Sales and Marketing. Postcard Mailers.

Postcard Mailers

The most cost-effective form of advertising that I have found for small promotions is
Postcard Mailers. When you mail a tri-fold or brochure, the recipient has to open it.
and the five-second rule applies. If you have not piqued their interest within the first
five seconds, consider your mailer filed in the round file (trash can). With a post card,
you have a mailer that is already opened. The best results arc when you mail in
triplicate. They say it takes at least three times of your advertisement being seen by a
customer or client for them to respond to it. Postcards can be done inexpensively.
There are many companies online that offer 5.000 postcards for $389. Local printing
companies can't beat the online price of many of these postcard pieces. 5.000
postcards may seem a bit large in quantity if you are a small business not trying to
gain 5.000 clients. I found a company in Florida that offered 2.500 postcards for
Si 19. I was leery at first, but after my original printer had problems. I had no choice
but to go elsewhere and take my chances. They printed three sets of 2.500 postcards
and had them shipped to my door within 7 days. Florida to San Diego, not a bad
turnaround time. The postcards were of excellent quality as well. I was very
impressed. The company name is Online Print House and their website is located at
www.onlineprinthouse.com. The postage, if put on by you. will cost 23 cents for each
postcard. If you have a mailing that has more than 1.000 pieces. I suggest a meter,
because it is very time-consuming and monotonous to put stamps on that many
postcards. Mailing houses will put the postage and delivery address on the piece for
an additional fee. Their fees are pretty expensive, so the more you do for yourself, the
more you will save. Your mailing list can be purchased from a number of companies.
1 unfortunately had purchased a bad list. Generally, you would receive up to 10% of
your mailing returned as undeliverable. My recent mailing was over 25% returned,
which is totally unacceptable. I don't suggest buying a mailing list from Internetbased
companies unless you are absolutely sure of their track record. Ask your networking contacts if they know any good list companies; look in your local phone
book for list companies: then go online to your local Better Business Bureau and
check them out. Make sure they don't have any complaints and then give them a call.
A general new company list will cost you around 7 to 9 cents per name. If you want to
use the list more than once, it will cost you about 15 cents per name. Depending on
the complexity of the list (whether you want phone numbers, individual as well as
company names, etc.) the cost could be more for each additional request. So if you
wanted to send out a postcard mailer to 1,000 new companies that just opened up
their doors, your cost for this marketing plan would run you about $400 for each
mail, and mailing it the suggested three times would run you around $1,200 total. I
do postcard mailers for my books. You have to get creative and have catchy phrases
that will pique the interest of the individual you are sending it to. The three postcards
for this book say on the front:

1. I bet you've thought about opening your own Bookkeeping Service at least
   once.
2. I bet you've thought about opening your own Bookkeeping Service another
   three times since our last chat.
3. What are you waiting for? You don't have to quit your day job: get clients
   on the side and supplement your income!

You need to offer your target consumer something that will make them want to call
you. Most people want a discount of some kind. If you offered your potential client
two free hours of QuickBooks» training they might be more excited to call you than if
you just let them know you do bookkeeping down the street. If your main service is
going to be onsite bookkeeping, offer them a few hours of free time on their first
invoice. Word it in a way that entices them to call you to find out what you do. You
can find a graphic artist who will help you put together a professional-looking
postcard as well as your stationary. My graphic artist does an awesome job. She
designed my logos, the book covers, my postcards and all of my stationary. She does
do work all over the US via the Internet as well. There is link information in the
contact page of this book and a banner on my links page to find her. The name of the
company is Urick Designs. Kinko's can also help you design a postcard mailer.