SMA helps brew up business from a direct mail campaign that was more than SAP Triversity Inc. bargained for.

As a leading global provider of customer-centric solutions for the retail industry, SAP Triversity Inc.’s solutions are installed in over 500 retailers in 32 countries. When SAP Triversity started developing a new Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) solution, they asked SMA to help them execute a direct mail campaign to create awareness of their pending offering — and to identify key retailers to partner with them for the next product development stage.

“We wanted to use an unusual direct marketing approach that would get the attention of a high-level retail executive – something that would stand out,” says Ms. Sydney Day, Director of Marketing at SAP Triversity. “In order to give the piece ‘presence’, a large brown box was used to mail a package of coffee and a letter; respondents would receive a special drip-style coffee maker.”

It certainly did get their attention. Originally scheduled to launch the week of September 11, 2001, the mailing was postponed until mid October. And then, just as the direct mail piece started arriving at the targeted retail organizations, the first anthrax scare hit the U.S. over a weekend.

With mounting panic about mail – any mail – especially from an unknown originator, Ms. Day called Bob Becker first thing on the Monday morning, asking SMA to phone each recipient to assure them it was a direct mail campaign containing coffee, not anthrax. “The situation could have been very damaging, but SMA had everyone on the phone within an hour. They turned it around to be a plus,” says Ms. Day.

Needless to say, people were very grateful and relieved to get that phone call. And some individuals actually called Ms. Day to thank her, commenting that SAP Triversity’s compassion and professionalism had impressed them.

SMA handled every aspect of the campaign, starting with list verification to identify key contacts. Customized labels and coffee bags, unique packing material and boxes were sourced and produced. Simultaneously, SMA provided copywriting services, creating a letter to communicate an easy-to-digest J2EE message with clear value proposition, and a call to action. Finally, SMA coordinated the mailing with the mail house and conducted outbound calls post-mailing.

“I’d give SMA an A+ for project management. This campaign definitely opened doors for us, and had even more of an impact than we expected because it had a very human element,” says Ms. Day.

About SAP Triversity Inc. 

SAP Triversity is a leading global provider of customer-centric solutions for the retail industry. By integrating market-leading Point-of-Sale/Point-of-Interaction (POS/POI), loss prevention and retail CRM solutions, SAP Triversity provides retailers with the capability to offer a consistent shopping experience across all channels, all the time, and enables them to easily and effectively manage the customer lifecycle on a one-to-one basis. SAP Triversity is a single source for retailers to extend existing traditional transaction processing to multiple points of interaction, including the Internet, kiosks and wireless devices.

SAP Triversity’s retail solutions are installed in over 500 retailers in 32 countries, processing billions of transactions a year. Retailers using SAP Triversity’s technology solutions include the U.S. Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES), The Children’s Place, Discovery Channel, Dollar General, Hallmark, Pep Boys, Rite Aid, Staples – Business Depot, The Shoe Company, The Sports Authority, Wawa and Williams-Sonoma. SAP Triversity is headquartered in Toronto, with a main U.S. office located in Philadelphia.  SAP Triversity Asia Pacific Ltd. is headquartered in Hong Kong.  For more information, please visit http://www.triversity.com.