Direct Mail Marketing

[RudyUWL]

I am just starting out in the Lawn Care field and am looking at doing a direct mail postcard to about 2500 people, in my target market.

Looking online at www.infousa.com, you are able to select the area that you want to mail to, the demographic variables such as income, home value, age, and others.

In my business plan, I specified for the first year in business, I would like to reach between 20-25 billable hours, which would allow me to reach my goals. With the amount of people in this mailer I would only need 1 % of people to sign up to achieve my goals.

Is 1 % a realistic return from the advertising? Any ideas on what demographic variables to use to help maximize the return? I live in a suburb of Denver, with around 100,000 people in our market area.

I appreciate any help anyone might have. Thanks

[PrecisionYardworks]

Hey, in my opinion direct mail has worked great for me. With postcards i doubled the return over passing out fliers. Next year hope to send out some brochures to higher end homes. I tried info usa but I got a lot of homes that I did not want to service. I found that just riding around and getting the addresses in the areas you want is much cheaper and you already know you want to service that area. I had all winter to prep the bus for 06' and i'm ready to rock.

Hope everyones has a great year.

[RudyUWL]

So how many postcards did you send out, and what type of response did you get? I am trying to figure out the amount of mailers I may need to reach my goal of 25 customers. What demographic selecetors seem to be the best?

[rbrehm]

I advertise in a very small (32k readers) local paper and it works wonders. A 1/8 th page advertisement costs $125.00 where I live in South Carolina, and the paper comes out weekly. They also have a home and garden insert coming out mid-March, and have already purchased a space in there as well. My ROI has been tremendous, as my business has doubled in less than one year.

[EliteImpressions]

rudy,

For direct mail, you will average anywhere between .5 and 3%. Given that, you would have to send between 800 - 5000 postcards. Cost for postage would be around .18 - .20 a piece for direct mail if you have a permit or used a company to mail them.