While the Telus Mike brand was a recognized name, there was very low awareness of its broad range of services and benefits. Most of the people in the target group of construction, transportation and manufacturing industries just thought of Mike as a walkie-talkie. The challenge of this campaign was to increase awareness of all the different ways Mike phones could make their businesses more productive.

The primary objective of the campaign was to encourage recipients to book an appointment with a Mike representative, and ultimately to sell more Mike phones.

A series of highly personalized mailings were used to get the attention of the recipient and build awareness of the benefits and services of Mike. These mailers used a combination of humour and micro-targeting to create a one-to-one relationship with the brand. For example, if the message focused on how tough the phones were made, and sent to Tim, the mailer would read “Built Tim Tough” or “No one can defeat the Tim”.

DM recipients also received PURLS (personalized urls) allowing them to go to a personalized Web site and book a meeting with a Mike rep. Where emails already existed, recipients received a personalized email instead of a Direct Mail piece. (See example on next page)

There were four waves of mailers, and each wave was followed by a telemarketing campaign to encourage more appointments with Mike reps. As an added bonus, during their meetings with prospective new customers, Mike sales reps reported that people were using the direct mail pieces as personalized office decoration.

The targeted direct mail pieces were integrated with an email campaign that supported the DM and invited the respondents to call and set up an appointment. The one-to-one emails were personalized by first name, industry, and selected Mike phones with copy supporting the most relevant benefits to that particular respondent.

The campaign took personalization to a new level, and this drove response to far exceed expectations. A person who received one mailing was 41% more likely to set up an appointment versus somebody who just received a telephone call. That increased to a 56% higher likelihood for those who received two mailings and 118% for those who received three. According to the client, “The response rate is overachieving versus traditional direct mail and what’s really overachieving is the conversion rate”.