Chandler Writes. You Profit.

Selling a corporate software product that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars is a tough project. You can’t just broadly advertise and expect results. Instead, you need to reach directly into the offices of executive buyers.

There’s no shortage of gatekeepers and roadblocks between you and your quarry, and executive buyers are often deeply jaded to traditional advertising messages. What’s your route to success?

The Campaign

My client was introducing intelligent eMerchandising software that increased the per-cart sales average of large online stores. We rolled out a wide-ranging campaign (involving offline and online elements like print ads, online advertising, e-newsletter sponsorship, email blasts, etc), and the basic campaign concept played out in the visual for our print ad:

The first run of the print ad offered a white paper, and the ad generated far more leads than expected. Time to breathe a sigh of relief.

After all the other elements hit the market, we confronted the problem of getting our sales reps into the offices of 80 highly qualified targets. How could we do that?

Birth of a Lumpy Mailer

I’m a fan of lumpy mailers — three dimensional objects (often with a humorous slant) shipped to small, carefully targeted lists. Because they’re clearly not junk mail and carry an aura of value, lumpy mailers blow right through barriers and onto desks.

The ready-to-ship cart shorn of some of the accompanying elements.

In this case, I located a source for footlong miniature shopping carts costing less than $7 each. We shipped them in large white boxes, and each cart carried a foamcore-mounted piece promising the executive they’d never see another empty online shopping cart.

Also included was a handwritten note from a sales rep promising to get in touch. This was critical — lumpy mailers can be tailored to generate response, but when you send them to high-value targets, the mailer often paves the way for a near-term contact.

The thinking is simple; cold calling a VP’s office earns you a one-way trip to voice mail. But calling an office that just received a fun, three-dimensional goodie (neatly aligned with your product benefits) lands your sales rep a spot on the VP’s appointment calendar.

Results?

Early reports from sales reps were highly favorable, but because my contact is on maternity leave, I don’t have any numbers (and it’s likely too soon, given the long sales cycle). The client’s happy, so I’m not

The moral? Much of the marketing world’s attention is focused online, yet the there’s no reason to ignore traditional techniques like lumpy mailers. They work.