A Simple Letter From Bjarne Hastrup

Background

Attracting new members for DaneAge at the lowest possible recruitment price.

Target Group

225,000 households with at least one resident aged 60-75, segmented as follows:

• 100,000 addressed direct mails to households with no members of DaneAge.
• 125,000 unaddressed mails to households where there would probably not be any members of DaneAge.

Campaign Goals

Testing different distribution methods and attracting new members: Index 100.

Idea

Experience had showed that DaneAge got the best response rate at the lowest recruitment price when the association used addressed direct mail. Therefore, in the recruitment drive of October 2010, mail was used totalk to almost half of the identified target group.

DaneAge also wanted to test both unaddressed mail and household direct. This was an unaddressed medium that enabled targeting of named prospects, i.e. targeting with the same precision as direct mail but at a lower contact price.

A number of other tests were conducted concurrently, such as whether it was more effective to send envelopes with stamps or with PP and which envelope formats worked best.

The content was the same in all mails and included a letter that gave information about DaneAge and its key issues and, on a secondary level, about events, discounts and other membership benefits. It was all written in a warm and human tone.

The text was written in “typewriter font” and the only other effects used were blue underlining and director Bjarne Hastrup’s signature.

The recipients could respond by sending in a coupon, telephoning or going online. DaneAge subsequently called 25,000 of the non-responding recipients and an effect measurement provided further details about the recipients’ reactions.

Results

• The direct mail gave a response rate of 4.4%, and among the results of the test were that a stamp on the envelope lifted the response rate by 20%. Household direct gave a response rate of 2.4% and was also very profitable.
• DaneAge attracted new members at a historically low recruitment price: Index 175.

Here we have some people who sat themselves down, looked at the target group and gave the task some serious thought. This is a back-to-basics solution, just a well-crafted letter with a signature, and then testing the different ways the letter could be received.

The way the letter is laid out is simple and perhaps a bit 1960s-like. It was a pleasure to see that DaneAge did not just go to the printer and use a standard letter paper. The idea may not be art exactly, but it worked for a target group that was young in the 1960s.

One of the things DaneAge wanted to test was if response rates were better with or without a stamp on the envelope. (The stamp lifted response by 20%.) The same letter was tested in different formats, in this version using an old-fashioned ‘typewriter’ font deliberately to appeal to the recipients.

It was tested as both an addressed letter and as unaddressed mail.