When using target marketing tactics, such as direct mail, to reach prospective households in your service area, sometimes it pays to hone in on particular households versus blanket all households.
This typically applies when the cost of reaching all households in your service area exceeds your budget, or you would simply rather reach a certain demographic makeup and leave others out for a specific campaign (for instance, targeting households with children when promoting a new Family membership rate).
Today’s target marketing technology makes it easier to find ideal members; members most likely to join your Y and stay for an extended period of time.
Here are some tips to targeting ideal households in your service area:
- Produce a Member Profile report. A Member Profile report allows you to clearly see your member’s demographic and psychographic characteristics and makeup. With this information you may want to clone the current members, or even target households that do not look like your current members.
- Define demographic profiles. If you don’t have a Member Profile report, you can still narrow down your target audience with enough confidence to run effective target marketing campaigns. You may want to consider narrowing your audience using what we call household categories such as:
- Age ranges
- Household income levels
- Presence of children versus no presence of children
- Define lifestyle interests. You may also want to consider targeting households with certain lifestyle interests as well, such as households with interests in:
- Active lifestyles
- Parenting
- Community/Charities
- Children
- Precisely define your target market. If you are in a service area with neighboring YMCAs, today’s technology allows you to clearly define the households you want to reach and avoid encroaching on neighboring Ys. You are no longer restricted to a simple circular circumference around a specific location. The below images show how this can work.
One more thing to keep in mind: when targeting prospective members in an effort to grow your membership base, don't make the common mistake of immediately dismissing your current members from your acquisition promotions. You can usually structure the language and offers in an outbound marketing campaign to effectively appeal to both audiences.
Happy marketing!
Bruce
