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TruckersB2B, having found that direct mail is the best way to communicate with its members, plans to almost double the amount it sends this year.

Why? Because the firm's customers aren't opening e-mails.

The Indianapolis-based company, a volume buying service for small truck fleets, will raise its total mail volume to 60,000 pieces per quarter, compared with 35,000 pieces in 2005, said marketing director Sommer Sweeney.

TruckersB2B has been growing steadily. At the end of 2002 it had 11,400 fleets representing 319,300 trucks as members; by last December it had enrolled 19,929 fleets, or 424,981 trucks.

According to Sweeney, over the last three years the firm has sent some 2,500 e-mails per month to inform members about how much they're receiving in rebates from TruckersB2B's vendor partners, and to introduce new products. But direct mail has proven more effective, especially given the declining open rates for the e-mailings, she said.

Last year TruckersB2B dropped oversize postcards to 7,000 fleets to promote Wabash National Trailer Corp., which led to a threefold increase in purchases from this company during the following three months, Sweeney said. Truckers B2B also has used co-branded letters and coupon booklets in mailings with vendors such as Michelin, and it got a 3.1% response two years ago to a 14,000-piece coupon mailing that advertised tires from Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.

That effort, budgeted at less than $50,000, was designed to increase Goodyear's sales and market share among TruckersB2B members while building the group's membership base. The coupons entitled recipients to $20-per-tire rebates on purchases of up to 100 select Goodyear commercial truck tires. In the end, 580 coupons were redeemed for rebates. Of those, 256 came from new members who joined when they used the coupons; the remaining 324 were turned in by existing members.

The mailing piece asked for information like principal contact name, the number of commercial tires and retreads bought within the past year, and whether the recipient used Goodyear tires or a competing brand. Recipients responded via a toll-free telephone number, fax or mail.