Take Me Out to the Mail Game
A few winters ago—in the wake of the New England Patriots Super Bowl win and the Red Sox World Series victory—a friend outside the marketing world asked me if the local teams’ good fortunes had any impact on direct marketing response rates in the region.
I had no idea.
Intrigued by the topic, I decided to pose the question to several marketers for a column in our sister publication, Direct. I chose professionals in two specific geographic locales: the then-victory lap running New England area and Chicago, home of legions of loyal Cubs fans (who we Boston fans feel a kinship with). I asked for responses about the cities’ major league franchises that were either serious or silly, and got a little of both.
North Kingston, RI-based B-to-B consultant M.H. “Mac” McIntosh said that having grown up near the frozen Wisconsin tundra of the Green Bay Packers, then rooting for the Dodgers and Kings while spending nearly 20 years in the Los Angeles area without a local football team in sight and now transplanted by marriage to New England, he had a unique perspective on the impact of sports team success on response rates.
“My non-scientific, qualitative analysis says definitely yes and no,” reported McIntosh. “It seems to depend mostly on how much drowning of sorrows one’s customers do when their team loses, and how much celebrating they do when their team wins. In other words, inebriation probably has a definitive impact on response rates. As I suspect, [things like] parades and autograph signings at local malls and car dealers all cause people to be away from their mailboxes and PCs.”
Bob Cargill, senior copywriter at Lexington, MA-based VistaPrint, said he thought response rates in any given city or region would be somewhat proportional to the home teams’ number of wins and losses.
“Not only are fans in better spirits when their teams are victorious, but surely there must be a positive ripple effect on the local economy, too,” said Cargill. “When a team is on a winning streak, the people who follow it get giddy and optimistic — they begin to feel as bold and invincible as the athletes they cheer.”
“Their fates do affect my buying habits,” said Boston native Deb Goldstein, president of IDG List Services in Framingham, MA. “Not just in terms of sports memorabilia, which I purchased a great deal of after both the Red Sox and Patriots won, but there is this inexplicable sense of well-being and pride that puts you in the mood to spend and participate. There is joy in Mudville. And Mudville has a lot of malls.”
Unlike the rest of the respondents, Nancy Harhut, senior vice president and executive creative director for relationship marketing at Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos Inc. in Boston, admitted she wasn’t much of a sports fan. Still, she had some thoughts.
“I bet that when the athletes are too focused on their winning game, it takes their time away from responding to our mail,” she said, tongue firmly in cheek. “Which is not a good thing, because in this business, every response counts.”
Ron Jacobs, founder of Chicago’s Jacobs & Clevenger, called my line of questioning “interesting and painful” for someone from a town without a winning pro team.
“This is a very sensitive subject here. Since the end of the Bulls’ great run, no sports team in Chicago has warranted that kind of attention,” he said. “Of course, many of us in Chicago are all long-suffering Cubs fans. And, while we follow them, nothing the Cubs do has a chance of changing our response habits.”
While sports doesn’t have an impact on direct mail response rates, it does affect DRTV and telemarketing, said Jacobs.
“You wouldn’t expect a fan to respond during the ninth inning or during the last few minutes of a football, basketball or hockey game if the home team had any chance of winning. And they don’t,” he said, adding that the same thing happens during close political conventions, interesting Olympic competitions, awards programs or any other time large populations are glued to their television sets. “We often stop outbound calling or move DRTV placements well beyond the viewing hours for such events when we see consumer response fall off.”
Bill Gorski, chief account services officer at Draft Chicago, said if you’re selling team-related products, of course you’re going to get a lift. “And if you’re selling other products, you can get a lift in response rates if you can leverage the success of the team by including an offer that engages both the passionate as well as the casual sports fan.
Gorski noted that, as a Boston transplant to the Windy City, he was completely consumed with both the Cubs and the Red Sox during the 2004 pennant race. “A savvy direct marketer could have identified me by doing some simple list work, and capitalized on my Red Sox passion during the World Series — in a market where other media would not have been effective.”
And though he hated to admit it since he now lives in Chicago, in 2004-2005 he bought a lot of Red Sox and Patriots merchandise — for his kids, of course.
