Expert advise helps create Ikea’s most successful mailer
The Background
IKEA were experiencing record low levels of store visitation. The bleak headlines about rising household bills, and the spectre of COVID-19 still haunting people’s collective memory, made people reluctant to visit and spend. The situation became even more dire when IKEA’s previously successful spend-threshold promotions failed to drive sales.
They needed a new engaging way to entice customers in store, beyond simple discounts, with the aim of generating over £1 million in short term sales.
IKEA’s most receptive and lucrative audience to get instore are their IKEA Family members (IKEA’s loyalty programme). Financially, these customers spend on average 24% more than non-members, so encouraging them to visit would help make up for lost sales.
The Solution
It was clear that a powerful hook was needed as previous efforts with offers and discounts just weren’t cutting it. FOX worked with the agency to offer valuable creative, manufacturing and technical advice to move a conceptual design into reality, a self-mailer was developed so it could be sent directly into IKEA Family Members’ homes. One that could be manufactured in high volumes, be cost effective, engaging and deliver the results that IKEA were looking for.
When landing on the doormat IKEA Family members were presented with what seemed to be a jumble of dots. To decode what these dots were, the recipient was encouraged to take a moment out of their day and enjoy playing a dot-to-dot. Once the dots were joined together, a money-off threshold discount amount was revealed to claim in store. Having experienced the benefits of play, IKEA Family members were invited to redeem their offer in their nearest store. And finally, once used, the mailer could be sent to the recycling bin as an origami paper airplane with origami folds.
The Results
FOX mailed this out to one million IKEA Family members between August 30 and September 5, 2022. Within three weeks, 19,000 customers had redeemed the voucher in-store. And with a resulting ROI of 4.5:1 this significantly outperforming the year’s earlier best-performing mailing and became Ikea’s most successful mailer of 2022.
