So, you are in retailing... Then let us guess what do you mostly dream of? About continuous streams of clients which will leave all their money to you buying your product. They are loyal clients who will buy only your products even if the competitor offers them similar goods of better quality or at a lower price.

Do you want it? Then everything is in your hands! Using such powerful sales tool as direct marketing correctly, you will necessarily attract the buyer to the goods.

Very often direct marketing is associated only with a mail box full of junk in the form of unnecessary advertising booklets, as well as with obtrusive calls with offers to buy various products. A lot of trading companies spend considerable sums of money for manufacturing and distribution of advertising circulars at a regular basis and they are sure that they deal with active marketing. Unfortunately, the lion's share of these efforts is thrown into the waste basket.

You may ask, “What is direct marketing then?”

Direct marketing is oriented towards mutual relations with the buyer. The greatest efficiency of using direct marketing is provided by creation of the client base and further constant use of information entered into this base for the purpose of increasing sales volume.

“Direct marketing means direct communications from person to person. It stands to reason that if a company deals with sales of FMCG products, then the mass communication channels should be first and foremost. However the world practice shows that the DM share in the total amount of marketing budgets grows every year. It’s worth noting that the vision of marketing policy gradually changes in Ukraine and we can see it by the example of our work with clients”, - says Liliya Gorelaya, the organizer of the International Business Forum “Direct Marketing Days in Ukraine” and the Head of “OS-Direct” DM Agency.

Achieve loyalty and it will pay back with interest!

What do people, who know nothing about the meaning of direct marketing, do when they want to sell goods quickly? They go bald-headed: they attack consumers with a flood of advertising and make aggressive attempts to foist their goods. Such hucksterism is characterized by the fact that the seller is not interested in clients’ preferences and needs at all. 

According to Liliya Gorelaya, the role of direct marketing lies in providing information about the brand and showing how this brand care about these people. It is necessary to differentiate the role of DM in forming consumer loyalty and holding of actions-drawings for supporting sales. Creation of the database of loyal consumers will allow the company to choose from a huge potential audience of those people who show active and positive attitude towards the brand. Being loyal to the brand, these people promote it in their surroundings. In this case the brand builds communications not only with these people, but with the surroundings of these people. This is the most important factor.

Experience shows that in general impersonal communications from the brand, even the most promoted brand, work worse than addressing from a concrete person who represents this brand. It is necessary to remember that people will be loyal to that product which arouses emotions in them. And DM facilitates the creation of these emotions, even diverse emotions.

What DM tools are effective in trading? This question can be answered by retailers and experts working in this market.

According to Jean Smotrich, Marketing Director of the Cigar House “Fortuna”, the most efficient approach for retailing business lies in working with your own client base using various DM tool. If we speak about the Cigar House “Fortuna”, then we can say that direct marketing provides access to the company’s target audience, i.e. men aged 25 – 50 years old with high and very high income, this access is difficult to achieve only by means of direct advertising. “When using DM tools, first of all, it is necessary to make sure that the base containing checked information on our target audience is available. The second important point is the necessity of non-standard, creative address to people which will not just attract attention, but will also cause a concrete action. The third important point is the conditions specified in this address – they should induce to make action. The tool which allows taking into consideration all these conditions to the maximum is postal dispatch. Besides, minimization of contact cost is very important. Therefore, from a viewpoint “price-efficiency” for retailing electronic and SMS dispatches can be effective”, - Mr. Smotrich considers.

“Traditionally for promotion of retailers the supporting programs for consumer loyalty based on direct-mail and professional maintenance of a database are used in practice” – says Larisa Kozachenko, Director for Business Development of “OS-Direct” marketing group, the head of organizing committee of the International Business Forum “DM Days in Ukraine”. The second case of efficient work of DM is various discount programs, actions such as “collect and win” which are directly aimed at sales increase. DM will allow informing an audience about such campaign quickly and comprehensively”.

 “Probably, it is possible to distinguish two boundary formats of cooperation variants with the companies-retailers though everything surely depends on the purposes of the customer. Unregistered post delivery of materials given by the Client in the packaged form will be the most facilitated variant. The most difficult variant is the development of a complex project using combination of various (and sometimes all) direct marketing tools for obtaining a result necessary to the Client. And this division, according to the quantity of DM tools used, can be completely not identical to a budgetary division. The most simple DM combinations can be more expensive than the most complicated DM projects”, - Larisa tells.

As of today the sphere of direct marketing is developing, tools are being improved, popularity of DM projects are growing especially in the Internet. Elena Korovets, the expert of Belarus Portal of Style and Beauty tells: “Our experts are constantly busy with the development of essentially new tools which we offer and use in the development of DM projects in the Internet for our clients. Among them there are large trading networks, as well as small enterprises for which it is very important to find and keep regular clients, even if there are only several hundreds of them. For the latter (networks of beauty salons, perfumery and cosmetics shops, etc) we offer, for example, participation in the forums, in the discount program of our Portal with simultaneous use of dispatches. The peculiarity of such link lies in the fact that, on the one hand, it allows the company to address concrete users, on the other hand, it allows conducting unobtrusive but precise work with communities through the Leaders of opinions. Yes, it demands a lot of time and a high level of interpersonal skills from experts of the companies, but in some cases it can be more effective having the least expenses for realization. Besides, such work through the Internet allows working more flexibly, changing and optimizing the realization strategy in the course of its implementation”

Remember, that neat and well-judged direct marketing program attracts people to your credit, paves the way, tramples down a platform and lays the foundation.

Three successful DM projects which “touch hearts”

Here are some examples of successful DM projects (they were presented at the International Business Forum “Direct Marketing Days in Ukraine 2006”), giving evidence that you can use DM tool at a considerable profit too.

