For my last direct mail campaign I purchased a mailing list from market research firm.
Here are the demographics…
EST HOUSEHOLD INCOME : $250,000 PLUS
EST HOME VALUE : $250,000 TO $1,000,000+
YEARS AT ADDRESS : 2 TO 99 YEARS AND MORE
ADULT AGE : 35-39
ADULT AGE : 40-44
ADULT AGE : 45-49
ADULT AGE : 50-54
ADULT AGE : 55-59
GENDER : FEMALE
GENDER : MALE
HOUSING INFORMATION : ALL
APPLICATION : MAILING
MARITAL STATUS : MARRIED
… any others i should take into consideration for the upcoming spring?
It is a numbers game. The more you send out the greater your your % of calls. Just like with flyers. To be sucessful with direct mail use some type of special and name it. That way you can track your ROI. Also do it several times a year to the same people.
i would drop the household income to $150k for 2 reasons
unless you live in california or in a super rich area you will have a low number- drop the income level and make it a big number to send out more pieces. the more you send out the bigger the return
you also want to cater to people who make good money but dont have the time to clean their own windows. when i dropped my household demographic down to $125k for my october mailing my list grew by thousands… my phone is still ringing from that mailing even with snow on the ground.
Good point I didnt even catch that… We have far more customers in the 150 - 250 bracket. Obviously because more of those people exist, but they still spend $.
I am assuming that the customers you get from direct mail (with some kind of special) are repeat customers? I have learned long ago that I do not want the kind of customers that just want a good deal and not a long term business relationship.
all of the customers i got from my direct mail were not lured with a special offer last season… i believe all of the customers i gained through my direct mail piece are going to be repeats this season except the ones who had me install gutter protection bc those are one hitters.
last season i mailed out as much as possible in the summer… 2-3k every couple weeks in the summer. in the fall i mailed out one big mailing that cost me around $10k. i did one key thing wrong last season which is not keeping track of how many calls i got from different advertising but if i had to put a number on my direct mail i would say i got 3% call back with no offer on the direct mail piece… which was enough to make my money back…
i have never done direst mailings but i want to try it. What company do you go through to do this or does the post office do it? Also, can you send the mailings to just certain neighborhoods. I want to target new housing developments. Thanks
Go to Mailing List - Email, Business, Sales Leads, Consumer - InfoUSA and mailing list. They have a complete data base and you can choose by zip code, age, income, house type… etc even a google maps function which you can select your target audience in a certain area.
You can also try vistaprint.com they allow you to purchase the postcard, design it anyway you want, buy a targeted list (i think they get theirs from infousa) and they mail out the cards. Pretty good service I have not had issue with them but have heard others complain. Biggest complaint I have seen is check box issues. Meaning at sometime when they were entering information on the site there was a check box checked off and they either purchased something addtional or get spam. Just be careful and read everything before you click next. I ordered 1000 post cards from them last year and they were 300 short. Not sure what happend, maybe the cards fell off the truck. But they were very cool and sent me out a box of 500, 200 extra cards free.
