The Zoo Story
AFTER NEARLY TWO YEARS — about as long as an Asian elephant’s gestation period — Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo is back in the mail with a 125,000-piece membership drive targeting prospects and lapsed supporters.
The $175,000 campaign is expected to net a 1.2% response rate, or around 1,500 enrollments, according to membership and annual giving manager Steve Sullivan.
The zoo’s last mailing in 2004 generated 0.5%. Sullivan hopes this year’s effort will set a baseline for future direct mail initiatives.
The new prospect package includes a laser-personalized message, a brochure and a large, flashy insert/response card. The envelope states, “Get inside our brand-new Zoomazium — Free!” But Zoomazium — an interactive learning center for younger children — is not the piece’s sole focus.
“With a zoo, you have to sell the idea of membership,” said Spyro Kourtis, president of The Hacker Group, which designed the campaign. “This is where most people go wrong — they sell the newest and latest thing. Nobody has to buy a membership to go to Zoomazium.”
Instead, Woodland Park is touting a variety of year-round offerings, such as educational programs, family activities and the reciprocal membership agreement it has with 120 other zoos throughout the country.
The membership options range from $90 for the basic family package to $135 for the “Elephant Herd,” which allows members to bring a guest.
In addition, the zoo is testing two premium offers: a children’s watch or an extra two months on the one-year membership. The latter is described as “two summers for the price of one,” indicating that the 14-month membership lasts through two summers.
Timing is being tested as well. The mail dates were split between mid-May and early June to see which pulled better.
Roughly 105,000 prospect pieces were sent to those who subscribed to family oriented magazines like Martha Stewart Kids and names collected by Disney-style entertainment outlets. The target audience consisted of families with children between the ages of 3 and 10. Why those cutoff points? Children younger than 3 are allowed into the zoo free. Those over 10 are likely to be less interested in the experience, Sullivan explained.
The reactivation package that went to 20,000 former members contained many of the same elements as the prospect mailer. But the text of the letter was slightly different, and the outer envelope stated, “We miss you.”
The zoo believes it will end up with a total membership between 35,000 and 36,000 — all it can handle, according to Sullivan.
It had 34,000 members prior to the mailing, down from a high of 41,000. Interest in the zoo spiked after the birth of Hansa, an Asian elephant, in 2000. But the sheer number of attendees strained capacity, so management decided to let memberships lapse without replacing them.
Because of this, Woodland Park didn’t have a lot of marketing history to rely on. So Sullivan, who joined the zoo’s staff in 2005, had trouble accessing the records.
To refine targeting, The Hacker Group used PowerTest, a multiple-variable evaluation tool which allowed two or more campaign aspects — such as copy, design, offers or list — to be tested on a small mail volume.
Later this year, Sullivan hopes to do an e-mailing based on trials done near the end of 2005. The blast would serve primarily as a renewal and gift membership tool. Sullivan estimates that 40% of the members have e-mail addresses on their records.
If, despite all these efforts, the paper mailing doesn’t draw as Sullivan hopes, there’s always one more fallback: The birth of a new baby animal.
