As a means of communication, using a fax machine isn’t top of the list for reliability. Fifteen years ago it was at the cutting edge of business communications – every office had one, usually in a central and prominent location. Today however, the fax machine is usually hidden out of sight and rarely attended, and the B2B marketing industry has, by and large, abandoned fax marketing in favour of online methods.
We’ve taken a deliberate policy not to invest any further in fax data, says Nick Fraser, head of B2B at data provider Experian. We do have around 130,000 fax records, but of those only about 61,000 are not on the Fax Preference Service (FBS), and so by the time you’ve segmented it to any extent, there isn’t very much to work with. Email has replaced fax as the main direct marketing medium for B2B marketers and nowadays we just don’t sell that much fax data.
There have always been problems with fax marketing. One is that recipients have to pay for the fax to be printed and have no choice in the matter. A 2004 survey by the Computer Security Institute found that businesses were paying an average of £500 a year to print fax marketing messages. Another is that it is difficult to control how the finished fax will look. Email suffers from similar issues, but these can be resolved with a rudimentary understanding of email formatting and are in no way as damaging to brands as are smudged illegible scraps of fax paper.
Despite these problems, the greatest single cause of the decline of fax marketing has been its misuse by practitioners and the consequent introduction of the FPS. Vic Godding, chairman of the B2B Council of the Direct Marketing Association, says, Fax marketing was abused by unscrupulous operators who bombarded companies with offers they didn’t want. The result is that fax marketing is now dead and buried. There are 1.9 million fax numbers on the FPS, 90 per cent of the total number available, and around 30,000 are added to it every month.
Steve Cook, MD of data provider, Market Location, agrees, We hold 811,000 fax numbers on our data universe of all 2.3 million UK businesses. Once the numbers have been screened against FPS there are only 427,000 available for fax marketing purposes. Unfortunately, bad messaging and abuse of the medium over the last 10 years has led to the demise of fax marketing.
Not everyone is so certain the medium is finished. Research in 2005 by marketing agency Adestra revealed that while it is declining in popularity overall for direct marketers, 80 per cent of existing fax marketers plan to increase or continue to use fax marketing in 2006. Adestra found that use of fax marketing remains stable within B2B sectors such as event organising, publishing, car-leasing, manufacturing and professional services. Cook at Market Location also agrees there is still a place for fax marketing and says that in the last year he has even seen a slight increase in demand for fax data.
Heather Westgate, MD of direct marketing agency TDA, comments, There is less fax marketing around these days, but interestingly, this can mean that receiving a piece of fax marketing is more of a novel event so it might achieve more cut through than another medium. If you can obtain clean and up to date fax data, you may find that engaging with a media channel that most people think is outmoded generates a significant uplift in response. Smart marketers use whatever tools are available to achieve the best, most cost-effective results. As part of an integrated strategy fax could still have an important role to play in B2B marketing for years to come.
The key to successful fax marketing is, as Westgate says, obtaining clean, recent data. Paul Crabtree, marketing director of Adestra, one of the few agencies still to provide fax marketing services, believes that the medium will continue to be useful for certain B2B marketers, such as publishers, exhibition organisers and office utilities providers, but that it must be used carefully. For this reason he advises clients to steer clear of list sellers in this area and to use only data collected from internal databases and bespoke research.
He says, Fax has many benefits. It is immediate, it can be personalised with salutations and pre-completed forms and at two or three pence it is a great deal cheaper than post at 21 pence. However, because of the FPS and misuse in the past, data is scarce, so don’t annoy the list you have got. Just because you’ve got 20,000 names you don’t have to fax all of them. We have a maximum of 5000 for each campaign we do, and we get great results for our clients.
One such client is Cobo media, a marketer of theatre and concert offers at venues ranging from the Royal Opera House to London fringe theatres. Although it sells a consumer product, it does so by faxing offers through to businesses. Richard Andrews, MD, says, We don’t think of them as faxes we’re sending, but as A4 posters that people can stick up by the watercooler and discuss.
The quality of data is paramount for Cobo. Over many years it has built up a database of around 25,000 names split into 12 special interest groups. It has accumulated these by sending out faxback forms to ascertain interest and from people contacting the company asking to be added to the list. Andrews adds, We only fax offers to people who are interested and we make sure it’s a good offer, well-presented. This approach costs only £200 for 1000 destinations. It not only brings great results for us, it also allows many office workers to enjoy live music and drama at very affordable prices.
There are a number of ways to obtain fax data, but one of the most efficient, and reliable, is to use your own records. Most companies have been gathering fax numbers for a number of years, but they may be spread around the organisation on different databases:
The best place to start is your sales and marketing databases, as many fax numbers will have been collected by your sales team.
Don’t forget operational databases. Check your accounts team and perhaps customer services. If they send information, invoices or order forms via fax to customers they will also have built up databases of information.
It might also be useful to look at ‘goneaways’. When a person leaves their position, their email address will bounce, but their fax number is unlikely to change so if you address your fax to a job title you’ll be able to reach their successor.
Then there’s always common sense – visit company web sites and add their advertised fax number to your key contact records.
In some cases you may have the fax number of a colleague working in the same team of a target person. With some intelligent data manipulation, you’ll be able to append the fax number to both records.
Lastly, it’s important to always suppress and clean. All fax databases should be run against the FPS (www.fpsonline.org.uk/fps) as well as your own suppression lists before broadcasting.
It seems that fax marketing may have a future after all. Although its use has declined in recent years, its benefits are still relevant today for any company that wants to reach a large number of businesspeople at one location, for low investment, and is more concerned with immediacy of offer than with preservation of brand imagery. If these companies are able to learn the lessons of the past and limit campaigns to carefully- selected lists, then the fax will continue to be a valuable niche marketing medium.
