The ROI Case for Gender Marketing

Sometimes you need to convince the powers-that-be that the return on investment for a new approach is worth the added time, effort and expense. Direct response rates are especially suitable for an ROI approach, as small changes in response rates can translate into big changes in a campaign's results.

Gender marketing involves a strategy of design and copy versioning that attempts to boost response rates based on the differences in what appeals to men vs. women, at least in aggregate terms.

Here's a sample ROI that demonstrates the potential impact that gender marketing might have. Just substitute your own numbers and stages.

Let's say your company sells furniture and is planning its annual clearance sale. Let's assume you drop 25,000 pieces in the mail for each store and you have 40 stores. You would mail 1,000,000 pieces across the local markets you serve. To keep it simple, we'll assume half your list is comprised of half women and half men.

Over the three-day sale, let's assume that 10% of women visit the store yet only 6% of men. To keep the example consistent with our experience, let's assume that 10% of the recipients who responded to the mailer with a visit actually make a purchase, with an average purchase price of $300.

In this experience, the gender response gap between women and men is 4%. 50,000 women visit your 40 stores, but only 30,000 men. Of those 80,000 visitors, 8,000 make a purchase averaging $300 for total chain revenue resulting from the mailing of $2,400,000.

Not bad, but consider the cost of that gender response gap: The 20,000 fewer men who responded resulted in 2,000 fewer sales worth a whopping $600,000! The relatively low cost of creating and producing a second version pales in comparison to the upside of closing the gender response gap.

Need Some Help?

If you need some help with gender marketing, personalization or variable data in general, give us a call at 905-660-1515. We'd be happy to help you think through your tests, creative options and even produce your campaign.