«ОТТО Ukraine» Company, which presents several thousand of clothes catalogues, personally informed 5 thousand of Kiev families about its assortment in the shortest time possible and with practically no budget. Guess how did the company manage to do it?

 “OS-Direct” DM Agency developed a DM project for «ОТТО Ukraine» named “Hi, my darling!”. Previously, usual delivery of clothes catalogues to mail boxes or offices did not bring any results for the company. The company could not afford address delivery, as its budget was extremely limited.

“OS-Direct” DM Agency fulfilled the dispatch in such a way that it was really impossible not to pay attention to it. Inhabitants of Kiev found an envelope with a letter, addressed personally to them in their mail boxes. The envelope was not sealed; therefore any curious person could have a look, what was there inside the envelope? And there was an OTTO catalogue and a personal letter mentioning nothing about the firm. Some girl wrote to her friend that she was sending this catalogue to her as she had promised and accentuated her attention on some models - “The trousers I told you about are on page 11”. “Kiss and hug. Love, your Masha”. Nothing special, just usual ending of a usual letter. But in fact, such addressee and such sender actually never existed and it was unusual.

Relatives and friends of the employees of “OTTO Ukraine” Company who knew nothing about the project were included in the base of dispatch. After the delivery was fulfilled, they were polled. All of them took letters home and read them! Moreover, after having read the letter they immediately opened the catalogue and looked if there were those models mentioned in the letter. People told about receiving such “wrong door” letter to their neighbors, friends and relatives. And only half of the respondents understood that it was advertising.

As a result - a minimum of expenses, a creative part and such feature of human nature as curiosity were used only.

Haven’t you received "magic" matches from the Cigar House “Fortuna” by mail yet? They are real professionals! We are rising to our feet in honor of them, taking off our hats to them and applauding to the echo for a long time!

In the spring of 2006 the project “10 magic matches of Fortuna” was implemented, its task was to attract the attention of target audience (they were well-to-do connoisseurs of good cigars and alcohol drinks) to the cigar salon in Kiev. The idea was developed by the experts of Marketing Department of the Cigar House “Fortuna”. Within the framework of this project the dispatch of a postal card with special cigar matches stuck to it was carried out according the base of clients of the largest restaurant network “Kozyrnaya Karta” (Trump Card) with 15% and 20% discount. All cards were packed in firm envelopes of "”Kozyrnaya Karta” with the logo of the Cigar House “Fortuna” and sent to 5000 addresses. It is worth noting that it is difficult enough to kindle a cigar, for this reason cigar matches are longer than usual matches. The motivation of clients was based on “three whales”: utility (matches which can be used), 15% discount for services of the tasting room and humor. All messages were accompanied by a comic advice like this “you can burn a letter from your mistress with these matches” or “let everybody know that all you have is much more longer, even matches”. Jesting aside, the feedback result exceeded all expectations: 127 new clients (2,54 %) visited the cigar salon during the period of this action.

Do you want to find out how to inform 4,6 million of potential buyers about Your goods at minimum expenses? And clients will enjoy advertising!

Last year the experts of the Belarus Portal of Style and Beauty DiVA.BY® implemented the project for “Lebortovo” company selling the products of ТМ Kotex, - On-line game-test “Choose your style! or How well do you know Kotex?”. The purpose of the project was to attract target audience to the site and to acquaint it with products, as well as to increase loyalty of the customers who were already familiar with Kotex products, forming steady positive emotional associations with Kotex brand, to provide an effect of “a little bird told me” - transfer of information from mouth to mouth, and not only during the game, but also after its end.

The project was implemented in two stages. The first stage was the online-test placed on DiVA.BY Portal during several weeks. Because of absolutely low budget, the developers planned to provide information scope of several tens of thousand of visitors and to receive a clear feedback (at the forums + e-mail) even from hundred the visitors who underwent the test. In addition great attention was paid to virus marketing, it was important to distribute information as widely as possible without additional expenses for “Lebortovo” Company.
The result exceeded all expectations: 26 350 visitors attended this web-page during the game was. There were even unexpected “by-effects” (for example, active participation of men, who voluntarily studied the products and were subsequently capable to influence the process of purchasing hygienic means by their ladies).

The second part of game was the online-game Kotex.PUZZLE with elements of training (a deeper studying of Kotex products properties than it was realized in the first part) – it had to give more serious results concerning the scope of a target audience and exert noticeable influence on sales volumes of “Lebortovo” Company. Besides, the second part was supplemented with gambling elements – Kotex.Puzzle was implemented on the basis of a combat sport principle.

When the game KOTEX-PUZZLE was over, it was available in free access at http://kotexpuzzle.diva.by on numerous requests of its participants. Game was included into the list of the most favorite office and family mini-games, and not only girls aged 18-25 were its admirers but also ladies of elegant age, and even whole families and collectives.

As a result of such effective synergy of thematic content-project and a popular Portal the total number of access contacts to the game information exceeded 4,6 million. And the effect of “a little bird told me” is still the same - the project is remembered till now since one of the tools of virus marketing is prizes – Kotex handbags for those who managed to answer all questions in the test correctly or become one of the hundred of prize-winners in the puzzle game. Friends of participants of these games quite often ask how to get such marvelous cool things and they are told a brief story how such gifts have been received.

P.S. Remember that the final decision to make purchase is more often a result of “heart-head” combination. By means of a correct direct marketing you are able to play the buyer’s favorite melodies on the secret chords of his soul, and you will increase sales for sure!

The International Business Forum “Direct Marketing Days in Ukraine” will be held on May 24-25, 2007 for the seventh time.

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