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Thread: Please Review Ad for ShopPass.com

  1. #11
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    Thanks for the research and info Steve. I know direct mail has a low response rate, but I've really known how low. I've seen things like 2% and I've also seen 0.5% Obviously it's going to vary with how the mail is written and designed and what the offer is for. It should also depend on the frequency of the same offer. I would expect the first time someone receives a direct mail offer that it would have an extremely low return rate, but I would also think that repeating that same offer to the same people slowly increases the return.

    My only experience with direct mail is a single postcard we sent out in a previous web design business. I think we sent out about a hundred to a list a small business owners we built through a local chamber of commerce. I can't really remember how the copy and design was, but I assume both were ok, though probably nothing special. Our return was exactly 0%. We weren't expecting a lot, but we had hoped one or two people would respond.
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    Early 90's there was a course I bought on direct mail from some guy out of key west fl. He actually seemed to have a good system down, although it was scamming people as I recall. At that time, it involved using Fedex for delivery, because the odds of someone opening a Fedex envelope were far greater than just some flier. He had a method for getting a qualified mailing list to justify the fedex deliveries. I don't remember any more than that.

    I can tell you this story that might be a good example. Sometime in the 90's, I had an American Airlines flight from South America to Miami. I had their airline sandwich. It surpassed the meaning of bad in airline sandwiches. I was hungry so I ate the one I had. I asked for a second one and stuck it in my briefcase.

    On that same flight the American Airlines magazine had an article from the CEO of American talking about how they were changing their airline meals to meet the new light eating style of the the American Airlines customers.

    I froze the sandwich in my briefcase. Highlighted every reference to the "new lite meals" in the CEO's article, stuck them in a Fedex package with a short note stating "this must be one of those new light meals you were referring to - you should be embarrassed about this" along with my frequent flier number and contact info (I had a ton of frequent flier miles with AA at the time). I FedEx'd the notes and sandwich to the CEO of AA.

    I didn't ask for anything. I just said in the memo "you should be pretty embarrassed about this". I got more calls that week from executive VP's from AA than I did clients. They gave me a dinner voucher or something, I don't remember. I didn't ask for anything. I suspect what happened is the CEO's secretary opened the Fedex package, read the note, looked at the sandwich and it became an insider joke. What if I had two sandwiches and sent a copy to the media?

    Relevant to this thread; I sent one Fedex package and had executives from AA calling me all week. It was a pretty qualified mailing list; the CEO. The mailer was an attention getter, his lousy sandwich along with his article bragging about their food.

    No, the above isn't sales, although I got a dinner out of the deal.It might imply, however, that its not quantity, but quality, and the recipient that makes the difference.

  3. #13
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    Steve - the research also did suggest that you should re-mail to the same list 3+ times. I've never had the guts to do that since even if I doubled my success rate the second time I would still lose money. The only reason I didn't lose too much money with one of my attempts is because I had a dog trainer go in on it with me so all my costs were cut in half (two brochures and a cover letter just barely stayed under the 1oz limit). The problem was that his respense rate was 0% - so he wasn't interested in trying again.

    I'll try it again someday when the economy turns around. The concept is very appealing to me if I could just find a formula that has a consistent positive return.

    Bill your story reminds me of the time my Dad sent the rusted remains of the front quarter panel of his 75 Chevy truck to the president of General Motors in a manilla envelope. Those of you old enough to remember the rust years will appreciate that. Unfortunately, he didn't get any free truck coupons back in the mail.
    Steve B

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    I'm back - I have to catch up on the read here - and then I'll post - thanks for the contributions to this topic.
    Always listen to the experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it. Robert Heinlein

  5. #15
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    A lot of interesting comments and feed back..thanks

    A couple things that I have forgot to mention...1 week after that post card we did send out brochures 3fold - we did get a couple fo calls and that's why we have some of the coupons we do have.

    I had three ladies and myself knocking on doos too as a follow up - most businesses don't want you to walk in or some won't even take a call. This is the troubling part..these are small businesses (e.g. coffee shops, barbers, tanning salons, etc) these are the same businesses that when they started out, they want people to take a chance on them - but for our small local businesses they wouldn't give the time of day Go figure...but we keep pushing forward....I often sit back and try to figure out "what do they (the small businesses want" of course customers. But what will attract then to use our service..."more customers". I need more then their listing to get the amount of customers that will make their head spin...

    Businesses have the tools for me to work with I just need to get them involved and then I can get customers to the site or use the service so I'm offering a drawing for Wisconsin Businesses -

    Create a coupon of any value (the best would be by one get a second one at discounted price) and use the coupon to enter a drawing for a cash prize - I'm thinking it would be 150.00 cash prize and the 12 picked winners would be included in the big 12 cash prize drawing for a much greater amount...

    As a business owner, that would get me to at least twitch and the fact that there are 12 chances to get the big prize will help me decide to keep the coupon online?

    Do you think 150.00 would be enough for most businesses to "be interested"

    The benifits are...
    It's free to begin with (no layout of pocket expence, no risk?)
    For a coffee shop (150.00 can help pay for the coffee they gave away free)
    Not to forget the fact that they may have gained a new customer.

    Now I have someting to work with...

    Where do I make money?

    Creating custom coupons, managed account for those that don't want to do the work..pictures of their business and even video?
    Last edited by Watchdog; 12-24-2008 at 06:22 AM.
    Always listen to the experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it. Robert Heinlein

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    $150 is $150. Everyone can use a little more money.

    That's the kind of thing that could entice someone to visit the site. Don't try to explain too much about the drawing on the ad. Just get across the idea about winning $150 for marketing your business and have them visit a specifically designed landing page on your site for the details.

    Now you can attract new customers and win $150 in the process...visit shoppass.com/coupon for details

    You could still offer other info on the ad about ShopPass, but make the info about the contest a teaser. Make people visit your site for the details. The specific benefits here is the chance to win $150 while marketing their business.

    Make sure to design a landing page specific to this order. People visiting the site from the ad are going to be doing so because they want to find out about the $150. If they initial page they see on your site doesn't have that info they'll leave right away.

    Also don't connect the rest of the site to this page. Don't link to this new page from the rest of your site. That way the only way people will get to it is by reading the ad. That could help you track how effective the ad is. You can have the landing page link to the rest of the site, but don't have the rest of the site link to this landing page.

    You can prevent search engines from accidentally finding and indexing the page by adding a meta tag

    <meta name="robots" content="noindex"
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    Be sure to research any gaming laws in your state. I'm not sure, but I think there may be some state specific guidelines about how contests that give away money are handled.
    Steve B

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    Some great points - thanks.

    Steve, yes I should check it out..but for now, I think I'm going to wing it. It's under 600.00 dollars so I'm not obligated to 1099 anyone (I think) But I'll look into it. The first drawing will be Feb 2009 for Jan 09 entries...so I gotta roll with it and see where it takes me next. The first month might be a little slow, but someone will win

    It should grow to be interesting. We're focusing more on the smaller services coffee shops in the beginning.
    Always listen to the experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it. Robert Heinlein

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