Adventures in Lumpy Mailings

[Travis Price]

Can I get a picture of the girl before I respond?

No. But the state of MI could sure solve a lot of female missing person cases if they read that response.

I meant gift.

 

[WinoBlues]

No. But the state of MI could sure solve a lot of female missing person cases if they read that response.

I meant gift.

Give them my email address and they can make an appointment.

 

[shonceman]

No. But the state of MI could sure solve a lot of female missing person cases if they read that response.

I meant gift.

I have to admit, I did wonder!

 

[WinoBlues]

I have to admit, I did wonder!

Don't get him started.

 

[Cheryl K Bennett]

I believe we really require postal service delivery once a week at the most. Almost percent of the mail I receive is spam. I open my mail every day, and it's generally filled with junk mail: credit card offers, DirectTV sales pitches, food bargains, broadband service offers, and so on. Almost every day, everything I receive goes straight from the mailbox to the trash can. So nowadays it is better to do direct mails as people will trust it the most because no one will invest his time and money for doing spam in that.

 

[rousemark]

I believe we really require postal service delivery once a week at the most. Almost percent of the mail I receive is spam. I open my mail every day, and it's generally filled with junk mail: credit card offers, DirectTV sales pitches, food bargains, broadband service offers, and so on. Almost every day, everything I receive goes straight from the mailbox to the trash can. So nowadays it is better to do direct mails as people will trust it the most because no one will invest his time and money for doing spam in that.

So people will not consider your mail piece in among all that junk mail to be junk mail and put it straight in the trash can?

 

[shonceman]

So people will not consider your mail piece in among all that junk mail to be junk mail and put it straight in the trash can?

I don’t know what she’s talking about, but the underlined text is a link to a Canadian direct mail marketing vendor. (Do I smell Spam?)

 

[Up In Smoke]

I had this baller idea to do a three-month lumpy mailing campaign for people 69-77.

Letter 1 was supposed to be sent a month prior to their birthday.

It included a sales letter with a letter opener

Letter 2 the month of their birthday

I was going to send a more direct sales letter. I'm testing but bought some movie fake money and shredded/small bagged it. (You can buy shredded $20 bagged for .67 each.)

Sales letter 3 month after their birthday.

Final sales letter inviting them out to coffee with a branded wooden nickle.

I apparently did not investigate well enough. You can mail letters with a stamp if they're under an ounce and flat. Cool!

If they're rigid, they have to be mailed first class. Business-class is $2.74, the nonbusiness class is 3.80 for postage.

Based on 300 (because I was going to saturate my local market) my costs break down as follows:

Envelope .06
Double sided letter (ink) .06
Letter paper- .01
Letter opener .64
Corp postage 2.74

Total 3.51

$1053.00 per mailing.

I'm anticipating roughly 4% return, but I'm also shooting relatively conservatively based on lumpy open mail and longevity of item.

12 call in leads.

25% (usually mine is closer to 40% on call-ins) close rate equals 3 sales

average first-year premium plus spiff is $480

3x480 fyc= $1440

I guess being in the money first year is good enough. I'm wondering if anyone else have tried lumpy and what type of return rate you've seen.

I was really excited about this at .55 stamp (I use a handwritten font on a normal #10 letter with a normal stamp for improved open rates) as I'd triple my money.

I can still do this with the shredded money as long as the letter is no more than 1/4 inch think, flat, and flexible.

$1.32 per letter is only $400-ish in costs.

I may be overthinking the costs, because either way I'm in money.. However, I did just waste $200 in postage prepping the original letters.

Great share!

 

[LostDollar]

I believe we really require postal service delivery once a week at the most. Almost percent of the mail I receive is spam. I open my mail every day, and it's generally filled with junk mail: credit card offers, DirectTV sales pitches, food bargains, broadband service offers, and so on. Almost every day, everything I receive goes straight from the mailbox to the trash can. So nowadays it is better to do direct mails as people will trust it the most because no one will invest his time and money for doing spam in that.

There's an infrastructure problem here. The "end of the street locked mail box" stacks are not big enough to take one week of mail at a time.

I can't quite think out what the retirement pay or unemployment tax costs would be.

And, we destroy the post office's ability to afford to deliver mail by using alternative services, but then we still depend upon the post office for delivery of important (or at least some important) legal and financial mail which DOES require daily delivery.

(And yes, I do know the post I quoted was a spam post.)

 

[Travis Price]

There's an infrastructure problem here. The "end of the street locked mail box" stacks are not big enough to take one week of mail at a time.

I can't quite think out what the retirement pay or unemployment tax costs would be.

And, we destroy the post office's ability to afford to deliver mail by using alternative services, but then we still depend upon the post office for delivery of important (or at least some important) legal and financial mail which DOES require daily delivery.

(And yes, I do know the post I quoted was a spam post.)

You can use third party delivery services for Legal documents.

Personally, I ended up using a 5 letter sequence over 9 months that works pretty well for me. I don't suggest people do what I do though, as I work a full time job.

However, as of late I've laid off the mailings because of AEP and I was in the process of buying a mini-farm and now moving next month.

There's only so much I can handle at a time. Luckily, this will be my last move for awhile.