This method can be used by or for businesses that target the majority of the population, but are providing a high ticket product or service (or have high long term customer value) such as Dentists, Lawyers, Chiropractors, Car dealers, Furniture stores, HVAC and more.
There are plenty of businesses you can approach and there are many tools you can use in order to find businesses to target as your clients, but one I’d recommend is this (mobile Renegade) – this software is useful, well supported and reliable. It’s cheap and most important – it will make you money!
Target a town outside of the major cities, research demographics and other information that will give you a better profile of this town, using http://www.city-data.com.
You can do this manually as well, doing searches for “[Industry] at [Town], [State]” – get their full contact details.
Once you have the list of businesses to target, start emailing and calling them.
You have an advantage! You can send a postcard to every single home in this town.
Go to USPS.com and look at the eddm tool at https://eddm.usps.com/eddm/customer/routeSearch.action
EDDM is a service USPS provides – “Every Door Direct Mail” and this tool will tell you how many mailing addresses you have in the town you are researching.
You can select “Residential Only”, eliminating all the P.O. Box addresses in this town.
So, that’s for mailing the postcards using a 6.5×9 postcard.
Where do we print them?
printing4supercheap.com (for the US)
1000 flyers would be about $175 total. (printing in 2 days, 2-3 day shipping).
Start thinking more about who you’re targeting and the best neighborhoods to target across the USA.
How do you do that?
Think of each area in the US that has a certain need or a certain demand.
For example – there are areas more prone to hurricanes. During hurricane season, especially when a hurricane is going to hit a certain area, you can target these areas with offers for hurricane shatters. After a hurricane had hit, you can send cleaning, roofing, tree cutting service offers.
After a hail storm, you can send offers for insurance covered roofing services, car body work offers etc’ Just need to think.
West coast is warmer, people have swimming pools, air conditioners, and they require maintenance. Another offer idea for the summer. This is more for upper scale neighborhoods. You can find these on Google earth or maps or Bing maps (birds eye view).
Use the above process to locate an area, find the mail routes (using the EDDM tool)
Get the list of addresses, and its cost, design the postcard, print it and it will be sent to your local address (you need to find someone in the US for that), print and fill the forms on the USPS site, and send all the postcards and the forms, using flat rate boxes, to the post office that provides the service (defined in the EDDM tool).
Average cost for you will be 29-30 cents per postcard printed and sent. Charge 45-50 cents per postcard and you can make a nice earning from it.
The post office will deliver the flat rate boxes to you for free, and will come to pick up the full boxes as well.
You can try doing it all yourself and selling the leads that call, to the service company you contact. The chance they have good results is quite high, as these postcard will hit a big target audience.
When you contact these companies, you can send pictures and a visual example of the postcard.
You can offer this service to two or three businesses that do not compete, and thus lowering the fees they need to pay (Pool service, aircon service and maybe a restaurant as well). Each will pay 20cents and you earn more per postcard.
Taking screenshots of the neighborhoods provides more visual proof, and show the business owners that for a few dollars they can reach their target audience.
Use USPS and EDDM as leverage for credibility, when you begin.
[reference – remote mailing pdf]