When bringing clients into direct marketing to Hispanics for the first time, I have long advocated an approach that can be summarized as “start from the back and work forward.” Essentially, it calls for building the infrastructure that will support the program before media and creative are even explored.

That means looking at the existence of response centers (calls and emails) that are Spanish-enabled, putting in place databases that can handle ethnicity and language flags, ensuring that metrics are in place to measure Hispanic efforts separately and fairly, etc. Pay attention even to things like ensuring that stores to which you’ll drive Hispanic traffic are properly staffed with bilingual employees. You get the point.

From the May 2006 article in Target Marketing magazine by Gustavo Grüber, former Chair of the DMA’s Directo Council, comes the following advice to not lose sight of the back-end processes when implementing direct marketing programs for the Hispanic market. Below is my adaptation of the list of process and procedures that Gustavo suggests:

• Train data entry staff and set up database fields properly to deal with compound names (like first name “María de Jesús” and last name “de la Cruz”) appropriately and not end up with bad data (like first name “María” and last name “Jesús”).
• Set up bilingual response centers that can respond to calls or other inbound contacts (e.g., email) in the same language that they were sent and that we promised to consumers. Also, prepare for longer call times (Hispanics tend to be chatty and to seek trust by “getting to know” the rep on the phone, lengthening calls) and emails.
• Accommodate longer pay cycles that are more appropriate for a large section of the Hispanic population that are not as in tune with the importance of timely payments and credit ratings as the general market consumer. Also offer COD or other cash-based payment options for those who prefer to pay cash (or don’t have a credit card).
• Design Spanish-language or bilingual bills for Hispanic consumers. Many Hispanic households are multigenerational, and the person ordering the product may prefer Spanish while the person paying for it may prefer English. Bilingual billing solves this. At the very least, Spanish-language billing closes the loop of the full in-language experience for the consumer.
• Adjust metrics accordingly to account for differences in the Hispanic market. Responses may be lower than general market benchmarks but conversions may be higher (or vice versa). In some cases, the front-end ROI calculations may show lackluster results, but longer-term calculations like lifetime value may be superior.
• Be patient and persistent with Hispanic market programs. Hispanics are for the most part newer to direct marketing programs, so they may take a while to adjust. That newness may also drive a lot of testing and refining of programs because there are few benchmarks or historical learning to leverage.

The full article, if you’re interested, is available here.