Printing Coupons or Boxtop Coupons

In business a year now and still strugling to stay afloat. We have done very little advertising do to the cost. How do you print, or who do you use to print box top coupons or just a coupon to insert in the edge of the box.
Thanks

Are you distributing menus?..

Went around to all the business and had a pull out menu with coupons inserted in the Clipper Magazine and was a flop. The clipper is a coupon thing everyone gets in the mail. We have had menus in the shop to hand out and we also have online ordering.
Would like to try box top coupons for returning customers or some type of coupon to insert in side of box for carry out or delivery.
Thanks

The problem with box toppers is you only have a limited customer base…IMO you need to put more effort into new customers…I would suggest printing more menus and delivering them door to door by hand…You need to build up your data base in order to have enough to reach out to again…Good luck…

Look into EDDM through the post office. You can do it yourself. Get the menus printed (EDDM approved pieces) and then you can do as little or as much as you want, based on your budget. To do 1 carrier route its going to run you about $120 (postage only), depending on the number of addresses in the route. We used to do 1 - 2 routes per week. Now, with increased sales, we are doing 2 - 3 routes every week.

We use box toppers on EVERY box that leaves the store. Even with just a few customers this is worthwhile. The cost is very reasonable since you only pay a few cents per copy. We get full color toppers for about 2.5 cents each and use a glue stick to put them on the boxes when they are folded. We print them a year at a time in a couple versions with offers we are happy to honor all the time.

I agree with Royster though… you need to get busy on finding new customers. They do not just appear on their own and it costs money to do it. Some less expensive things to do include getting busy on facebook, joining a local service organization, donating to teams and local organizations. Scroll through my facebook page to see the “thank you” pies that we have done. That combines facebook with local promotion is a very effective way.

If you need help i have extensive EXPERIENCE! I can give you a call… No worries… If you like what I say will want more advice. My proven systems work! Let me know.

Seriously backward thinking. Effective marketing builds your business and increases sales… Spending money to grow your business through marketing is something nearly every business must do, due to the competitive nature of our world. If your competitor is talking to the customer and you are not, they are going to eat your lunch!

Set a budget for advertising, in our case it’s 5%. We average pretty close to that every month, some higher some lower. As your sales grow so will your budget, leading to more and more sales. This all assumes that you have a good product and good customer service, of course.

We only do box toppers and have only done that for the last 10 or so years. I would consider the Mailshark system if I was new in the business and trying to build sales. It seems to be reasonably priced and there is no money up front. One of our competitors across the street is using them and I feel like I see there material all over the place now.

Just turned 1 year on June 15th. I went with Mailshark. They have a year program which is what I chose and it worked out very well for me. You can pick and choose which mailing routes you want delivered and their designers are fantastic, very quick turnaround with making changes of proofs and very easy to work with. You can customize anything just ask. Make sure you add something on your artwork so that you know if people are using the mailers when they call. Like a coupon or something.

How does the pricing work?

It depends on what pieces you want to include. I switched it up mid year cause I wanted to make some changes to my menu. Now I’ve slowed it down. If I did my math correctly a tri-fold 11x14 menu with coupon tab comes out to about $0.44 each delivered. Talk to Kevin Weidner at Mailshark he can guide you through it.

$0.44 plus postage or including postage?

DELIVERED would include postage.

I have a lot of clients in small towns where door to door deliveries are not available…I just had a client get the local swim club to deliver his menus and magnets door along with a notice of their upcoming bottle drive…The swim club included a note thanking my client for their donation in exchange for delivering the menu and magnet…Killed 2 birds with one stone and it sounds like homeowners did not get cranky…

Price includes postage.

How does EDDM compare with MailShark? Seems like Shark has pretty high monthlies.

EDDM costs 17.7 cents postage plus cost of printing. Mailshark costs an average of 31.2 for for a 10000 piece 5 cycle mailing program with different pieces each time.

EDDM is certainly cheaper assuming you are buying your printing for decent prices. After doing EDDM for a couple years I changed to Mailshark as it was a better business decision for me. I’m mailing a 29000 address cycle so my prices are a little better than the above 10000 address price. I’m not spending hours a week choosing what carrier routes I’m mailing to, bundleing thousands of pieces in batches of 100 and standing in line at my various post offices. When I was doing EDDM the time and hassles were such that I didn’t mail near as many pieces as I wanted to. With Mailshark, 2900 pieces go out each week, without any time of my own(except for proofing the artwork every 10 weeks). Last year was my first doing Mailshark and I shattered my record year by $230,000.