No Bull: HotData helps firm pick prime prospects
Undeliverable rates of 50% to 60% are bad under any circumstances, but when a direct mail package costs upward of $15 they can drain a marketer’s budget.
Such was the case with The Paint Bull, which offers automobile customization and repair start-up kits and training. The Saginaw, MI firm uses a mixed-media mailing to induce auto dealers, body shops and the like to use its wares.
The Paint Bull doesn’t have a problem gaining prospect names: Its database consists of more than 25,000 inquirers as well as 1,700 domestic customers. But information on them had been limited to what The Paint Bull captured as part of the inquiry process. Moreover, prospect lists selected by SIC codes often yielded laundromats, restaurants and other unrelated businesses.
In mid-1999 the company began using HotData (www.hotdata.com), an online hygiene and prospecting service that provides access to consolidated data culled from a number of information sources, including Claritas, Dun & Bradstreet, Experian, Mailer’s Software Inc., The Polk Co. and the U.S. Postal Service.
The additional prospect data, coupled with valid contact names, has caused The Paint Bull’s undeliverable rate to drop to 16% in the 16 campaigns it’s conducted since employing HotData. And sales resulting from mail campaigns, according to The Paint Bull’s national vendor administrator Peter Avery, have jumped to between 12% and 15%.
The Paint Bull has relied primarily on revenue figures, information on length of time in business and number of employees to select top prospects from its file. These are sent the full introduction kit: videotape, catalog and a folder filled with articles covered by a personalized letter.
The company has begun to do mailings based on census tract information, sending kits to targets in high-growth areas with increasingly affluent populations.
The Paint Bull is mulling the use of HotData’s consumer information to tap into the entrepreneurial auto detailing market, which includes independent contractors.
The company has used this data to weed out potentially undesirable contacts. Some firms, Avery notes, call up claiming to be smaller businesses, and try to get sympathy-based price reductions.
Having info on them at his fingertips allows Avery to check their legitimacy during the phone conversation. The quick turnaround for HotData inquiries also lets him check whether an inquirer is actually a competitor trying to get pricing information.
“It’s really neat because we can pick up on them automatically,” says Avery.
“We have some fun with them,” he adds. “We can inflate the price a little bit.”
There’s some data that Avery would love to have but which HotData won’t be offering anytime soon.
While HotData added fax numbers to its product mix, e-mail addresses are a bit trickier in light of privacy concerns that unsolicited e-mail raises.
