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Ever spend much time with an IT professional? Contrary to popular myth, not all of them are completely lacking in social graces. And many even have interests outside of Dungeons & Dragons and “Star Trek.”

But most techies do have one important trait in common: When they're focused on a project, it can be extremely difficult to direct their attention to anything else.

For a computer products reseller like Continental Resources, that can be a problem. That's why the company uses a multitiered approach of dimensional mail, telemarketing and a more than 100-person sales force to make a case for their offerings.

Direct recently talked with Ann Dempsey, marketing director for the Bedford, MA company, about the challenges she's encountered in the competitive IT reseller market. A graduate of Babson College, Dempsey has been with Continental for 18 years. Prior to that, she was with H.H. Scott Electronics, now a division of Emerson Radio.

Dempsey handles all marketing for the company's various divisions and subsidiaries, including direct mail, online, radio, telemarketing, incentive programs and premiums. Continental works with Acton, MA agency Dragon Direct Marketing and devotes about 70% of its marketing budget to DM.

The company has been in business for more than 40 years, and began life as a test instruments rental firm. Around 1970, Continental started renting computer equipment and then expanded into systems and network integration.

Direct marketing is used primarily as a prospecting tool at Continental, said Dempsey, who shared her thoughts on why dimensional mail works so well in IT, and how the firm plans to get a clearer picture of its DM return on investment.

DIRECT: Who are your typical customers?

DEMPSEY: It's diverse between the two divisions. On the systems and network integration side, the customers tend to be midsize to large, $250 million and up. Right now we have approximately 2,500 active repeat customers. On the test instruments side, although we do a lot of business with larger companies too, the customers tend to be a bit smaller.

DIRECT: What marketing challenges do you face as a reseller of high-tech products?

DEMPSEY: We are a channel member, and that puts a different burden on us when it comes to marketing. We're not like a manufacturer, where we have a specific set of products. We represent over 100 manufacturers. We have about 280,000 SKUs that run the gamut from Sun Microsystems, our No. 1 vendor, to Cisco, Veritas, HP, ADIC, Hitachi, CheckPoint and quite a few other major manufacturers. [An SKU, or stock-keeping unit, is a number associated with a product for inventory purposes.] What makes it difficult is you don't really get to know any one specific product line. There are many different products, so we have to rely on support from either the manufacturer or the distributors.

DIRECT: Do you do a lot of joint marketing with the manufacturers whose products you sell?

DEMPSEY: Most of the programs we do are Continental-sponsored. We'll come up with the concept and then create the piece. But there are campaigns that the manufacturers also run on behalf of the resellers, and we participate in as many of those as we can. Many of the distributors also have campaigns. It becomes complicated on those occasions when we might have multiple campaigns on the same topic running through different telemarketers and vendors. We have to be very careful that we don't over-telemarket our audience.

DIRECT: Do you telemarket more for retention and upselling, or for prospecting?

DEMPSEY: A lot of it is prospecting. We also have a new program called Power Pipeline, which I hope will finally be able to get us some ROI figures on the various campaigns we're running. In the past, the measurement has been restricted to the number of leads received, and some feedback from the sales force. Now, I've engaged a telemarketing company that actually contacts the salespeople, tracks all the leads, and actually speaks with the corresponding salesperson at the vendor so the whole loop gets closed and we have a program where we talk to them every month. Any leads that come in from the projects we run go into this pipeline program. The salespeople get a regular contact from the telemarketing group, so they're really in charge of whether that lead stays in the system, is removed, or put onto a secondary status level.

DIRECT: What's your annual direct mail volume?

DEMPSEY: It's not large. We do probably about 100,000 pieces, but most are dimensionals. They need to get the attention of CIOs and CTOs, and there are many other vendors and resellers that try to get their attention. One [piece] we just did with Dragon has been out about a week, and we've set about 35 appointments already — about an 8% response rate. And I anticipate it will go up to 30% or more. It's a combined effort of direct mail and telemarketing with a secondary support mailing and follow-up telemarketing to non-responders.

DIRECT: What does the piece look like?

DEMPSEY: It's huge. It's about 6 inches deep, 20 inches long and 15 inches wide. Inside there's a beautiful brochure and a remote-control dinosaur. The dinosaur ties into the theme of the whole campaign. We're trying to convince IT managers and directors that it's time to take a look at the latest technology now — before old systems become ‘dinosaurs.’ We sent out about 1,000 pieces. There's a giant color label on the box that says, ‘You'll never guess what's eating your resources and profits.’ Each piece is digitally printed and personalized. I can't tell you by exactly how much, but I have found that personalization increases response rates. We don't send them the remote with the dinosaur. To get the remote, they need to respond to the campaign, and set up an appointment with a Continental sales rep [who] will bring them the batteries, the remote and a little screwdriver. We prequalified the list, making sure the [recipient was] the decision-maker for this type of product.

DIRECT: What's your cost per piece on the dinosaur campaign?

DEMPSEY: I'd guess about $60. [Our dimensionals] run the gamut from $25 to $75, sometimes $100. It depends on how targeted the list is and how many we're sending out, and what the campaign's goal is. This effort targeted CIOs, IT directors and IT managers at companies within a restricted geographic radius around our offices. In the systems and network integration side of the house, we have six locations primarily on the East Coast, and one in Chicago.

DIRECT: And then you'll follow up with telemarketing and a second mailing?

DEMPSEY: Yes. The secondary mailing is going out in a color-coordinated envelope. Inside there's a plastic dinosaur skeleton attached to the mailer with repositionable glue. We typically also develop microsites to support the various campaigns. For this campaign for Enterico — a division of Continental which primarily sells IBM products — the site is at www.enterico.com/play.

DIRECT: If people want to respond online, can they?

DEMPSEY: Yes. They can go onto the landing page, where we ask a few questions about them as individuals and their position with the company and their purchasing authority. Then they sign up for the appointment. I also ask for e-mail and mailing permission at that point as well.

DIRECT: Do you do much e-mail marketing?

DEMPSEY: We have done some, to internally compiled files and rented lists, but I have to say I'm disappointed in the results. Frankly, I think the people we're trying to target are inundated with e-mail and it's just a matter of standing out in the crowd. That's very hard to do with e-mail. We have to remember, too, that [although] high tech is in a growth period, a lot of the IT departments are still dealing with a shortage of personnel. That means their attention spans are even shorter for marketing materials now than they were four or five years ago.

DIRECT: Do you think direct mail maybe pulls a little better in the high-tech sector because it's more of a novelty? It's not what these IT directors are dealing with all day, so it's more interesting to them?

DEMPSEY: I think with the dimensionals, absolutely. What I find, though, is sometimes they'll get it, then they'll put it down by the side of their desk and get carried away in a project. That's where the telemarketing comes in, and the second-wave mailer. The other thing is that they have specific projects they're working on for specific times, so it really is a case of being in the right place at the right time. That's why, on the landing page, we ask them to tell us their top three initiatives for the year.