Adestra Fax Marketing Benchmarking Study Summary

Fax marketing is a niche medium. Historically, a popular channel, many marketers have replaced it with email. So what is the future for fax marketing?

This survey discovers that surprisingly fax marketing lives on, thriving within certain industry niches. This throws up a new problem- there is very little industry information about how marketers use fax marketing, how well it performs and how they believe they can improve their promotions.

This research provides useful benchmarking information for established fax marketers and those considering using the medium for the first time.

Who can you reach by fax marketing

There are still a huge number of fax machines being used in the UK. According to industry research house, Key Note Ltd (www.keynote.co.uk ), the UK market for photocopiers and fax machines was worth £805m in 2004. They believe that although the fax channel will decline over the next 5 years it will not become extinct.

Research Methodology

Over 65 marketers took part in the research including an online survey of direct marketers including LexisNexis, Graduate Prospects Ltd, Childline Perfect Cover Ltd, Equisys and IIR Exhibitions, face to face discussions with attendees of the DM Show and conversations with existing Adestra fax clients.

Key findings

Is fax a dying medium

• Over 96% of the sample used fax marketing for B2B marketing. It is however only used in a number of industries:
  • Publishing
  • Event organizing
  • Leasing
  • Engineering
  • SMEs
  • Training
  • Professional Services
  • PR Agencies
  • Local Government
  • Manufacturing.

Of those that have used fax in the last 6 months, only 1 in 5 people plan for their usage of fax to decline in 2006. Of those that used to use it, all have no plans to use the medium again. This suggests that when you stop using fax, you don’t go back.

When asked why they no longer use fax marketing, the research discovered the most common answers were:

“Our fax marketing program has been replaced by email marketing”

“I have changed jobs, and fax marketing is not common practice here”

“I couldn’t measure the effectiveness of the medium easily” ><

>< this is despite 86% of participants claiming they can measure the ROI of the fax promotions

Fax Marketing Campaign Performance

• Benchmarked delivery rates: The sample confirmed that the delivery rates of their fax broadcasts varied considerably based upon their data collection methods and the age of the data.

However, delivery rates can be improved significantly through data cleaning processes designed to correct bad numbers. One participant reported an improved delivery rate by 18% through correcting incorrect characters within their dataset.

• Response Rates: this again depends on the offer and the list, but overall the sample confirmed that fax’s response rates are a fraction of direct mail.

However, the cost implications mean that the returns can be greater by using an increased reach. Response rates between 0.01% and 0.1% were not uncommon.

• Reach Rates: no-one in the sample had measured how effective fax marketing was at moving from the fax machine to the intended recipient. Anecdotal evidence supported that addressing fax marketing to a named recipient or to a job title increased response rates significantly.

• Brand recognition: ad hoc research by respondents operating within the events industry suggested that many attendees remember receiving fax marketing amongst the many other messages they were sent.

Why do people use fax

Fax marketing is used mostly by B2B marketers to sell off the page (43%) or drive leads to a sales team (38%)

How to improve your fax marketing

Fax Marketing Database

4 out of 10 respondents said their data could be improved, using better, cleaner contact details. Adestra would recommend:

• Merging your fax marketing data with your customer database to allow personalisation and pre-filling of reply vehicles
• Suppressing bad fax addresses when they fail and if relevant investing in a cleaning operation to capture clean fax numbers
• Ensuring data capture forms separate STD codes to minimise bad data

Fax Marketing Message Design

22% said their message design. Adestra would recommend following the guidelines from within our “Effective Design and Layout for fax marketing” article including:

• Addressing your fax using personalisation or title slugs (addresses to a job title)
• Imagery: ensuring when printed they are not distorted
• Lay-out & text: easily scanned and legible
• Call to action forms: pre-filled where possible and easy to use

Fax Marketing Measurement and reporting

Can you measure your campaigns? 86% said they could although 22% were concerned about their reporting. Adestra recommend that you measure your fax promotions by:

• Numbering the reply vehicles
• Using campaign specific ‘priority’ codes (tracking codes) that clients have to quote to claim an incentive
• Where possible asking each customer how they found out about you.

With useful case studies and industry research

68% of all practising fax marketers would be keen to receive regular information about fax marketing best practice.

Adestra would recommend you sign-up for Adestra updates our best practice newsletter or browse our best practice centre on our web site – www.adestra.co.uk

More information and a full copy of the survey results

For a full copy of the studie's complete findings, please contact Paul.Crabtree@adestra.com