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Up until about four years ago, Volvo's use of direct marketing was pretty formulaic. Lists were rented and mailings were designed to generate handraisers that the company could go back to with the incentivised offer of a test drive.

"We used all the usual stuff - hampers, gift vouchers - usually between £10 and £15 worth of incentives to get people into the dealers for a test drive," says Volvo Car UK direct marketing manager Anita Fox.

While this approach succeeded in hitting test drive targets, its drawback was that it also attracted a lot of low-quality leads - people who were more interested in the incentive than the test drive, or, indeed, the car itself.

So Volvo changed tack, abandoning the incentives in favour of an approach that would generate fewer test drives, but would attract people who were much more committed to the idea of buying a Volvo car.

It decided to work with several list suppliers to generate a 'suspect pool' of consumers who closely match the profile of its existing customers and recent responders. Even without the incentives, the profiling Volvo undertakes before each mailing campaign means that the recipients are people who are much more likely to be predisposed to the idea of trying, and maybe buying, a Volvo.

"What we find now is that we don't need to generate as many test drive enquiries," says Fox. "We've increased the number of prospects who convert to a test drive threefold, and the dealers love the new approach because it means they get people who want to test drive our vehicles, rather than people we send through to them to hit our test drive targets."

Another innovation over the past 18 months has been the use of email to nurture those consumers who respond positively to Volvo's mailings.

Those who are interested but not yet ready to take a test drive are emailed (with their permission) every couple of months, with a call to action to sign up for a test drive, or to visit the Volvo UK website, where they can also sign up for a test drive. This, however, is the only way in which the car manufacturer uses email for its B2C campaigns.

"We only email consumers who have initially shown an interest via the direct mail route," says Fox. "We've done cold emailings on the B2B side, but we just don't like it for B2C."

Once the consumer registers an interest in taking a test drive, the lead is passed to the dealer, who then has 24 hours to respond to the enquiry and report back to Volvo on its progress.

In addition to the more closely targeted profiling work Volvo has undertaken over the past four years, it has also started to use DM to target very specific groups by playing on one of its major brand strengths - safety.

A campaign targeting women in their first pregnancy went live last year and has, according to Fox, been a great success, with up to 15 per cent of respondents requesting a test drive and up to 30 per cent requesting a brochure.

To put this particular campaign together, Volvo worked with its DM agency EHS Brann to source a list of women pregnant with their first child from the Bounty database, then created an emotional message around the idea of protecting their unborn child when they are travelling in a car.

The mailing starts out by playing up the Volvo brand and the company's commitment to safety, and by the end of the piece, it shows vehicles in the Volvo range, such as the V50 sports wagon, that are relevant to new mums.

"The new mother approach didn't come out of any of the profiling work, it was more of a consumer planning insight," says Fox. "We felt that only Volvo could talk to this audience in this way because of our brand heritage. We have a crash test dummy of a pregnant woman, so there's real substance to it."

In addition to the direct mail activity, Volvo is also targeting this group through the Baby Show exhibitions in Glasgow, Birmingham and London, and via inserts in the parenting press.

"Inserts, doordrops and events are an important part of our DM mix," says Fox. "We're interested in any activity that can get us the handraiser information that can go into our lead management system."

On the B2C side, Fox says Volvo's DM spend, which she declines to disclose, has remained static over the past few years. But in 2004, the company added another 20 per cent to the budget to target fleet managers with a B2B proposition.

"We took all the learnings from our B2C DM activity and used that to target fleet managers in 60,000 companies last year. As a result of that activity, we're now nurturing 25,000 companies with our fleet offering," says Fox.

As the Volvo story shows, you can get more from your DM by reassessing how you use it, without necessarily throwing any more budget at it.

VITAL STATISTICS

Name: Volvo Cars UK

Marketing challenge: To attract a more committed breed of test driver

DM spend: Undisclosed

Agency: EHS Brann

Media: Direct mail, doordrops, inserts (automotive and parent press),

events (motoring/parenting shows)

Competitors: Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz