The Longwood Furnace
Heat output: 150,000
btu
Fuel types: either gas or oil, plus wood logs up to 5' long.
High efficiency burner
Price: $2,500, plus installation
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Where To Find
Longwood Parts Now?
It's 24 years later, and
as of 2010, Longwood has gone out of
business. When the company grew and divested the
furnace operation,
their star salesman, Joe Dennis, carried on the parts
business for many years. Following his death in 2000,
his wife and daughter offered parts through their
website, LongwoodFurnaceParts.com, which is now discontinued.
The family
has sold off the raw materials and is looking for
a buyer for the tooling. If someone restarts
the business, we will post that link here.
An unrelated
parts supplier, Longwood Of Ohio, is also no longer
listed.
The GOOD news
is that the original supplier of the MOTORIZED
DAMPER DOOR can still supply you with
that part. They also now sell grates, and will soon
offer reprints of the Owners Manual. Call Norman at
(718) 589-6365
or email him at equinoxmfg@aol.com.
These were
all nice people and they had a great product. If
you hear of renewed parts availability, please contact
us so we can share that with other people
who want to know. Thanks!
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Hot Mailings Sell Furnaces
A small company in Missouri had been selling special furnaces through
conventional dealers. Called the Longwood, these units could burn
either heating oil or gas in combination with firewood (up to 5 feet
long) at the same time. Well-built, efficient, and with a choice of
fuels for today’s uncertain world, they were also expensive.
At $2,500, plus installation, sales were slow.
We hoped to bring in additional sales by a test
that advertised directly to the end consumer. But who in their right
mind would send this much money through the mail to a company they’d
never seen before? Especially for something as complex as a home
furnace?
No Marketing Challenge Too
Difficult!
To begin with, we learned everything possible about the product,
the company, and their customers. We studied the technical design,
watched the factory assembly process, and trained with the service
department. We visited many existing customers to learn the real
truth of how well it worked. Then we sat down and designed a series
of direct response letters, brochures, and videos.
The first mailing was fat with features and benefits,
with a 4p cover letter, 4p Q&A, 4p testimonials, order form
and paid return envelope. It was mailed to a high quality list
of
home owners who had purchased gardening equipment. The second mailing
was even fatter, with a 16p booklet and included the offer of
a
45-minute video.
At the end of the two month campaign, 144 of the
expensive furnaces had been sold. The test was a success. The little
company was delighted!
Back to more Portfolio
Case Histories!
(Or go forward to Next Page to see Distribution
Channels.)
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Video Sales Tape reaped 22%
conversion.
Similar to an infomercial,
but without the high pressure, this sales tape had
20 minutes of down-home reasons to buy the furnace.
Plus it had 25 more minutes, to be shared with your
local heating dealer, showing how to install it.
The “experts” said
that nobody would watch anything this long or complex.
Yet, of the people who received the video, many bought
the furnace, for an astounding 22.5% conversion!
(Normal direct mail responses of 1/2% to 2%
are considered good.) |
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Need A Sales or Training Video?
We have produced (literally from start to finish) scores of videos for companies
that made everything from lawn equipment to airplane engines. These resulted
in effective and enthusiastic staff training, plus thousands of prospects
who went on to buy the products. |
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What
The Heck Is
"Direct Response Marketing" and Why Should You
Care?
Direct Response
Marketing skips all the middlemen and
aims directly at your customer using
techniques that objectively measure
the results. It can be used B2C or
B2B and applied to any level in your
sales channel. But you can't bluff
your way with this
advertising;
if
it's
effective,
you'll know it, and if not, you'll
know that, too.
DM is a great way to lower your advertising costs
while increasing your sales and profits. But there's
a lot of science and art to it. To learn more, please
visit our page, Direct
Marketing.
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