HelloFresh homemover direct mail campaign
Background
HelloFresh is the perfect cooking solution for a time-poor person who wants to eat healthy, exciting food and make mealtime something you can share.
Over the last 3 years, every household that matches the HelloFresh customer profile has been targeted at least once through a multichannel approach, with mail being the most successful direct response activity - 10 million mail packs have been mailed to potential customers in the past 12 months alone.
HelloFresh sought to build on this success by exploring new ways to increase response rates and reach new audiences.
Solution
HelloFresh knew that success wasn’t just about letting people know about their product; it was about timing of the message too. Working with their agency PSE, they identified Homemovers as a potential audience. This ‘life-changing event’ meant that consumers reassess many parts of their lives; HelloFresh could target them straight after moving, a time when they are changing numerous products and services they receive.
As a starting point, PSE recommended adding Royal Mail Homemover data to HelloFresh’s traditional September large mailing – timed to drop after the long summer holidays. Initial testing of the data delivered a breakthrough in response rates, with tracked voucher codes posting a 28% uplift on already high performing data sets; it was clear the Homeover opportunity had to be maximised.
As the Royal Mail dataset is limited in volume, PSE identified new specialist Homemover data providers. Once these were established, HelloFresh customer profiles were overlaid and insights which had been learned from developing the channel over the previous 3 years were applied to create the next campaigns.
It was decided to use the successful creative from previous campaigns to avoid adding another variable - on top of the new audience and the element of timing – to the testing mix.
The role of mail was to encourage people online to see the exciting range of menus and recipes and the ‘simple to order’ customer journey, so this mailing used a simple, clean, fresh design to do just that. Inside were unique QR codes that not only tracked code redemptions but delivered the customer straight to the recipes ordering page.
Tipped onto the mailings were two voucher code cards. Removable offer cards made the piece interactive and gave the recipient two opportunities to respond, with the second card delivering an ‘introduce a friend’ opportunity as an additional perk.The Homemover mailings carried the tried and tested 60% off the first order offer.
Results
The new Homemover dataset delivered an exceptional uplift in response rates of 64.5% compared to all other datasets. Introducing Homemover data improved the overall CPA of the mail by 26%.
Homemover is now an always on channel. New customers are won even on non-seasonal mailing months such as August and December.
HelloFresh’s next step is to develop and test specific Homemover creative and continue to refine the data targeting models.
Source: DMA Awards, Best use of Mail (Silver), 2023