In a recent post, I described the multi-channel process we used to invite customers and prospects to an event announcing that we had achieved carbon neutrality at our Mississauga production facility. Our business objectives were to reinforce our environmental message and expose our guests to our six lines of business.
We invited 725 people to the event, in a campaign that included three potential touches.
- We sent an attractive self-mailer; recipients could respond by typing the personalized URL into a web browser, by scanning the QR code with their smartphone, or by phoning in a response.
- After a ten-day interval, an email invitation was sent to those who had not already responded; recipients could respond by clicking on a link to the personalized website or calling the supplied phone number.
- After a further week, we sent a second email reminder with similar contact options to those who had not responded previously.
Overall, 40% of recipients visited the personalized website or called our office. Of the responders, 50% responded to the direct mail piece, and the remainder replied to either the first or second email. The table below shows the breakdown by response method:
The quick take-aways from the results:
- It takes multiple waves of invitations to build an audience for an event: one-quarter of the respondents replied to the third invitation they received.
- Mailed invitations were highly effective, producing half of the responses.
- Each invitation should give the responder several ways to make contact.
- QR Codes are gaining traction, producing 11% of the responses.
Looking into the QR Code numbers, we found that 25% of the responses were from a Blackberry, 61% from an iPhone, 6% from Android and 3% from a Nokia Symbian phone. Of those who responded to the emails, 72% were from Windows computers, 24% from Macs and 4% from Smartphones, mostly Blackberries.