Targeting & Comms Strategy for DM Programme

Project: Crime Prevention Campaigns
Deliverables: Targeting & Comms Strategy for DM Programme
Sector: Public Sector
Client: Surrey Police

 
91% positive response to pro-active crime prevention advice

Challenge

Surrey Police has an extensive crime prevention marketing programme, which is planned to ensure maximum PR exposure and operational effectiveness. This is designed to complement operational initiatives, such as the “Stop, Chain, Check” programme for elderly residents. Existing campaigns use a variety of advertising and PR media. No direct communications have been used previously. Our aim was to prove that direct activity could be accurately targeted, communicating the key themes to people who are most vulnerable to that crime type.

Solution

Direct marketing was trialled on 3 campaigns in the spring of 2006. These covered Hate Crime, Burglary and Distraction (or Bogus Caller) Burglary. Existing crime statistics were analysed to identify who the most likely victims would be and when this may occur. For example, Easter is a peak time for burglary.

Targeting models were built for each campaign and data was acquired enabling us to mail named contacts. For example, the two burglary campaigns were mailed in postcodes where there had been a higher than average incidence of this crime in the previous year. Elderly residents received a “Stop, chain, check” leaflet and door sticker. Other residents received a Home Office produced anti-burglary advice leaflet. A personal letter was written to each group to highlight the seasonality of the crime. We decided not to highlight that they lived in a hot spot area, as it was felt that this may alarm respondents.

A response slip with freepost address was included on the letter, to gain feedback and collect data from recipients. There was no response incentive, other than the fact that we valued their comments. There were 2 opt out options – to receive no more communications about that crime type and / or any crime prevention advice, as well as space for free text comments.

Results

The response rates and nature of responses has astounded us! Our expectations were that with little incentive to respond, we would only get negative respondents replying. However, the reality was the opposite. We have had over 1300 total responses from all 3 mailings, with the distraction burglary achieving the highest response rate.

Overall more than 90% of all respondents have said “I found the leaflet useful and would like to receive similar information in future”. Only 186 out of 25,000 people mailed have opted out of either that type or all crime prevention mailings.

In addition, face to face follow up research was done to households who had been mailed either of the Burglary mailings. Spontaneous awareness was 43% (target 25%) and prompted awareness was 59% (target 45%). We also measured memorability (2.96, target 2.7), call to action (2.71, target 2.4) and visual impact (3.03, target 2.8) scores.