Advertisement Blue Ox   Click Ad to pop-up full view

With that thought in mind, I recently purchased the Trailer Life RV Buyers Guide 2003. I wanted to see if this was an effective marketing tool for many of the companies that were represented in the various product sections that comprise this informative publication.

Let’s make a few assumptions as we go through this exercise, which will be continued in next month’s issue of RV News.

Let’s assume that most people who buy this publication could be considered newcomers to our industry. After all, a seasoned RVer that has owned a few RV’s, would know where to go for information on new models, probably frequents a few shows each spring, and probably has developed an affinity for the manufacturer they will purchase their products from.

Let’s also assume that many of the purchasers of this guide do not yet own an RV and look forward to receiving information from the manufacturers they circled on the reader response card.

I decided to see just how manufacturers and dealers respond to the various requests that are made by consumers via this methodology; buy a book, fill out a card, mail the card, and wait until the postman deposits something in your mailbox.

Sounds simple enough, but as you will see, perhaps it doesn’t work quite like we think it should.

I filled out two response cards. One card included a request for information from 25 towable manufacturers and the other card requested information from 25 motorhome manufacturers. I deliberately mailed both cards on April 28th, so that they would be at the fulfillment center by the first of May.

Then it was time to set up a spreadsheet and wait to see what happened. If something happened, then I would log my comments about the response and the type of material sent in response to my request. I logged the date the cards were mailed, the date information was mailed to me from a manufacturer and the date I received the information. Columns were also set up to note when I first heard from a dealer in response to the manufacturers mailing and whether that response was via telephone or another mailing from the dealer.

So how did we, the industry, do with this exercise in the first month after the cards were mailed?

• Motorhome requests for information: 25 Responses received the first month after card was mailed: 9 (36.0%)
• Motorhome information received from manufacturers: 9
• Follow-up by dealer: 2 (22.2%)
• Towable requests for information: 25
• Responses received the first month after card was mailed: 8 (32.0%)
• Towable information received from manufacturers: 8
• Follow-up by dealer: 1 (12.5%)
• Total requests for information: 50
• Responses received the first month after card was mailed: 17 (34.0%)
• Combined information received from manufacturers: 17
• Follow-up by dealer: 3 (17.6%)

Congratulations go to National RV for the first response received in the motorhome category. The requested information on the Islander motorhome was in my mailbox on May 12th, and just two days later I received a followup call from Peter Gaudreau of Diamond R.V. Centre with a message on my answering machine. Peter invited me to a National open house that they were having the following weekend and then followed that up with a mailing that highlighted the entire National product line and additional information on the dealership.

As good as they were on the motorhome side, there has still be no response from the towable side on the request for information on the Splash trailer. Perhaps that will still come, but nothing yet.

First response honors go to Adventure Manufacturing (Timberlodge), K-Z, Inc. (Sportsmen), and Play-Mor trailers who all had information in my mailbox on May 16th.

However if we were giving trophies, it would have to go to Play-Mor because we heard from Glenn Campbell at Breezy Bend RV on May 29th and have not had any follow-up by a dealer representing Timberlodge or Sportsmen.

What can we learn from the preliminary results after just one month? I would suggest that most people who fill out readerresponse cards do not keep track of who they checked off and simply wait for the information to arrive.

It stands to reason that the company that can respond quickly, and provide exactly what the prospect asked for, and has a system in place to assure that the follow-up action plan gets to the dealer and the dealer follows through with the prospect …. might, just might, be the first one to sell that person a new RV.

More importantly, we apparently have a lot of companies that are slow to respond to this type of lead. We must assume that all manufacturers receive notification from the publisher at approximately the same time. We can see where several companies simply applied the mailing label provided by the publisher to the envelope and somebody inserted information and mailed it. Others took the time to personalize the response with a hand-written or typed label.