Contact Frequency: How Often to “Touch” a Cold Prospect?

Posted in: AERIOS, Lead Generation by admin on 08/09/2011

We’ll explore this popular question with our final post under the topic of Lead Generation.

Traditional media reps say that “a prospect has to see your ad 3 times to be “effective” – i.e., they can recall both the product and your brand.”  Some will say 7x, and others will quote London businessman Thomas Smith, who in 1885 said it takes up to 20x from initial impression to purchase.

Of course the media reps make more $ when they sell frequency – whether they can track it or not.

In the direct response world, we know quantitatively how things perform. And we’ve uncovered a paradox:

Awareness increases with frequency, but campaign response rate drops off exponentially.

In this direct mail example, the response rate for each “hit” is half of the previous one (without varying the package, list or offer).

So for clients with a very large target audience (e.g., the state of CA), we use a “skim” strategy. We touch prospects only once with DM – reserving other, lower-CPM media to provide frequency.

And for clients in smaller niches, traditional media often has too much waste. So here we use multiple hits of direct response to drive both awareness and sales. By continually varying the package and offer, we keep it all “fresh” for prospects. The result is a much smaller trail-off in response, and we maintain our client’s campaign ROI.

So the number of “hits” varies by client and situation. And the best way to assure optimal frequency is with Frequency Planning. This process pinpoints how to measure the effects of frequency, how often to contact prospects, how much to spend, and at what point one may see diminishing returns.

More on that in a future post…