One campaign.
5% response.
60% converted.
300% ROI.
100% new business.
INTRODUCTION
A six-person business on a former farm in Cumbria set out to crack a market it had never sold into before. No off-the-shelf data existed for it, no supplier had a ready-made list, and the camping season was closing in fast. Two weeks later, Logs Direct had a mailer in the post to 1,500 carefully qualified prospects, and within days the orders began to arrive.
That single campaign delivered a 5% response rate, converted 60% of those responses, and returned 300% on the investment, every order from a customer the business had never had before. This is how a hand-built database and one sharply targeted mailer opened a brand-new market.
A NICHE BUSINESS LOOKING FOR A NEW AUDIENCE
Logs Direct is a specialist wood products business built on a former farm in Cumbria. It takes in whole tree trunks by the lorryload and turns them into kiln-dried logs, kindling, bark, sawdust and pellets, the kind you will have seen stacked outside service stations and supermarkets up and down the country. A compact operation with a genuinely national reach, and it wanted to widen that reach by winning an audience it had never approached.
The brief was a simple one: help us find and win a new market. But a mailer alone would never have managed it. Logs Direct needed the right audience to send it to, and that audience existed in no list money could buy. So, we built one.
BUILDING AN AUDIENCE THAT DIDN’T EXIST OFF THE SHELF
Rather than settle for a sub-par, ready-made list, we identified a promising, untapped market – campsites licensed for open fires – and assembled the data for it from the ground up.
We worked through the UK’s campsites one by one, identifying and qualifying each, then capturing it into a clean, properly structured, mailable format. Names and addresses were only the start. We captured the number of pitches too, and, crucially, the opening and closing dates, so not a single mailer went to a site sitting shut for the season. What Logs Direct ended up with was a bespoke, qualified database of 1,500 genuine prospects, built for them and theirs to keep, the kind of precise targeting no off-the-shelf list could ever match.
DESIGNED, PRODUCED AND MAILED IN TWO WEEKS
With the data in hand, our studio designed and produced the mailer in house, taking the whole campaign from brief to letterbox in around two weeks. For a job starting from nothing, that is quick!
Before any design began, the account manager on Logs Direct went to see the business first-hand: how it works, what it makes, and what it wanted this campaign to achieve. That understanding ran right through the creative, the hooks and the response channels, so the finished mailer did far more than look good. It was built to earn a reply.
ORDERS WITHIN DAYS, AND EACH ONE A NEW CUSTOMER
A 5% response rate is worth dwelling on. Direct mail has long run to a rule of thumb where a 1% response counts as a good day, so this came in at five times the benchmark. Of everyone who responded, 60% went on to place an order. The campaign returned 300% on the investment, and every order came from a genuinely new customer, with repeat orders already following and further campaigns in the pipeline. For a business setting out to open a market, that is 100% new business, with lifetime customer potential attached.
Landing with a tightly qualified audience at just the right moment in their season, the mailer worked, and quickly. The first orders came in within four to five days of it landing.
WHY BESPOKE DATA MAKES THE DIFFERENCE
A mailer is only ever as good as the audience it reaches. What sets Telescope apart is the ability to build that audience from scratch, researching, qualifying and shaping bespoke data for one specific target market, then designing and producing the campaign that goes out to it, all under one roof. For a smaller business with no obvious way into a new market, that is precisely what turns a promising idea into orders on the books.
WHAT IT DELIVERED FOR LOGS DIRECT
A brand-new market, opened from a standing start. A qualified, bespoke database the business now owns outright. Response and conversion rates well beyond what most direct mail delivers. A 300% return, every penny of it from new customers. And an approach that worked well enough that Logs Direct has already come back for the next one.
IN THEIR WORDS
"Telescope felt like part of our team from the start. They took the time to understand our business, then went and built us an audience from scratch that didn't exist anywhere else, which was no small job. They just got on with it and made it easy, and the results spoke for themselves: a 5% response, 60% of those converting, and a 300% return, all of it new business, with orders arriving within days of the mailer landing. It opened up a whole new customer base for us."
Phill Heartwell, ecommerce and marketing manager, Logs Direct
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT BESPOKE DIRECT MAIL CAMPAIGNS
Can a direct mail campaign reach a market with no existing data?
Yes. For Logs Direct, we built the audience from scratch, researching, qualifying and structuring a bespoke database of 1,500 prospects in a market with no off-the-shelf list, then designed and mailed the campaign to it.
What response rate can a well-targeted direct mail campaign achieve?
It varies by market, but a tightly qualified campaign can comfortably beat the usual direct mail benchmark. Logs Direct saw a 5% response, against the 1% often treated as a strong return, with 60% of those responses converting into orders.
How quickly can a direct mail campaign be produced?
Logs Direct went from brief to mailing in around two weeks, built on bespoke data researched and captured from scratch, with the first orders arriving four to five days after the mailer landed.