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Marketing Shorts
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Business New Haven
11/16/1998
By: BNH
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Plan Furnishes New Customers
For all the brouhaha about marketing plans, we rarely hear of a small local business that really works its plan.
Fair Haven Woodworks is an exception.
The store sells an eclectic mix of upscale, hand-crafted furniture from Vermont, Milan and elsewhere. With a slogan (“Where Soho meets Vermont”) that reflects its status as a “destination” shop, Fair Haven Woodworks attracts a sophisticated clientèle from a wide geographic range. Many local residents bring in out-of-town guests just to look around.
But the store can't survive on impulse purchases. “People rarely buy on their first visit,” says CEO Elizabeth Orsini. The selling cycle averages at least six months from initial contact to first purchase.
Reluctant to downgrade their merchandise mix, Orsini and her husband, owner Kerry Triffin, planned a series of marketing and advertising campaigns to increase visibility and sales among their target market.
First, they surveyed their customers, asking some 35 questions about everything from demographics to reading habits. Then they started advertising, initially in Connecticut Magazine, and put together their first direct-mail campaign.
It consisted of six six-by-six-inch cards with different but related copy and graphics. One card went to architects and professional designers, another to home-based businesses and a third to people who were relocating. The remaining cards promoted seasonal themes and sales. Triffin supplemented the in-house mailing list with purchased names and sent out 6,000 of each card. He and Orsini tracked the effectiveness of each piece by asking everyone who came into the store how they had heard about it.
In the first year, these campaigns boosted the niche store's business by about 35 percent.
Rather than stop there, Orsini and Triffin increased their marketing budget and continued tweaking the programs. They are now working on the third go-round of direct-mail cards and brochures, designed by New Haven graphic artist Jennifer Anderson. Triffin has bought more names and “massaged” existing lists.
The store is also diversifying its print advertising. Orsini and Triffin first added the Connecticut section of the Sunday New York Times, a natural for them. They have since expanded their newspaper advertising to reach prospects in Hartford and Fairfield County, as well as along the shoreline.
They've stopped tracking results of the individual cards and ads - Orsini says it's pretty much impossible by now, given their cumulative effect. But they'll continue working their plan, improving on it bit by bit - and adding a Web site in 1999.
Get Honors for Your Work
The Connecticut Press Club invites writers, journalists, editors, advertising and public relations professionals to enter their best work in its 1998 communications contest, “Honor Your Work.”
Awards will be presented in 45 categories at the CPC's annual awards banquet in May. First-place winners in the statewide competition become eligible for another contest sponsored by the National Federation of Press Women.
To be eligible, entries must have been created, produced or published between December 1, 1997, and December 1, 1998. To request an entry packet, call 203-655-3234.
The contest is open to Connecticut Press Club members and other professionals who join by the entry deadline date, December 4. For membership information, call Al Haut, membership chair, at 203-838-5531.
Awards for Geomatrix
NEW HAVEN - Geomatrix Productions has earned recognition for several recent projects:
n Machine Safety: It's in Your Hands, produced for the Bureau of Business Practice (BBP), won a Silver Connecticut Vision Award (training category) from the Connecticut chapter of the International Television Association.
n A Certificate of Excellence, also from the Connecticut Vision Awards, honored a marketing program that Geomatrix produced for Sargent Manufacturing. The program, Innovation, presents the New Haven-based lock manufacturer's wide range of products in a series of videos formatted to resemble television magazines.
n A third award, a Bronze Telly, celebrated Back Alley Buddies, an educational program about peer pressure. (The Tellies recognize outstanding non-broadcast video programs and television commercials nationwide.) Geomatrix produced the program for Twenty-Third Publications, a publisher of educational books and videos.
n Easter Seals of Connecticut Inc. recently gave Geomatrix a Recognition Award for an hour-long television special, produced in collaboration with writer/producer Diane Ploch. The 1998 Easter Seals Galaxy Awards, which features an award ceremony hosted by Robin Leach, as well as segments highlighting Easter Seals services, aired in August on WTNH-TV.
Pite Plus Focuses on
Capitol Growth
HARTFORD - Pite Plus Marketing recently completed a series of focus groups for the Capitol Region Growth Council. The purpose of the focus groups was to determine how young people perceive the Hartford area as a place to live and work. The information will be used to support the Millennium Project, an initiative designed to help recruit and retain young professionals in the region.
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