DM Case Study - Apr08

Getting a ‘Piece' Of the auction - literally

Selling through the use of DMs is tough. Convincing your clients is tougher. Selling art-pieces is even tougher. Selling the idea of using DMs and actually selling art-pieces is the toughest of the lot. But Kaiiten Communications managed to do just that.

Masterpiece Auction House in February 2008 engaged us to embark on a full scale PR and direct marketing campaign for it. We had to assist the client to attract an effective turnout of over 600 art enthusiasts and art investors to their first-ever Singapore auction over four days, from 28 February to 2 March 2008, at the Sheraton Towers.

Being its first foray into Singapore, we needed to get its positioning right from the start. We had to promote its business of ‘Art Auctions' to target local art lovers and more importantly, those who could afford to invest nothing less than a generous five digit sum in a single painting. As such, we proposed to do a direct mail campaign targeting the expatriate community, high net worth individuals and foreigners living in Singapore, and also people regionally who were interested in alternative investments.

The direct mail portion was a significant part of the entire publicity and marketing exercise to directly reach our client's target audience. Each flyer was a "piece" of the action or "auction" - we used it as a vehicle to brand an image, communicate a message and inspire a call to action.

In this case, the call to action was to come for the preview and to participate in the auction. However, to supplement the direct mail invitations to the four-day preview and auction event, we also promoted the event to the masses as one that featured the top of the line pieces, produced by renowned Indonesian, China and South East Asian artists. We established this via extensive media coverage in the Business Times, The Straits Times, Channel NewsAsia and News Radio 93.8FM leading up to and during the event.   

Data-mining was the most important aspect of our direct mail campaign. A total of 5,000 direct mailers and emailers were printed and sent to databases in these target groups: Expatriates, Indonesians, Singaporeans and Foreigners. 

The mailers were sent out in the following manner:

1. 45%  to internal relevant database  
2. 15% invitation cards to embassies and business associations
3. 25% sent to cultivated database of high net worth individuals and art investors 
4. 15%  sent through financial partner database

As a result of the integrated PR and direct mailing activities leading up to the event, about 1,500 persons turned up over the four days of the art preview and auction - in the following mix: 50% were Indonesian, 15% Singaporeans and 35% expats & foreigners. We had also a total registration of 800 bidders over the two days of auction.

One of the key difficulties we faced was the currency of the entire database; which saw return mail total about 2% of the entire quantity sent out. However, no opportunity was lost as this exercise enabled us to keep track of address and contact detail changes and to make the necessary updates.  

The essence of direct mail is in targeting the right target audience to the specific event in question. Used strategically, supported by a strong PR and marketing exercise, DMs become a very powerful tool to match real customers to businesses. We believe the awareness generated through this integrated publicity and marketing campaign was a success because we managed to successfully attract a niche target audience for our client; that was critical for their grand debut in Singapore.

Elaina Olivia Chong

Managing Director

Kaiiten Communications