Throw This Away
Issue 17 | December 2010
Agency
Wunderman Sydney
Creative Team
Creative Director: Matt Batten; Head Of Copy: Jason Stubbs; Art Director: Matt Batten; Copywriter: Jason Stubbs; Designer: Aaron Sutter
Production Team
Head of Production: Paul Hayes; Group Account Director: Belinda Leworthy; Account Manager: Kate Nicoli; CRM Strategist: Melissa Eychenne
Other Credits
Channel Development Manager, Microsoft: Clayton Moulynox
Date
May – June 2010
Background
Microsoft products and services are sold through authorised third party Resellers. To help them identify lucrative sales opportunities, Microsoft provides the Resellers with an online ‘Customer Insights Tool’ (CIT).
However, only 1.8% of Resellers downloaded the tool in January and therefore the vast majority were missing out on many potential lucrative sales for themselves and Microsoft.
The task, then, was to get them to download the CIT to start making more money.
Idea
Resellers are salespeople. They speak one common language – money.
The idea was simple. Despite Australia Post’s recommendations against sending currency in the mail, Microsoft did it anyway and created an Australian Direct Mail first.
They posted real money to the Resellers and dared them to throw it away because that’s what they would be doing if they didn’t start using their Customer Insights Tool.
The letter was personalised for each recipient using data to highlight exactly how much money they were potentially missing out on.
Results
In the month this mail pack was sent, the number of Resellers downloading and using their Customer Insights Tool increased 723% compared to January. And the month following this pack still saw an increase of 515% over January's figures.
Our Thoughts
One of the challenges for mail as a medium in the near future is going to be how to get people to opt in, to volunteer to have stuff sent to them. So, if you are mailed information that’s useful, made offers that are relevant and given incentives that are attractivel, like real money, for instance, then you are going to want to stay in touch.
A demonstration of how to do direct mail properly from Matt Batten’s team.