Clients Want to See Where Existing Customers Are, to Know Where to Prospect

An important role that many marketing companies play is in helping their customers profile target markets. In addition to socioeconomic factors, location is often critical in defining the best segments. As Bruce of a Boston area direct marketing firm expresses: “Most people choose a dry cleaner based on the convenience of its location. They are more likely to choose a store that is on the travel path between home and work, or within their ‘convenience corridor’. We have found that the best way to win new business is to target the neighbors of those households that are already great customers”. To identify this list of neighbors, Bruce relies on Maponics’ mapping services.

Mapping Provides The “A-ha” Feeling

By adding latitude and longitude coordinates to a client’s customer address list, Maponics is able to create a color coded density map showing where current customers are living. This service becomes even more valuable because Maponics overlays postal carrier route boundaries onto the map. According to Bruce, this visual representation is a key part of his firms strategy “Our clients love the ‘A-ha feeling’ of actually seeing their customer base, and quickly being able to identify their personal convenience corridor”.

Using the map, Bruce identifies which carrier routes have the highest existing customer saturation and orders the corresponding residential address list data. By conducting a merge/purge to remove all of the existing customers’ addresses, Bruce then provides his clients with a clean list of the clients best customers’ neighbors.

Unusually High Response Rates Achieved

Bruce recommends that his clients mail personalized postcards or letter packages 2-3 times per year, with the message along the lines of “We have customers on your street who are satisfied, here is a $10 gift certificate to try out our services”. Bruce has conducted this type of direct marketing in 17 locations for one dry cleaner and according to him “The response has been outstanding, with response rates as high as 20% in some carrier routes.”

In fact his company’s experience in using mapping with its dry cleaner clientele has been so positive that the company is expanding its use of Maponics maps to run similar direct marketing campaigns with its clients in other location sensitive industries. For example, they work with a waste collection company for whom it is very inexpensive to add additional clients on a given street once one stop has already been made. By using mapping to mail only to other addresses on that street, Bruce is sure that their client will be successful in generating new customers on its existing routes, thereby increasing efficiency and upping revenues.