Direct Marketing; Developing a List

Direct Marketing by mail is a great way to help your sales improve and most businesses who do direct marketing do quite well with it. There are many Money Mailer and Coupon Type Books you can join in with and they say that this increases the letter opening barrier substantially by using such a service. Yet, you are also displaced by many other offers and occasionally by competitors even though most of the coupon direct mail companies guarantee not more than two of any one type of business.

One thing we had learned over the years in the car wash business was that we did quite well by sending out our own post card coupons, no one had to open the letter, it was opened. And the post cards got a preferred rate. Meanwhile we hand addressed them because when our cashier was not busy that was her job and she signed them too.

How come this worked so well? Simple really we had made our own list by driving all the neighborhoods within ten miles radius of our car washes and we looked out side to see what type of car they owned. Needless to say if they drove and old beater car, they were not on the list. Only those with newer cars. It sure worked well when we put forth this little extra effort that way. Consider all this in 2006.