How To Mail 10,000 or 100,000 Direct Mail

Letters Per Week for Free

By Ben Hart

Dear Inner Circle Friend,

You’re going to love this amazing little trick.

What I’ll describe to you here is a super-simple strategy that will allow you to mail 10,000 or 100,000 postcards or letters per week for free -- without you even having to pay for postage.

I hope you remember the short article I sent you a week or so ago -- the one titled “What to Say on Simple Postcard That Will Bring You an Avalanche of Customers.”

In case you missed that one, here it is:

http://www.directmarketinginstitute.com/ARTICLEWhattoSayonaPostCard.htm

You’ll certainly want to read that one before you put this simple strategy into effect.

But basically the idea is this.

The most expensive part of your postal mailings is postage.  Your next most expensive element will be your list.  The postcard might cost you a penny apiece to print -- depending on your quantity.  So that’s almost nothing.

What all this boils down to is that it’s pretty tough to get a mailing out these days for less than 50 cents each, maybe 60 cents apiece.  So that makes direct mail pretty pricey.

So here’s what you do to avoid paying postage, list rental and perhaps even printing.

Let’s say you have a business where your customers are mostly local.  Maybe you own a store, a car dealership, or maybe you are realtor, a lawyer, a financial planner, a CPA or your own a restaurant.

What you do is this. 

First, you find out how many people live in your trading area. Really, what you want are the number of residences.  The post office will show you how to do a “Dear Resident” mailing.  The post office will deliver your “Dear Resident” postcard super cheap if you are trying to hit every household in a certain zip code or set of zip codes.

If you’d like to personalize the carrier envelope, just look under the Yellow Pages under the category labeled “Mailing Lists,” and you’ll find a list of local companies that can help you.  Or if you want one of the big mailing list companies, I use Melissa Data (www.MelissaData.com).  They are a great company and will help you reach whatever target market you are looking for.

So then let’s say you find out that there are 55,345 residences in the trading area you want to reach.

What you then do is approach other businesses that would also be interested in reaching these same people with a postcard advertisement.  Ask these businesses if they would like to spend, say, 5 cents instead of 40 cents or 50 cents to reach a potential customer in their target market. Only approach businesses that are not competing with yours.  You letter to these businesses would say something like this:

Dear Mr. Jeweler:

I’m sure you know how costly it is to mail a marketing letter to your target market.  Even a simple postcard mailing will cost you 35 cents or more for each post card you send out.  And if you mail a letter in an envelope, you’ll spend at least 50 cents per letter, even if you mail it at the bulk rate.

What I’m proposing is that we conduct a “co-op” mailing.  I’m looking to find 12 businesses (none of which are in competition with each other) to share the cost of the mailing.  All of our post cards would go into the same envelope.

This mailing will be hitting 55,345 homes in the Great Falls, Virginia area.  But instead of paying a minimum of $20,000 to mail into all these homes with just your mailing, you can put your postcard ad in my mailing for just about $2,250 per home (estimate based on current out-of-pocket costs to me).  So you’ll be hitting a home in the Great Falls area for less than a nickel.  All you then need to do is give me your postcard, or what you would like it to say, and I’ll print it for you.

I have found this to be the most cost-effective way for me to reach my target market, which is the Great Falls, Virginia.

But here’s a hidden benefit of having 12 postcards arrive in an envelope.  The postcards bundled together are heavy in the envelope and kind of land with a thud when the envelope is dropped on the kitchen table. This is attention-getting, and actually improves significantly the response to the mailing over what you would receive if your postcard just showed up in the mailbox by itself.

So if this is a program that interests you, just give me a call at XXX-XXX-XXXX.  I’ll be happy to answer any questions you have and to give you all the details.

I encourage you to call me right away if you are interested, because I’ll need your postcard ad by [date] in order to keep to the mail schedule.

Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it?

It is.  In fact, there are a number of companies that will provide this service for you.  They are called “card deck” mailings.  Just type “card deck mailing” into Google, and you’ll see all kinds of companies come up in the listing that will do your card deck mailing for you.  Your card will be ganged in with all the other merchants.

