Local Mailing: Never Waste a Letter Again!

Hey BHW, I've been working on a local mailing campaign lately and have ran into a few problems that some may have overlooked. Now, when I send out a local mailing, I don't want to waste a single letter. One letter = $0.70 ~ and if one is a waste, that could have been a successful candidate. Here are some extra steps to conducting proper research.

PS: This was gathered while seeking prospects without a website.

1. I use a Google Places scraper. It checks if they have a website or not. However, a lot of these people created their website AFTER creating a Google Places page. Of a 100 person census, I found 14 business' that actually HAD a website, it just wasn't added to Google Places therefore my scraping software did not pick it up. There's 14.

2. By actually looking at the addresses on Google Maps, I found 9 addresses which were actually residential. Now, depending on the business... I wouldn't recommend wasting your time mailing to those who run their business out of their house. However, there is an exception. Example, an electrician or plumber... Someone who's business is to go all over the place. If you were looking at lets say for example accountants, I wouldn't recommend mailing to residential addresses. Those people could be doing it as a part time gig and won't take it seriously. Those who have a commercial location and no website are in much more need than those who run the show from home.

3. Lastly, the mobile website detector doesn't work the greatest. It checks for the following:

a) m.domain.com
b) domain.mobi
c) domain.com/mobi

The problem here:

a) Many websites are responsive and do not require a redirect anymore.
b) Anyone could have registered that .mobi domain!

The solution: Download the mobilizer software, works on PC and Mac (Adobe Air).

Conclusion: A little manual work never hurt anyone folks. Sure, I use a scraper to gather leads but I do hours of manual research before ever sending out a letter. I've managed to remove 25-35% of unqualified leads from my mailing list. Hope this helps to save money guys!

Good luck,
Tristan.

Interesting approach! I've done a few local mailing campaigns myself and the method that worked best for me was:

1.
- scrape the yellow pages
- scrape google places
- scrape any other local business registry (Every city/county has some sort of local registry)

2.
- pick out the duplicates (tons of programs can do that for you)
3.
- mail these guys... anybody who takes the time to get their business added in more than 2 registries is a good target


Just my personal approach, I prefer manual work myself too... plain scraping just adds to the costs on your end!

You must be pretty inexpensive, or convert really poorly if you're concerned over a 0.70c cost.

Jobless said:

You must be pretty inexpensive, or convert really poorly if you're concerned over a 0.70c cost.

Click to expand...

No, its a money and time thing. Would you rather have 70 potential customers on a mail out or 100 potential customers? And this INCREASES conversion. Just helping those who don't want to send website proposals to those who already have a website.

Tristan

Always a good idea to manually verify data. Not just because of the money waste delivering to an undeliverable or old address...but the time that it takes to put together each letter/package. If you are including custom details/info for each one you want to make sure they are still in business and still at the same location. Manual all the way

Well of course it increases conversions, but this is really common sense. "Make sure the client needs what you have", is basically what the OP said.

This HIGHLY depends on the time spent.
Both the time spent to create a letter, aswell as the time spent to verify the data.

In my case, verifing the data would take way too long, compared to the time it would take to put together the letter.
I blast about $200-350 in returning/dead postage each Month, and I couldn't care less.
Each and every single of them could have single handedly made up for that by far.

Also be careful with the "dont mail businesses running from home"-Advice. This HIGHLY(!!!!) depends on the Services you are offering!

Other than that, good share!

Great share. Glad to see this offline marketing section is getting more and more popular, as a lot of us are trying out new things and showing great success

I agree with tristan, its not about the $0.70, but the time spent on each mail as well. Everything adds up. It really does.

Yeah I always Google the name of the company and check their FB page just to make sure to see if they have a website after getting the lead info from G+ as I've come across a few who did in fact have a site.

Another reason for checking their FB page is to see if they're even in business as some do close and/or change their address which is not reflected in G+.