10X Your Money With Direct Mail

Most people would jump all over a stock that you could buy for $100 per share and sell for $1,000 a month later. But then it when it comes to spending money on advertising many business owners view it as a cost; not as an investment.

We generate $10 to $15 of sales for every $1 we spend on direct mail. It's all a numbers game. Every month we spend $20,000 mailing out 60,000 pieces knowing that 2% of them turn into visits. Each visit turns into a $200 to $250 average sale producing $200k to $300k in monthly sales.

Type of Direct Mail?

There are two categories of direct mail to choose from:

Shared Mail - your piece is mixed in with other businesses. Could be Valpak which is an envelope with a bunch of other ads. It could be a newspaper style like Valassis. We have found these types of mailers are the lease expensive but also the least effective. I personally throw out the entire envelope & newspaper because it's always the same advertisers and I rarely find value in them

Stand Alone - your piece is directly in the mailbox along with all the other letters. This is our preferred method. The choice becomes what size? You can do small post cards, magnet calendars, full fold menus, oversize/jumbo cards. Our philosophy is the bigger the better. The point is to get eyes on it.

What Company to Use?

MailShark is our go-to company for direct mail. They have an awesome team of designers and accountant managers who are aligned with making every campaign a success. They offer weekly billing to help with cash flow, allowing you to pay 4-8 weeks later as your mailings are hitting and generating cash. I'm not aware of any direct mail companies that do payment plans. I had a great conversation with the founder Brian Johnson on my podcast. Check it out. If you using them tell them I sent you 🙂

Route Selection

One of our keys to success it targeting specific mail routes based on the buying habits of our existing customers. For example we look for a route that we get a lot of customers from but don't mail to. This is prime route to start mailing since neighbors generally have similar buying habits. We also stop mailing to routes that we don't get a good ROI on. For example if we only generate $4 for every $1 we spend it's not worth it.

Consistency

To have long-term success you need to be consistent with your mailings. A drop here and a drop there won't give you much return. If you want 10X you need to be in the mailboxes almost every month. We've been mailing consistency mailing 9 to 10 months per year for multiple years. You don't need a $20k/month budget to have success. Start with what you can afford and plan to mail to the same routes consistency. Track your sales from every mailer. Once you start to see an ROI that you're happy with you can turn it up and reap the rewards.

Strong Call To Action

Your advertising needs a strong call to action. It could be something free with the purchase of something else or a discount on a popular service/product. It needs to be professionally design, clean, and easy to understand. Mailshark guys can help you if needed.

Even in the high-tech digital world we live in direct mail is far from dead. To be successful you need a solid strategy and stand out from the crowd.

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