Mad Money

Not all consumers buying luxury goods are wealthy.

“You want both aspirational and elite customers,” says David Manela, vice president of strategic marketing at Ideeli Inc., which operates a shopping site featuring high-end merchandise. “When a luxury brand offers entry-level goods at a loss, it's able to create emotion around the brand.”

How does this work? Let's say a middle-income prospect goes to a posh retail outlet and buys a premium leather wallet.

“It may not be the most expensive item on your shelf, but you are acquiring a future customer,” Manela says. “You need to be able to do the same through your direct marketing.”

Even these customers should be marketed to as if they were already in the desired wealth bracket, and that means avoiding discounts and financial incentives on their first order.

“Five years down the road, when I look at those customers' lifetime value, I'm not going to be very happy,” Manela says.

Aren't middle-income shoppers affected by the economy? Yes, but that doesn't mean they're going to stop spending.

“When people get depressed they tend to shop more,” Rosner notes.

Of course, even the rich aren't completely immune from gas prices or environmental concerns. And that may be good for direct marketers.

“People are not getting in the car and driving to the mall,” Rosner continues. “We're seeing that across the board with our multichannel clients — their online sales are up and retail sales are down.”

This presents a problem for luxury marketers, who are selling their brand as well as their product. “Everything [a luxury marketer] does is built around the aesthetic,” Rosner says.

How can a marketer replicate this aesthetic? Packaging helps. Take Kiehl's, a multichannel health and beauty products retailer. The words “Welcome to Kiehl's! We are most honored to serve you today” are splashed across the top of its home page. It's a small detail, but the tone is reassuring to shoppers.

It's the same with packaging. Items received from Kiehl's do not arrive packed in Styrofoam. They're nestled on potpourri, and wrapped in gold paper. “They seek to make any day Christmas with their packaging,” Rosner says.

Orders from Peruvian Connection, which sells apparel made of rare fibers like alpaca and Peruvian pima cotton, are carefully ironed and folded within crisp sheets of tissue before being placed in a simple, elegant white box. They're accompanied by handwritten notes thanking the customer for the purchase.

The packaging “conveys the uniqueness of our product,” says Erik Martinez, the company's director of e-commerce.

Its marketing also reflects this sense of exclusivity. Peruvian Connection has a strict policy against offering discounts to prospects. “We never want to create the impression that our product is readily discounted,” Martinez says. “It's a fallacy that the affluent aren't as susceptible to deals as the rest of us. They are. We offer free shipping, which is meaningful, but it doesn't affect product pricing.”

That said, don't make empty promises.

“Wealthy people say, ‘Don't do anything extraordinary until you have gotten the fundamentals of the customer experience to the point where you deliver them consistently and extraordinarily well,’” Pedraza says.

Above all, don't try to be what you're not. “These consumers are looking for authenticity,” Pedraza adds. “You cannot try to be authentic. You either are or you're not.”

And if you're not?

“You will have a credibility problem and they will spot it immediately,” he says.

When direct marketers want to target the very wealthy, one question trumps all others: Where can I find these people?

Compiled and response lists relevant to what's being offered provide some insight, but Lewis Schiff, author of “The Middle-Class Millionaire,” has a more creative suggestion: Look at the National Trust for Historic Preservation's “tear-down” map.

It lists communities in 40 states where the wealthy are buying plots with old homes on them, knocking down the homes and putting up mini — and in some cases not so mini — mansions. And new homes being constructed by the wealthy and their ilk are fair game for a wide range of goods and services.

The map can be found at http://www.preservationnation.org/issues/teardowns/.-RHL