• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, January 26, 2009

A new survey from the Direct Marketing Association, complementing earlier research that focused on the Hispanic market from the consumer view point, presents the business side of marketing to Hispanics to provide benchmarks on the use of direct marketing methods in order to reach the Hispanic audience.

Anne B. Frankel, DMA senior research manager and author of the report, summarizes by saying "... Hispanic marketers find certain media channels and segmentation tools are more effective in increasing response rates among Hispanic consumers... therefore, marketing to Hispanics involves a different cache of tools than marketing to a general audience... it is crucial that direct marketers understand the nuances... "

Partnering with PSA and Zubi Advertising to provide extensive commentary based on their knowledge of marketing to the Hispanic audience, the report notes that:

• 48.1% of marketers who promote to Hispanics report that the majority of their Hispanic-specific promotions are written or spoken in both Spanish and English. 20.8% say that most of their promotions are in English only, and 19.5% have separate English and Spanish language versions
• 77% of the companies that market to Hispanics tailor their non-catalog direct mail messaging to this audience
• 84.4% of respondents who market to Hispanics say that they do not create different versions of their promotions based on dialect and colloquialism
• 64.9% percent of Hispanic marketers do not create different versions of their promotions for different US locations
• 91.8% of all companies that market to Hispanics use non-catalog direct mail, and 52.1% use telephone marketing
• Over ¾ of Hispanic marketers collect language preference/proficiency, age, and gender information
• 58% of the companies that market to Hispanics use non-email Internet marketing from among the online and new media channel options
• 53.7% of respondents say that non-catalog direct mail effectively boosts their response rates for Hispanic consumers
• At least half of those marketers who segment by the level of acculturation or by the number of generations that a family has been in the US say that the segmentation technique effectively increases response

 Please visit the DMA here for more details and the opportunity to purchase the complete study.