• by Ken Liebeskind , July 12, 2001

According to recent census figures, the rapidly growing Hispanic market now numbers nearly 35 million, but direct mail is seldom been used to reach Hispanic audiences. Orinoco, a New York-based direct marketing agency, is trying to change that.

The six-year-old direct marketing agency creates and places Hispanic direct mail campaigns, and has made some headway in demonstrating the viability of the medium to Hispanic advertisers, who have been very hesitant about using direct mail.

"Hispanic agencies know nothing about direct marketing," says Vesna Besarabic, founder and president of Orinoco, who worked for a number of direct marketing firms, including the Bravo Group, Young & Rubicam's Hispanic agency, where she set up the direct marketing division in the early '90s.

Orinoco buys and plans all elements of direct mail campaigns, but according to Besarabic, the goal of a successful direct mail campaign is to find the right lists.

There were no Hispanic lists 15 years ago, 20 lists ten years ago and over 100 lists now, she says. Almost half of the Hispanic households in the U.S. can be reached through the lists, which can be purchased from Hispanic publishers and mass merchants, such as Reader's Digest and Fingerhut. It is also possible to reach Hispanics through lists from R.L. Polk & Co., which ethnically segments its massive lists of car buyers. The lists provide 4.5 million unduplicated Hispanic names.

The lists can also be purchased from a few list brokers who specialize in Hispanic lists, including 21st AZ Marketing, Farmingdale, NY and Estee Marketing Group, New Rochelle, NY. Prices for the lists are good, Besarabic says.

"The lists are excellent in this market," she says, explaining that since Hispanic mailboxes aren't filled with the glut of direct mail the general population receives, the response is very high. Hispanics are "twice as responsive as the mainstream market, so you're guaranteed success," she says.

Once the lists have been obtained, the typical tactic for multicultural direct marketing is to translate the control package. Orinoco did that for the launch of Ritmo y Pasion, the BMG Hispanic music club - the company's biggest client to date.

After the control package, Orinoco created its own package, which beat the control by "going to the heart of the Hispanic consumer" with a launch party theme and more vivid colors.

The rest is textbook DM. For the BMG job, "we established the cost per response target, determined how many stayed as members and paid for their memberships," a common tactic used by clubs like BMG to measure the success of their campaigns.