The opportunity
We set out to persuade farmers to book their pasture spraying, to combat the growth of thistles and weeds including ragwort, through Farmlands Card. It should be done during Autumn/Winter, but farmers tend to delay due to financial pressure, and it’s a service they don’t have to book directly through Farmlands either, so we had to ‘take ownership’ and also create a product/service offering that would appeal, and make them do it now.

The solution
Farmlands conducted their first ever targeted direct marketing campaign, as a test for three stores, promoting a spraying service offered by third party helicopter contractors, on an incredibly tight budget. To make the service appealing, they had to tie up contracts with helicopter contractors and premium chemical manufacturers, and arranged a facility to offer a three-month deferred payment solution if they put it on their Farmlands Card. Our DM pack was a classic letter/envelope combo, squeezed out every trick in the book from the overprinted but simple envelope to the colour letter with callout panel and detail on reverse. With so little budget, we had to make it do it all in a very simple solution.

The result
Despite being on a shoestring, objectives were still high – achieve incremental spend of at least 10% and take up by at least 5% of those mailed. Despite the bad winter weather slowing down spray days, and interest being levied on the deferred payment option, it was a fantastic success – cut through was high and take up excellent delivering over 30% increase on year on year sales, and an uptake of 8%. Stores reported back to marketing that they had received many calls as a result.

Awards.
2009 Marketing Association RSVP Awards – Bronze – Shoestring Budget