Little Success and Great New Happenings

Marketing was one of the first things on my agenda when I came aboard. Marketing was only second to straightening out the bank register.

We needed new customers. I began reading everything I could get my hands on about marketing, advertising and sales. Direct mail continually came up as a good beginning to our marketing plan.

All I had to do was design some post cards, figure out how to say what I wanted to say, my list of companies I wanted to mail to, and slap some stamps on them.

The post card designs were fairly easy, not to mention a little fun. I decided to do two styles for two different industries we deal with. The first industry I targeted was a big money earning industry. The second is what I consider our bread and butter customers. I played with words and phrases for about a week until I was satisfied with what I was saying and sent each of the designs to the printer.

In order to understand how well direct mail would do for us, I selected 100 companies in each of our target areas. The return on the big earning industry was 2% and we've retained 1. The return on the bread and butter industry was a whopping 15% and we've retained them all. We popped a bottle of champagne over that!

I had ordered 1000 of each design, so I was able to send these cards out on other occasions as well. We put 250 of the bread and butter post cards aside to pass out and mail to our existing customers. So we've increased a bit of business by reminding our current customers the extent of our capabilities.

We will be doing this again with 1000 of each style soon. I'll let you know how well it works next time around.