5 Tips to Not Waste Your (EDDM) Mailer Budget
Be Specific
A typical local service company, a lawn care company for instance, may provide seven different services… mowing, mulching, aeration, …etc. If your postcard uses all of its real estate to promote everything that you do in bullet point style, it looks just like every other piece of “junk mail” that homeowners get. We have had more success when we focused in on one specific service, such as lawn mowing.
2. Offer Something Worth Something
Several months ago, we did a run of postcards for a coffee shop that offered a free cookie to customers who presented the postcard in the shop. Nothing is ever a guarantee in marketing, but if a customer sees “This postcard is good for a free cookie” rather than, “get 10% off your next purchase” the value of your postcard hovering over their trash can is more tangible.
3. Plan Ahead
Small businesses tend to fly a bit by the seat of their pants, especially in marketing (this is the voice of experience talking). Events like Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day, or even spring, for crying out loud, seem to sneak up out of nowhere… as if we had no warning. If your business is seasonal in any aspect, plan ahead. A run of postcards is so much easier to do well if it has been thought through, months in advance. We are six years into this business and finally last year we planned ahead for our busy season for the first time. It’s easy to focus your energy on marketing during your slow season, and marketing can be useful during that time. However, use your down season to prepare to reach the most people, when they are the most likely to want your service/product. For example: If you wait until June to do a run of postcards advertising your lawn mowing service, most of your potential clients already have somebody taking care of their lawn. You will probably get some calls and even a few clients, but your dollars will definitely not go as far as they would have just before lawn mowing season began.
4. Experiment
As with any marketing strategy, the first run is almost never the best run. We almost always recommend experimenting with different variations of an offer over time. A/B testing is one of businesses most valuable yet overlooked assets. Just because you didn’t see excellent results the first time you sent out postcards, doesn’t mean they weren’t effective. Sometimes the introduction to your company that a postcard provides can get the ball rolling, even if you don’t realize the benefits of that interaction for several years. We worked with a service based company a while back that got several clients in a neighborhood from their mailer. It was an overall successful run in it’s own rite. However, several years later that company had acquired 2-3X the initial clients in that neighborhood due to word of mouth and being present in the neighborhood.
5. Play the Long Game
Small business is a marathon. Almost everybody in this game will tell you that long-term success comes from long-term thinking. Mailer marketing is no different. Of course everybody wants the smashing, instant “covered up in work” story. This can definitely happen. However, almost always it’s a process of learning, A/B testing, adapting and getting more clean and efficient with your branding efforts.