But I can save a lot of money my doing these mailings by myself.  And these mailings are super-easy to do. Plus, I just believe in the saying that “If you want it done right, do you it yourself.”  I like to control the process.  I especially like to control who is getting my mailing. Often, the “card deck” mailing companies hit to big a geographical area (folks outside my trading area) and they include too many merchants in the mailing.  So, I like to just do it myself so I can be certain I’m only paying to reach those people I want to reach.

Also, you can gang together more than just postcards in an envelope.  You can also gang fliers, letters and other advertising materials.  Also, most “card deck” mailings arrive in clear shrink wrap.  I prefer my mailings to arrive in envelopes.

But whether you do it yourself, or use a company that specializes in card deck mailings, this is a very cost effective way to advertise a business if your trading area is local.

But there is one key you need to be mindful of to make this kind of a mailing work for you.  You need to make sure your message stands out from the other messages (postcards and ads) in the package.

To know what to put on your postcard, you’ll need to refer back to the article I sent you earlier -- the article titled “What to Say on Simple Postcard That Will Bring You an Avalanche of Customers” -- which, once again, you’ll find by going here:

http://www.directmarketinginstitute.com/ARTICLEWhattoSayonaPostCard.htm

But, just to save you a bit of time, this is the article where I recommend that you say something like this on your postcard:

Dear Great Falls Neighbor,

I have a way for you to buy a home in Great Falls with no down payment and at a low interest rate.

If you’d like to learn more, just call XXX-XXX-XXXX to listen to a free recorded message that will give you the details.  You can call this recorded message hotline any time of the day or night, 24/7.

John Jones

Your Friendly Realtor in Great Falls

Now this postcard will really stand out in your co-op mail package.  Most of the other postcards will be produced by, frankly, moronic ad agencies.  They’ll have the four-color art.  They’ll have the starburst graphic that says “10% discount if you bring in this card.”

But not your card.  Your card will stand out because your card will be in simple black and white.  And you will use a courier font. All the other cards will probably use four-color art and will be created by a graphic artist.  Some of your co-op partners won’t have an ad agency.  They’ll just create their own cards, and their cards will certainly be a lot better than the cards produced by an ad agency.  But their cards still won’t be as good as your card because you now know the trick of how to make postcard mailings work.

It should go without saying that you should not offer this opportunity to your competitors -- only those in other businesses who want to reach the same people in your trading area.

You can now actually make money in two businesses. 

You will make money on the business you are promoting in your mailing -- that is, with your own postcard.  And you can make a lot of money selling postcards to your co-op mailing partners.  Just mark up the cost 15% or so -- not so big a mark-up that your co-op partners resent your profit.  A 15% mark-up to compensate you for your work and initiative is certainly reasonable, and you’ll still be under-pricing the big national “card deck” mailing services.

You can start mailing these co-op mailings once a month, and then maybe move to once a week.  I think you can see how you can make some great money at this.  If you’ve got some ambition, working this system up to a point where you are mailing 100,000 card decks and other co-op mailings per week is no big leap.

I know people who are organizing co-op mailings like this that are mailed to millions of people every week.  You can do the math on what you could make on this if you just mark up the cost 15% to your co-op mailing partners.

And here's the other cool thing.

Your co-op mailing partners pay you before the mailing goes out -- that is, before you start incurring costs.  In other words, you get paid before, not after, the work is done.  This means, you actually get paid to grow this side of your business.  You take on no debt, no upfront cost.

Not many things better than that in this world.

And the fact that your postcard is in there with the other postcards just gives your sales presentation to your prospective co-op partners that much more credibility.  You are offering your co-op mailing partners a service you are also using.  Nothing more credible than that.

Of course, nothing will work if you don’t work it.

I don’t promote “too-good-to-be-true, get-rich-quick” schemes.  Getting this system up and running will take a little oomph on your part.  So go out there and grab the brass ring.

At a minimum, use this little trick to conduct direct mail marketing campaigns for no cost to you.  It's not at all hard to find 10 or 12 businesses who will be more than happy to jump in with you, once you show them the math.

  Have a great day.

Ben

  Ben Hart

  Your 21st Century Marketing Coach