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AHS

I've dabbled with direct mailing a little bit in the past & am looking to give it another go. Direct mailing was actually the first form of advertising I ever used.I compiled my list by targeting an area geographically & then driving up & down every road in my targeted area, writing down every address that needed my services. Keep in mind I primarily do roofing & exterior painting. I then sent a letter to all of the addresses on my list, I wrote out the address on the envelope by hand, addressed it to "Homeowner". I only mailed each address once & of course now I realize that was a mistake & mulitable mailing would be more affective but the mailings were sucessfull for only mailing them once.
Well them mailings were 5 years ago & I'm looking to get a new list. My delema is I'm not sure if I should go about getting my list the same way or if I should buy one from info usa which would include the home owners name & could be targeted more demographically.

Whats your opinion?

CGofMP

annecdotal personal opinion:

People new to an area (new homeowners) rarely have a clue where to go for anything.... They have no idea who is quality and who sucks.

Perhaps local real estate agents might be willing to help you out with lists of new home buyers?

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Memorable Places - My little home on the web
Member of the White Knights Of Contractor Talk

AHS

cg,
I'm not really looking for a new home owner mailing list. If I use info usa I can pin point exactly the type of customer I want. Example- family household that makes over $75k , a home worth $200k or more and the house is over 25 years old & I'll know the name of the home owner to. The list could be more specific to but your gonna pay a lot of money for it. The point is I can gear my mailing toward family oriented people that make a good living, don't have time to do the work themselves & can afford my services.
If I compile my list by driving up & down streets I won't know who I'm trying to sell to in my mailing but i'll know that everyone on my list needs my services.

Bukemdano

I would love to know how this turns out for you if you do decide to pick your mailing list out specifically like that. I say you got to try it just to see if you get any responses .

RobertCDF

Yes please be our guinea pig and let us all know how it works out for you

__________________
Robert Shaw
Colorado Springs Custom Decks
Colorado Custom Decks
Custom Composite Decks

Brian

AHS,

We've used the local property tax records to get names and addresses. We are able to access this information via the internet.

This method also allowed us to own the list, rather than just rent it. It takes a little work. We did it in small pieces-- whenever we got a job we would look up about 40 neighbors and add them to our data base.

Brian Phillips

AHS

Maybe I'll test market both methods. I can budget in about 3 mailing of 5000 for 2006. So I could do 2500 from each list. The only problem is I wanted to do one list or the other because I would like to space out the mailings differently. Like take 2500 addresses & mail them a few weeks apart & then take the other 2500 And space out them mailings a few months apart. I could still do that if I use both list but I won't be able to know if one list is better than the other or if it was the way I spaced out the distribution. And I would also like to test market post cards compared to letters and different offers. I can't budget in enough money to effectivly try all the variations I mentioned. But, I want to start narrowing down what works & don't work.

Mike Finley

Hands down the latter list should yield a higher return, as long as you are sending out the same number of mailings in each. Really if you think about it how can it not? The first is a shot gun approach the second is more targeted. The more targeted your advertising or the more you connect with people who have the higher potential to be matches for your service, the higher the rate of return on investment should always be, right?

If I read this right you aren't going to hand address one and use labels on the other right? The only difference is the selection of the addresses right?

If you want to do a shot gun approach with a mailing going to every house in a neighborhood you can do it really cost effectively. What you are talking about is called a carrier route mailing or a saturation mailing. It qualifies for the cheapest bulk mail rates there are, and the post office is set up to do these for you.

The real twist to this is this - is the rate of return better on a target mailing list that costs more to mail to or on a saturation mailing list that costs less so you can mail out to more homes for the same amount of money.

For example -

Saturation for 8000 mailings might cost the same as a targeted 5000 mailings. The saturation might give you a .005 return, but the targeted gives you a .007 % return or 40 responses for the saturation and 35 for the targeted. That would be the thing I would want to figure out I think.

RobertCDF

In order to track the 2 differant mailings use two different "coupons" on the mailings. In my case I would be doing "$250 off any deck 200 SQ FT or larger. must present coupon upon receiving written estimate" and then for the other one " $400 off any deck 300 Sq Ft must present coupon after recieving written estimate" Then they give it back to you and you know were it came from.

__________________
Robert Shaw
Colorado Springs Custom Decks
Colorado Custom Decks
Custom Composite Decks

jproffer

Just happened upon THIS little jewel if anyone's thinking about doing the "drive by and write down addresses" method. BTW, it's free.

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Jim P.

Mike Finley

Yep, along those lines many advertisers simply print two identical versions of their advertisement with the exception of an identifying code somewhere on each, and when they get a call they simply ask the customer during the conversation what code do they see at the bottom right hand corner? An "A" or a "B"?