An interesting way of getting your message to an older audience.

I have just received some information from a company (Live Marketing). As the name suggests, is all about getting your stuff, directly into the hands of your target customers.

The Boat and Caravan show has a nice tasty audience for anybody interested in the older market. Average age is 48 years, 76% are ABC1 (significantly higher than the UK population), average household income is £38,307 (23% more than the national average) etc etc …

Of course the group are self selecting because of their interest in caravans and boats. For a lot of UK marketers, especially the younger variety, this enough to consign the idea to the scrapheap.

I think that would be foolish. Goody Bags will ensure your promotional material is thrust into to hands of the show attendees.

Sounds like an idea worth thinking about. Dick Stroud

Reader's Digest puts its database of 2 million active readers on the market

Who would have thought it - all those avid readers can now be purchased via MediaLab.

The data consists of subscribers to the magazine, as well as buyers of books and products (e.g. books and DVD's). You can even buy the details of competition entrants.

The file's demographics are ABC1 aged 40+ with an average household income of £23k per annum. They are mainly empty-nesters who own their own home. You can even segment the data by age.

The question, the really big question is - are your potential customers likely to read the Readers Digest? Dick Stroud

A brilliant way of reaching the older market

Very rarely do you see a new marketing concept and think: “that is truly original and would work with an older market”.

This week I discovered ‘Matter’ . This is a Royal Mail service, the result of collaboration with Artomatic.

Matter is a box full of interesting stuff. It is a new way for companies to talk to people by giving them real physical bits and pieces. These might be functional, amusing or interesting things to keep, give away or talk about.

On a Saturday morning the postman comes and gives you this box of engaging items, each from a different brand. This is a photo of a Matter box.

The brilliance of this idea is that you can target the contents of the box to specific markets. Now if the Matter box keeps sending you rubbish then it isn't going to work but if does contain items of value (maybe for the grand kids) then it is a beautiful and inexpensive conduit for brands to reach targeted audiences. Plus, it enables the brand to communicate with the consumer using all of the senses.

I reckon it is great. I am waiting for my first box to arrive. Dick Stroud.

Communications channels and age

Emarketer has some interesting stats from a US study about consumer channel preferences. If the link doesn’t work then you will need to sign-up to the company’s free newsletter – worth doing.

A few observations:

1. Other than for 15-17 year olds, IM is noise level

2. Messaging via social networking sites is becoming worth considering if you are in the right markets – it is still pretty low priority stuff

3. Considering that text messaging is now becoming a mature application it hasn’t made that much of an impact

I guess the big message for companies is the relative effectiveness of mail for the over 45 year olds. Dick Stroud

Not bad e-mail marketing

I am not a fan of 50connect, but since meeting the guy from the company who did the Web site re-design I have been taking a bit more interest in the company.

This morning I received an e-mail from the company. My quick scan transformed into a detailed read. You cannot ask any more than that from an e-mail. Dick Stroud

Email overtakes print direct marketing

This is one of those milestones that I think it is worth recording.

The news comes from the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) Email Benchmarking report (sorry no links). The report also claims that the average number of emails rose by 50% in the last quarter.

I guess at some time in the future some blogger will record that digital has overtaken TV advertising. Probably sooner than we think. Dick Stroud

Relationship between catalogues and Web sites

The Royal Mail have done some interesting research into the ability of catalogues to enhance the value of goods that people buy using the Web.

Click on the image to see the graphs. This shows the uplift created by catalogues analysed by age and annual spending. The big differene is in the 40-49 year age group. Dick Stroud