They asked for a heat map. Then I asked a question.
One day in 1998 someone at TMP Worldwide called me. She asked if we could build a heat map for Terminix, so a visitor could enter a zip code and see where termites were being reported nearby. I told her yes, of course, that's easy. Then I asked whether they had a database of the homeowners in those areas. She said yes. And that one question turned a web page into a national campaign that ran for well over a decade.
These are this engagement's results. Your business is different, so they aren't a promise of yours.
A heat map. Enter a zip code, see where termites have been reported. That was the whole brief, and it was easy. What was sitting next to it wasn't easy, and nobody had asked about it yet. Terminix, through its parent ServiceMaster, had a database of homeowners in those same neighborhoods, and nothing connected any of it: not the map to a mailing, not a mailing to a website visit, not a visit to a phone call, not a call to a sale.
Well, when we light those areas up, what if we sent a postcard to everyone in the database around them? Termites were reported on your street by a neighbor, and while we're in the area we'll give you a free inspection. Even better, when they come to the website, we'll know who they are.
That last part was the piece I already had. Three years earlier Robert Stover had brought me the idea of tracking a single piece of mail all the way to a sale. I told him it couldn't be built. Then I built it. By 1998 PinID was running on LoanLink.com and dozens of other sites, and every recipient could carry a unique identifier that survived the trip from mailbox to web page to phone.
A month or so later people were coming to the site and identifying themselves. So I called again. We've got people showing up and telling us who they are, but if they don't request an inspection, then what? Why don't we have a call center reach out and offer one? That closed the loop, and the loop is what made the campaign worth half a billion dollars instead of a nice map.
The mailing
Every household near a reported street got a piece with its own identifier. When that person visited or called, we knew which piece, which street and which offer had brought them.
The web page
The visitor landed on a page that already knew their neighborhood and the offer they'd received, and asked for one thing: the free inspection.
The call center
Most sales happened on the phone. When someone called the number on their card, the agent already knew who they were. When someone visited and didn't ask for an inspection, an agent called them.
The loop
Every dollar of revenue traced back through the sale, the appointment, the call or the visit, the mailing and the household. Terminix could see, at any level they wanted, what was working and what wasn't.
Every piece of mail, followed to a sale.
The map
A visitor enters a zip code and sees where termites have been reported nearby. That was the whole brief.
The mailing
Every household near a reported street gets a postcard with a free inspection offer and its own identifier.
The web page
The visitor lands on a page that already knows their neighborhood and their offer, and asks for one thing: the inspection.
The call center
Callers are known the moment they call. Visitors who didn't ask for an inspection get a call offering one.
The inspection
The appointment is booked, still carrying the same identifier from the mailbox.
The sale
Every dollar traces back through the sale, the appointment, the call or the visit, the mailing and the household.
It became a national campaign, and it ran for well over a decade. More than $500 million in revenue came back to it. That's an estimate, but it isn't a guess: every postcard carried its own ID, and the system followed it to the visit, the call, the inspection and the sale. The number is built from that tracking. Twenty years later I still sometimes get the mail. I was only ever on that list as a seed for testing.
Once Terminix proved it, the same system went on to more than 200 companies in recruiting, mortgage, insurance and other businesses where a mailing, a website and a phone call all had to add up to one answer. Different industries, same idea: if you can't trace a marketing dollar to a sale, you're not measuring. You're guessing.
Not because of the technology. Google AdWords didn't exist yet and nobody had said "attribution modeling," but that's a footnote. I tell it because the gap between what a company asks for and what it actually needs is usually where the money is, and you find it by asking one more question. Do you have a database of those homeowners? Then what? Most of my work starts exactly like that.
“LoanLink.com was the first mortgage website tied to the PIN ID direct-mail tracking system John and Robert Stover had invented. It could tell us exactly who was visiting the site, what they were looking at, and which loan officer should get the lead.”
What is your company asking for?
Tell me a little about it. If there's a fit, the next step is a conversation of about 30 minutes, at no charge, and if the answer is a bigger question than the one you asked, I'll say so.