HAVE YOU LOOKED around your neighborhood lately? Especially if you’re in the suburbs, chances are you see a lot of folks driving SUVs. Families with several children. Weekend warriors who need to haul around a lot of sports equipment. Couples who may never venture beyond the mall parking lot but want room for their Pottery Barn purchases.
For many automotive manufacturers, SUVs are a big part of their business. And keeping the loyalty of those drivers who are willing to pay a premium price for prestige and cargo space is vital.
Honda is set to introduce a new version of its CR-V this month. To keep the brand in the hearts and minds of Honda buyers (and help sell down existing inventory), the car company turned to its agency Targetbase, which tapped Structural Graphics to create a dimensional mailer that hit mailboxes this spring. The 300,000-piece mailing resulted in a $100 cost per acquisition, which pleased the manufacturer. “Even though targeted direct mail and e-mail still suffers from being able to scale to larger volumes, it certainly reduces the need for incentive packages,” says Michael Keranen, American Honda’s assistant vice president of e-business and CRM.
The CR-V ranges in price from $20,000 to $25,000 depending on equipment. New-car dealers sold 16.94 million units in 2005, according to the National Automobile Dealers Association. Total dealership dollar sales exceeded $699 billion last year, down about 2% from 2004. However, 2005 ranked third among the seven best years ever for new-unit sales by franchised dealers.
Simply put, cars are high-value products and the automotive industry is extremely competitive. Thus the primary purpose of dimensional pieces is to get the message noticed, says Michael Dambra, vice president for marketing and sales at Structural Graphics.
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