Direct mail success story: Porsche dealer's personalized strategy increases interest
Pfaff Auto, a Canadian luxury car dealership, may have figured out a new way to get direct mail recipients' attention: Extreme personalization. A recent Pfaff mail campaign brought 36 percent of mail recipients to their website and made them think twice before disposing of the flyers.
The strategy, conceptualized by advertiser Lowe Roche, centered around driving a brand new white Porsche 911 to wealthy neighborhoods and photographing the vehicle in each driveway. A personalized, unique direct mail campaign - featuring the actual recipients' homes with the tagline "It's closer than you think" - ultimately generated results from targeted customers who are most likely to purchase a luxury vehicle from Pfaff.
The Porsche brand is not new to direct mail marketing: Last year, the luxury brand created a campaign to change people's minds about the vehicles being "impractical purchases for everyday use," according to David Pryor, Porsche's vice president of marketing. All of the campaign elements - including direct mail sent outside the typical Porsche customer base - directed consumers to a website that listed the benefits and "everyday magic" of owning a Porsche.
Direct mail campaigns with strongly personalized features should be paired with address verification software as a means to cut back on wasted materials caused by invalid or outdated recipient addresses.