October 26, 2000
Case Study

GoTo.com Rolls Out a Direct Mail Campaign to Attract 10,000 Additional Advertisers

SUMMARY: No summary available.
CHALLENGE
Expand the advertiser base on GoTo.com. GoTo launched its biggest marketing effort to date in September, which incorporates direct mail, telemarketing and online marketing.

According to Craig Wax, senior marketing director, “The genesis of the campaign is to spread the message that we just significantly increased the traffic that we are going to provide our advertisers with the signing of our partnership with America Online.” GoTo wants to attract 10,000 new advertisers by the end of the year.

CAMPAIGN
For the direct mail component of the campaign, GoTo.com drew up a list of 15,000 small to medium business decision makers who are in charge of deciding how to spend online marketing dollars. These decision makers were targeted to receive three waves of communications that would explain:
1. What the GoTo marketplace is
2. The traffic that marketpalce can provide to the
3. businesses
4. How using the marketplace will result in increased
5. revenues from highly targeted leads

Companies that are spending significant dollars on the web were on the list. GoTo also obtained names from list providers. Names were chosen for specific industries that work well on the Marketplace. Companies were also chosen by level of revenue and number of employees.

The package was sent in three waves. The first wave was a postcard that talked about heavy traffic would be coming through GoTo since the site signed its deal with AOL (GoTo also has partnerships with CompuServe, Netscape and CNET).

The theme of the second piece was that businesses needed to be prepared to welcome all of the traffic they’d receive by being on GoTo. It was a three dimensional mailer. Inside there was a picture of a welcome mat with the line, “You’ll be needing one of these when you sign up and bring lots of traffic to your site.”

The third piece was also three dimensional and had a goose and the golden egg theme. “Honk if you want more traffic” appeared on the outside. When it was opened up, there was a picture of a goose and a golden egg and the creative talked about the strength of advertising on GoTo.

The pieces were sent out in two-week intervals starting in September.

RESULTS
Very strong, according to the preliminary stats. September was a record month for online signups to the Marketplace. Currently, GoTo says that sign ups are tracking above that rate for the first 24 days of October. The campaign will run through the end of December.

NOTES: GoTo isn’t afraid to experiment. For the first time, the company is offering a referral rewards program. And, GoTo is trying telemarketing as a way to reach potential advertisers. We’ll be checking back with GoTo in January to get the final results.

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