2020 Silver Best Use of Mail

Agency: Sky Creative Agency

Client: Sky

Campaign Name: Missed Parcel DM

Campaign Overview

Return to sender

Ignorance isn’t bliss when lapsed customers fail to respond. Sky wanted to tackle the issue and win back previous subscribers.

Strategy

The Sky Winback programme is designed to persuade lapsed customers to come back to the broadcaster. Despite well-planned, well-targeted and structured campaigns featuring different mailings, a sizeable number refuse to return.

The business-as-usual campaign consisted of a standard C5-format, Sky-branded letter and outer envelope. While it had proven fairly effective an increase in conversion rates was desired. That meant putting very different creative to the test.

The team looked at the problem in a whole new way. Because someone had cancelled, Sky couldn't deliver great shows to them. This insight drove the idea: a subverted, personalised, ‘missed-parcel’ card that allowed clear and simple communication of key messages.

Of course, the recipient didn't have to go to the Post Office to collect anything. They just needed to pick up the phone to Sky.

Creativity

The creative needed to be the polar opposite of the existing work.

Sky stripped back the design, copy and print format so it communicated the benefits as succinctly as possible. To make the creative authentic the team decided to exclude the price point. This would give an indication of whether price was the most important aspect in driving a response.

A bold step was taken of including just a phone number as the call to action. If people called rather than going online, they were more likely to be convinced to resubscribe by specially trained and experienced call-handlers.

Results

Sky mailed 459,000. The campaign garnered a 43% increase in the number of calls to the call centre, easily beating targets.

Some people called to renew on the spot while others phoned simply because they were intrigued by the mailer and wanted to find out more. During 5,300 calls, Winback managed to convert 1,400 people back to Sky

Overall, there was a 33% increase in ex-customers returning, giving the campaign a 6:1 return on investment. The mailer cost just 2p per piece (20p with postage included), making it the broadcaster’s most inexpensive, yet most effective, Winback DM campaign ever.

The Team

Sky - Theo Simms, Senior Marketing Manager - Tom White, Marketing Controller - Tom Giblin, Developer - Joanne Ellis, Delivery Controller - Alexa Weselby, Head of Customer Comms Experience

Sky Creative Agency - Dan Perosin, Designer - Nigel Edginton-Amor, Creative Director - Ben Wade, Senior Copywriter - Darren Keeley, Production Team Lead - Josh Fazey, Artworker - Bianca Cohn, Account Manager - Vicky Winstanley, Senior Account Manager - Joss Finnan, Account Director - Alex Lemcovich, Senior Quality Controller - Fiona Millard, Print Manager