Erica North/Belinda Palmer/Julian Webster/Michelle Stewart IT Managers in the UK receive up to 15 selling calls a day from IT providers and around 35 mailpacks a week. From IBM alone, they can receive up to 18 mailpacks a month from various departments. The brief was to address this problem and create a more efficient and effective dialogue between IBM and these all-important customers. This pack which comprised a screwed-up letter with the line "We realise some of our communications to you end up like this". It then went on to explain that IBM realised that they were sending too much mail to the recipient. However, if they were to fill in the enclosed questionaire about which parts of IBM’s offering they were interested in IBM would then be able to only send them information about the relevant products. In simple, help us to make your mail more relevant. Unlike most mailpacks it creates instant emphasis with the clients' situation – everybody is trying to sell them everything whether they need it or not. IBM are different. They only want to offer IBM managers what they have said they’re interested in. While on the one hand IBM were offering this to customers and gaining their trust, on the other they were able to gain more information about the individual customers and develop more of a customer relationship programme. Ian Gaffney   Production   Ogilvy & Mather

Unlike most mailpacks it creates instant emphasis with the clients' situation – everybody is trying to sell them everything whether they need it or not. IBM are different. They only want to offer IBM managers what they have said they’re interested in. While on the one hand IBM were offering this to customers and gaining their trust, on the other they were able to gain more information about the individual customers and develop more of a customer relationship programme.

While it is still early days as the mailpack can only truly be judged by how successful the following mail programme is and how many sales result from the more informative follow-up pieces the responses levels to this all-imprtant establishing pack have been excellent. The mailing went to 10,000 individuals and has received 60 replies online and over 500 and growing, by post – a response rate of 5.6% from a target market inundated with mail.