Case studies of direct marketing

within the advertising department

2006 MaaX Users Group

March 28, 2006

Direct Marketing within the Advertising

Department at The Seattle Times

• What it is and the role MaaX plays

• Examples

– Silver Platters

– Millennium Ford

• Lessons learned and 2006 plans.

Direct Marketing at The Seattle Times

• Direct marketing sales through the advertising department was

part of the justification for MaaX.

• Want to offer full service integrated advertising solutions to our

customers.

• Position ourselves with a unique set of tools and print products for

advertisers.

• Staff: 3 sales specialist, 2 coordinators, 1 analyst.

How has MaaX made this possible

• MaaX has made it possible to easily offer:

– Targeted mailing lists

– Data hosting and hygiene services

– Data analysis services

• Use customer analysis (profiling) to lay

the ground work for an integrated

marketing program.

Customer Profiling – Silver Platters

• Challenge:

To find a way to increases their spending by showing we are the most effective use of their dollars.

• How?

Profiled their customers looking at demographic, geographic and lifestyle factors.

• Findings:

Affluent baby boomers, and lots of subscribers.

• Recommendations:

Inserted in key ZIP codes and mailed to non-subscribing customers.

• Result:

Annual commitment for the design, printing and distribution of their Bi-monthly magazine. 125,000 pieces: 70,000 inserted, 35,000 mailed.

Silver Platters customers are affluent

Half of all customers have incomes over $100,000

I nc ome Ra nge s

0%

10%

20%

30%

% o

f household

s

Silver Plat t er s % 1. 1% 0 . 7 % 2 . 3 % 3 . 9 % 5 . 6 % 18 . 2 % 18 . 7 % 14 . 9 % 17 . 1% 17 . 5 %

M ar ket % 7 . 0 % 3 . 8 % 6 . 3 % 7 . 4 % 7 . 4 % 17 . 5 % 2 0 . 6 % 13 . 9 % 6 . 9 % 9 . 0 %

Un der $ 15 , 0 0 0 $ 15 , 0 0 0 - $ 19 , 9 9 9 $ 2 0 , 0 0 0 - $ 2 9 , 9 9 9 $ 3 0 , 0 0 0 - $ 3 9 , 9 9 9 $ 4 0 , 0 0 0 - $ 4 9 , 9 9 9 $ 5 0 , 0 0 0 - $ 7 4 , 9 9 9 $ 7 5 , 0 0 0 - $ 9 9 , 9 9 9 $ 10 0 , 0 0 0 - $ 12 4 , 9 9 9 $ 12 5 , 0 0 0 - $ 14 9 , 9 9 9 $ 15 0 , 0 0 0 +

Source: Customer provided list; Demographic data from Equifax Marketing Services Inc. 2005

Income Profile

Silver Platters King & Snohomish County

customers.

= 61,738 customers

The Seattle Times and

Seattle P-I King &

Pierce County

Subscribers.

= 329,903

households

More than half of all customers subscribe to either The Seattle Times or

the Seattle P-I

Sources: Customer provided list; subscriber information from The Seattle Times and the Seattle P-I

How to read: There are 61,738 Silver Platters customers 32,087 (52%)

subscribe to either the The Seattle Times or the Seattle P-I.

Common households between Silver

Platters customers and The Seattle

Times and the Seattle P-I subscribers.

= 32,087 customers

Silver Platters customers are subscribers!

Subscribership

Working with auto dealers – Millennium Ford

• Challenge:

Local auto dealer trying to move cars, after the “employee discount” program

ended.

• How we targeted?

Use Polk new vehicle sales data report in combination with Claritas Consumer

Point to identify the households most likely to buy a new Ford, from Millennium.

• Recommendations:

Developed an ROP, Event and Direct mail campaign that included insert

distribution of 70,000 pieces in key ZIP codes and mailing to 30,000 of the

highest indexing non-subscribing customers prospects within the same ZIPs.

• Result:

Tough to match the employee discount, but Millennium had the highest unit

sales of all Northwest Ford dealers that weekend. Another event planned for

later this spring.

Serves as the model for several other auto dealer programs.

Lessons learned in the first year

• Be very conservative with first year revenue estimates!

• It takes more than a database:

– Underestimated the time it takes to educate sales staff, even

with three dedicated sales people.

• Not all business types are a good fit.

• 10,000 pieces takes as much work as 100,000

Plans for 2006

• On plan through the first quarter

• Better efforts at presenting complete annual plans.

• Revamped and intensified staff training.

• Looking into more turn-key programs.

• Hosting contest data and building our own lifestyle data.

Quick hits to get started

• You don’t need an internal print house, there are lots out there.

• Focus on a couple of simple products, IE 6x9 card with set pricing.

• Everyone loves new mover programs.

• Home furnishings and home improvement are great industries to

start with.

Thank you!