Last year I did my first EDDM campaign. Final ROI was 224%. There were many flaws in my strategy and I was disappointed with the result, but from what I’m reading, my ROI was still somewhere in the neighborhood of a “successful” campaign. I plan to do it again this year.
For my hand-delivered postcards I usually get an ROI about 10X that, since there are no USPS costs to worry about. On paper, that obviously looks really nice. However, it’s slow and in some cases, impossible to hand-deliver to certain homes.
Anyway, how do [I]you [/I]view the matter? If you’re into EDDM, how do you justify the much higher costs associated with it? Are you doing both? (EDDM & Hand-delivered) Is there anyone out there that tried EDDM, but had such a bad return that they gave up on it?
Generally I put them into the paper-box attached to the mailbox if they have one. If they don’t, and there’s no other way to neatly place the postcard on the outside of the mailbox, I’ll put it under the front door.
Simple math.
Takes on avg. 60 secs to walk door to door so a person can hand out a flyer. Thats walking concrete not cutting through the grass.
So you pay a person 10 dollars a hour.
eddm postage rate is .142 * 60 is $8.52
I would rather pay the post office than some person that may talk on his or her phone and take breaks ect and not even get the 60 flyers out an hour.
I do have guys pass out flyers if Im washing a house and they are just standing there waiting to wrap up hoses or something…I run 2 machines so that normally doesn’t happen to offen.
Thanks Lou, that’s a good way of looking at it. I like your reasoning.
Personally, I’ve figured that an EDDM compaign of 5,000 pieces only has to generate an extra 0.05% improvement than hand-delivered, to pay for itself. So to me it seems worth it. Or in other words, it only has to avoid 1-2 jobless days. Seems obvious.
But I’m still interested in more responses, perhaps from sole-proprietors like me, especially if you’re delivering your postcards by yourself, ie, “for free”. $1K per 5,000 pieces printed and delivered isn’t small change for someone who is solo, especially if the campaign bombs…
For a sole proprietor like you, hand delivery is (in my opinion) a waste of time. You need to not consider your time as “free”. I know you said that in quotes, and that you know your time is valuable… but as a sole proprietor, your time is REALLY valuable. I’d rather see you hire some kid to deliver the flyers for 10-20 cents per flyer than you do it yourself. You should be doing a TON of other things.
Cleaning windows. Working on your website. Networking w/ power washers, window tinters, real estate agents, etc. Calling old customers. Marketing to commercial clients. Interviewing people. And on and on it goes.
If you think hand delivery gets a better return rate than mailing because of the medium itself (which would be an interesting test) then definitely try it though…
Great point. I talked to the post office a week ago and they are actually raising the rates of eddm from .142 to i believe .146. Either way your point is clear that its better to have the post office send them out.
You’re correct Michael about why I put the quotes around the word “free”.
No, I agree with you completely. There’s much more to be done when you’re not cleaning windows than hand out postcards, and most of it is in fact more important, long term. After doing EDDM last year, I did find it very frustrating and tedious going back to handouts for a late fall campaign I did.
However, I noted in another thread that some here, like me, seemingly did just one EDDM campaign of only a few thousand pieces last year. Am I correct to assume that they also physically handed out a lot of fliers, “old school”? I’d like to hear from some of them. Are any of you guys sticking with hand-delivery, and if so, why? Or am I correct to assume that everybody and his dog are switching over to an EDDM emphasis for future “flier-marketing”?
BTW, all that talk about my “valuable time” is making me feel bad for posting here today!
And as far as EDDM vs. hand delivered flyers, for my biz, flyers still have there place. 1) for tight neighborhoods (under 200-300 homes) that are easily walkable. 2) low risk testing ground (to see what specials, deals, formats work well.
Sole proprietor here. Well, me and my wife actually.
We bought a list last year and mailed out. This year we’ll try eddm. I will say that every time we’ve gone house to house, we’ve gotten at least one job. Sometimes as many as 2 or 3. So we’re gonna do that a little still.
