Situation

Print Shop is Broderbund’s largest, most profitable business unit. The Company had just brought in a new CEO who came from the shared mail school of direct response.
   The Print Shop product group wanted to offer a high image upgrade -- the Print Shop Ensemble III  -- to its installed database of over eleven million Print Shop owners in the early Fall. Yet, the product release date for one of the OS versions kept getting moved back due to delay of one format variable, causing Broderbund’s new management to acquiesce over the launch.
   To make matters worse, in its eagerness to show Q3 revenue, management had permitted the available formats to be offered with TMaker's ClickArt, which had just mailed to the Print Shop list in late July. Clearly a case of one hand not knowing what the other was doing, this had the effect of preempting the official upgrade mailing that had been in the works for well over a year. 
   In early October, the decision was made to launch the upgrade campaign right after Christmas in anticipation that, by then, all versions of Print Shop Ensemble III  would be available. The previous year’s Print Shop upgrade campaign had done poorly. And, given the TMaker thunder stealer in July, Broderbund management clearly felt it had to add more value to the offer.

Problem

The new management, which was not yet in the strategic loop, had made it clear they wanted Print Shop to stuff the envelope with Broderbund offers. The shared mail model was clearly the worse possible scenario to present a high image upgrade targeting existing Print Shop owners. 
   Where the agency was used to seeing response rates on upgrades ranging between 20% and 75% for other solo mail campaigns it had done, shared mail marketers were ecstatic when they could pull anywhere over one half of  1%. These were clearly two different schools of direct response cultures; two different expectation levels for projected revenue. Worse, it was a campaign designed by committee.
   Producing successful direct campaigns leans heavily on an empirical flow of promotional trial and error scenarios over a broad array of promotional formats, lists, and offers.. Direct marketers test to roll. But, they need to make sure they're ready to roll out in the same market they're testing. It doesn't make any sense to test one month, then roll out six months later. Management did not have this orientation and the product group was helpless.
Further, there is no smart way to budget for direct

Solution

The Print Shop Ensemble III Upgrade Campaign: The agency convinced Broderbund that clutter was this campaign’s worse enemy; that too many ruffs defuses the call to action; that if they were to go positive on this test, they needed to build relevance between all the components in the package. 
   The agency created a 6" X 11" High Impact Classic Campaign Letter that focused all “equities and entities” on the upgrade offer specifically. The “Private upgrade notice” positioned the upgrade as a “pre-release” at over 50% off the suggested retail price. 
   The OSE used PressWriter and ClickArt as teasers to move recipients into the package.
   The Letter itself focused on product features and benefits, and the ruffs with PressWriter and ClickArt were only introduced in separate postscripts as “bonus” and “exclusive” offers at the close. 
   The Broadside brochure (15” X 22”) graphically showcased the Print Shop Ensemble III Upgrade Offer, but used about 25% of the space to introduce PressWriter as “The long awaited companion to Print Shop.” 
   The Lift Note hooked readers to “Look inside to see why ClickArt and The Print Shop Ensemble III are a marriage made in Heaven.”  Finally, a second Lift Note featuring Print Shop Photo Folios was added as a self liquidating sweetener to the package. Linkage between performance of Print Shop, ClickArt, and Folios was not required or expected.

Results

The conversion rate more than doubled that of the previous year, but came nowhere near its potential. 
   Despite the ClickArt preemption, the PressWriter  product launch, and the inherent clutter in the package, the campaign was highly profitable to Broderbund. The response clearly called for a second mailing. It would cost Broderbund millions of dollars not to mail again. And although the agency demonstrated how the campaign would have tested 100% better than it did without the diffusion in calls to action, the product group was ecstatic given the situation they'd been handed by management. It was later revealed that Broderbund was being groomed by accountants for a sale to Mattel two years later.