Washington Mutual Finance plans to roll out a direct mail program selling home-equity loans to finely targeted segments.
A successful March test went to 100,000 customers, said Rick Erwin, managing director of RR Donnelley Financial, which conducted the campaign. The July rollout will go to customers and prospects.
Washington Mutual faced a serious problem when it started thinking about the program: Falling response rates in the sub-prime home equity market, Erwin said during a session at Chicago DM Days & Expo.
The first thing the company did was to append demographics and summarized credit and lifestyle data. It then broke out segments within its responder base.
Next, it enriched the segment profiles with attitudinal data gleaned from RR Donnelley Financial
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