarded as “junk mail,” while plain postcards look more official and are more likely to generate responses, he says, noting results were measured against a control group of 331,854 license holders who did not receive a mailing.
Late last year, the Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife Resourcesused a $75,000 NSSF grant to develop a Facebook page through which it was able to sell hunting licenses and draw followers in that state, he says.
As part of that effort, sales of a state temporary hunter education exemption permit rose to 3,052 in 2011, a 12.9% increase over 2,703 in 2010.
Between last November and last February, the number of active users on the department’s Facebook page grew to 11,503 from 5,422.
The NSSF began helping state agencies use direct marketing several years ago because the sport of hunting was declining nationally and the organization felt such initiatives were necessary to help revive interest, says Curcuruto.
Here’s how the system works:
“We’ll send out a grant to a state and let’s say they have something that works or doesn’t work,” he says. “Then we tell other states what worked and what didn’t so they don’t have to go through their own trial and error. There’s no competition between states—it’s different from the normal direct marketing industry where Victoria’s Secret isn’t going to tell Sears what’s worked."
Later this year, the NSSF plans to help the Virginia Dept. of Game and Inland Fisheries roll out a similar program, which may also include email, says Curcuruto.
The NSSF is also looking to help states develop their database marketing capabilities by capturing information like income and gender. Because of individual state privacy laws the NSSF cannot collect user data from individual states and must keep to an advisory role, he says.
“As with all marketing and advertising, the more you know about your customer, the easier it is to provide the product or service they are interested in,” says Curcuruto. “For example, if a state has ages of hunters, they could offer lifetime license or senior licenses.”
Going forward, the NSSF will continue working with more states to help increase their email, online, telemarketing and social media marketing activities, Curcuruto says.
“Marketing hunting licenses is still in its infancy, and much more remains to be explored to identify the most effective direct and electronic marketing methods available,” he notes.
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