For a supercharged marketing effort
Just say you have an important event coming up and you have a specific number of seats that you NEED to fill. How do you accomplish your goal without overtaxing your player development department?
Regardless of how many mailers or emails you send, what is the best response you can hope for? Four percent? Five percent, if you’re lucky? (According to the 2015 DMA Response Rate Report, “telephone had the highest response rate at 9-10%. Direct mail achieves a 3.7% response rate with a house list, and a 1.0% response rate with a prospect list. All digital channels combined only achieve a 0.62% response rate …”).
If you need better than your typical postal mail response, what do you do?
Why direct mail and phone calls work together
Recently, a casino client was planning a large, signature event and it was extremely important that the turnout reached near capacity. The client stated that they were hoping for a ten percent response rate for attendance. After more discussion and a little more than a 3-week lead time, it was clear to the client that it would be a stretch to get a ten percent inbound response from direct mail alone. That’s when we offered to help the direct mail campaign achieve its goal.
They used a direct mail piece to announce the event, and they would utilize phone calls for follow-up calls and reservation reminders.
They did not have the internal capacity to do the outbound calls. Nor did they have the capacity to efficiently handle all of the RSVP calls. They hired Engagex as an extension of their player development department to handle all the incoming calls and to make the personalized outbound calls.
By combining both direct mail and phone support, this is what happened:
Campaign Design
- Target of 10% RSVP response rate.
- Short timeframe, high volume of calls.
- Direct mail followed by a personalized phone call.
Direct Mail/ RSVP Campaign Details
- Send one Direct Mail piece to segmented player database.
- Receive and verify inbound player reservation line for player development team.
- Send daily updates of RSVP list for player development team to print event certificates.
- Make outbound dials to those who have not made a reservation.
- Make personalized reminder/confirmation calls 48 hours prior to the event to remind players of their reservation.
The Results
Inbound calls from the Direct Mail piece generated a 4.4% response rate.
Outbound calls generated an additional 7.9% response rate.
Total Response Rate = 12.3%
When planning your marketing strategy for your next event, consider using personalized phone calls to supplement your direct mail and email efforts. The phone beats all other mediums for response rates – and fits perfectly after the customer has received the initial offer or event piece. And if you don’t have the internal capacity to handle the incoming RSVP calls with the prompt service that your guests are used to, outsourcing a call center is a good alternative. Just make sure that the call center you utilize is an “extension” of your own casino with the high standards and communication skills that your guests expect (personal calls, not recorded messages; articulate and well-informed callers).