But, mailing out is an incredible way to really get your name out. How long would it take to walk to 4000 houses? Additionally, mailing out got us into neighborhoods I didn’t even know existed, and I’ve lived here for 6 years!
So I think in person is more effective, in that you might go to 30 houses and get 1 job. But mailing out is so much more efficient time-wise. And still effective.
Our tactic has been to walk the neighborhoods and hand out fliers to customers door to door. I feel that it is successful for us for the following reasons:
If the flier is in the door when they walk in, they have to physically handle our flier and look at our flier, and only at our flier. Not the stack of the ads that they get on a daily basis.
We are visible in the neighborhoods that we target. This not only gives the potential customer the opportunity to see the faces behind the flier, but it also gives them the opportunity to approach us if they so choose.
We always end up booking some customers while we are out passing out fliers before we have left the neighborhood.
I can’t attest to the R.O.I. of this method because we are still getting calls to this day on fliers that we passed out over a year ago. I got a call last night on a flier that we put out in May 2010.
I completely understand that companies like ACWC could not possibly cover their territory by foot and direct mail has been very, very successful for them. But walking the neighborhoods has been the most valuable to us.
We hand deliver ours, but im doing smaller amts, 500-700 pieces. We will do it when we’re working in a particular neighborhood, on rain days,and Ive had my daughter and a friend deliver in certain areas and pd them $20 a piece. Ive had great results with how we do it. But again, I do smaller amts. If i was doing a few thous pieces, it wouldnt be possible i dont think.
Thanks for these comments guys. Maybe my original question wasn’t well put, but this is kinda what I was interested in knowing: if there were any other concrete reasons why some would still hand-deliver now and then. Brett, your point #1 is a good one that I hadn’t thought of before. Thank you for making it.
Although I agree that the numbers may be more in favor of getting your flyers delivered for you, you should also consider the more qualitative factors of your marketing efforts. There is a reason why Admail (as it is called up here in Canada) is also referred to as junk mail… because it is often given little (if any) attention by the consumer and promptly placed in the trash. Although you delivered your piece of marketing in an efficient method, it doesn’t necessary fulfill the ultimate goal of being most effective at making the phone ring.
I would much rather spend a little more on hand delivered materials that can be placed in a location that guarantees the customer’s attention such as jamming it in a door frame. This is literally half the battle that the former method often falls short on… getting noticed!
I would encourage you to experiment with this and then re-evaluate your preconceived notions which are solely based around quantitative factors… you may be pleasantly surprised.
In my area the good neighborhoods often time have 3 or more door hanger already there before I even place my flier or door hanger, so guess what?it all gets tossed and makes people’s homes look like a mess. I’ve never had good success with door hangers mainly because I think the hoods around here get so many. I’m going eddm big time this year in fact just ordered my first batch of 2500 postcards, sending them out in a couple weeks. Super stoked, then during the spring and summer going to make my wcra
membership pay off big time.
We don’t hand deliver. We have such a presence in our area that we have been told (and shown by a reg client) how all of our advertising (which is sent out) can’t stay on the refrigerator anymore with a magnet.
Like Chris said time is a very valuable asset. It’s been very important, especially growing into a bigger area, that we take advantage of what we’ve learned on how to effectively bombard everyone in our area without walking every neighborhood.
Thanks for your comments aplus, although I don’t know if I agree that all junk mail gets automatically thrown out - at least in my area. But that would depend on the EDDM design, I think. For example, my last piece had an attention grabbing photo filling the whole front side. It was also 8.5"X11" in size - which on an average day is a huge piece of mail to receive! Personally, I rarely receive such unique-looking mail pieces at my home. I know how to spot an unwanted catalog, handyman flier, etc… but a full-page, full-color, glossy, crisp card is kinda unusual around here and stands out.
That said, I have to agree that the very noticeable location in the front-door is an advantage for hand-delivering.
Thanks guys for all your input, I think I’m forming a pretty sure strategy for 2012. I’ll probably be focused on EDDM, with a small hand-delivered campaign here or there for testing purposes, or during slower months.
