best weeks to mail out menues

[system]

guys, i mailed 3000 menues last wednesday, with no response, and weekend was dead, so i guess i would be more lucky if waited till next week or mailed them on last week. So, how would i know what is the best week to mail out menues to get the best response? does it have smth to do with weather or holidays? i know there is no way to predict, but can anybody share their thoughts on this one. Thanks, Dmitri

 

[royster13]

In two pizza places I was involved with we did a 5 week rotation where we covered 1/5 of our market each week for 5 weeks and then started all over again…We did this over and over for years…We had experimented with longer and short rotations, however, we found 5 weeks seemed to work best…RCS…

 

[NicksPizza]

royster13:

In two pizza places I was involved with we did a 5 week rotation where we covered 1/5 of our market each week for 5 weeks and then started all over again…We did this over and over for years…We had experimented with longer and short rotations, however, we found 5 weeks seemed to work best…RCS…

Single shot attempts seem to be flat universally, whoever tries them. It appears that the seoncd, usually the third time through the rotation, people get the hint. “Silver Bullet” advertising by sending out one time efforts simply do not get the same support and response that you get from continuous, overlapping, incremental marketing plans.

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Advertising is sending out a coupon. Marketing is more of a plan to infiltrate the market and place your business name and concept continuously in the minds and eyes and hands of the target customers. It involves identifying your market, developing the different types materials/events, a time schedule of using the various meterials/events, and a means of tracking & analyusing the effectiveness of the campaign.

Just because you get no response from a doorhanger does not mean doorhangers are useuless. The message, payout, timing, or coloring could be ineffective in conveying to people the one single messagwe we all want to convey: COME TO OUR STORE or CALL OUR STORE (implied: so we can try to sell you some of our product).

 

[j_r0kk]

Dmitri,

All markets are different, but most get the best responses when marketing is sent out the last week of the month. My marketing is centered around the 1st and 15th because of military paydays.

With that being said, you might want to take a look at what Nick said in his last paragraph. It’s all about a marketing plan. Develop one, and stick to it. Putting out pieces once will give you limited response. If you keep hitting them over and over and over and over, most will finally give in and try your place just because you’re just so damned persistent in trying to get their business.

-J_r0kk

 

[snowman]

j_r0kk:

Dmitri,

All markets are different, but most get the best responses when marketing is sent out the last week of the month. My marketing is centered around the 1st and 15th because of military paydays.

J_r0kk is lucky because he knows his customers and their pay schedule. Honestly, pay day is a HUGE factor in when customers come in.

I’d bet that if you went to a 4-week schedule (much like the 5 week suggested above), you’d find two of the four weeks are better than the other two. I’d also bet that you’ll find that they are either 1 and 3 or 2 and 4. Once you have that information, I’d then look at dropping every two weeks with a delivery date of Wed or Thurs.

 

[system]

guys, thank you for your responces. i just got home - it’s monday night, and i think we got more new customers calling in today rather then fri or sat., as our sales today were same as saturdays. i honestly dont have a marketing plan, but i defenitedly cant afford to be mailing out menues every week - i was thinking more like once every 2 weeks or so, so the challange for me what two weeks out of a months that would be. by the way, is it only military personal gets paid bi-weekly or some other people too? it made sence to me to mail out on the last week of the months, and when probably in the middle of the month. Guys, tell me if there is a standard date of a year when all the pizza stores are busy - something like weekend before independence day or smth. so this way i’ll plan a big mailing and know that it will bring great response. Thank you, Dmitri

 

[system]

Super Bowl Sunday, Thanksgiving Eve, Christmas Eve. Marketing for your busiest days is less desirable that building up your slowest days. That way you keep your service great on everyday.

 

[NicksPizza]

Dmitri:

by the way, is it only military personal gets paid bi-weekly or some other people too?

More and more companies are going to 26 pay periods. Keeps more funds in the bank working for them more often. Last two law firms I worked for went to bi-weekly payroll. Wife’s current eployer is bi-weekly. Government and military are big ones, but the private sector, at least in metro Atlanta, has a lot of that pay period as well.

 

[system]

So, do you want your direct mail materials to be in their mailbox the day before they get paid, the day they cash their paychecks, or at some other time during that week?

 

[system]

the day they get to cash their paychecks, which supposed to be friday, right?

 

[snowman]

Dmitri:

the day they get to cash their paychecks, which supposed to be friday, right?

The idea here is that people don’t determine on Friday night what they’re having to eat. Most people determine that during the day or on the drive home, IMHO. Therefore having the drop on Friday doesn’t get you much business on Friday.

 

[system]

i’ve been told many times, that the best responce comes from mailing that hit houses on friday, but what u r saying makes sense, so is it better to drop them off at the post office say on tuesday, so that they’ll most likely be in the mail boxes on thursday morning?

 

[snowman]

The ADVO drops that we did for LC was targeted to Wed/Thurs (optimum was stated to be Thurs). The demographic for LC may be different than for your folks. The managers told me that they wanted Thursday and would rather error to Wed than Fri because Friday hits had less response than Wed, again, Thurs had the best.

LC was trying to prop up Fri and Sat with their mailings, so if your Friday nights are already good, a Friday drop might work better for you (since you’re running near capacity on Friday). By Monday, sales were usually close to normal. I believe by Wed, there was no difference from a drop week to a non-drop week. As such, if I were doing the drops today, that’s where I’d start. If ad drops are forgotten by Wednesday and you miss a huge increase in Friday sales, you’ve only gotten probably half the bang for your buck.

 

[Piper]

Dmitri:

i’ve been told many times, that the best responce comes from mailing that hit houses on friday, but what u r saying makes sense, so is it better to drop them off at the post office say on tuesday, so that they’ll most likely be in the mail boxes on thursday morning?

Snowman’s totally right, and I learned the lesson the hard way.

I used to always target for mailings to hit on Friday, based on what a lot of people told me would be best, both in the mailing biz and the pizza biz. But when I started targeting my drops to hit Wed/Thur my response rate doubled.

Saturation drops are easy to target since they normally go the next day. Database drops are tougher though since they’re going to get sorted and whatnot. I usually put those in on Monday and hope for a Thursday hit. Sometimes it’s Wednesday though.

 

[Dmitri]

guys, u r absolutly right, - last week i droped of menues at the post office on wednesday afternoon - they fit houses on friday and we didnt really have a responce, but this week i went to post office on tuesday, - and last night was good(thursday) and today we had a lot of new walk-in customers and new delivery adresses. Another thought i have - since i dont know which weeks of the month are the best to distribute menues - may be i should copy companies like val pack and souper coups - this guys probably did their homework and have a lot of experience in picking best time to fit households with coupons.

 

[snowman]

If it were me and I had advertising money to spend…

Divide your area in half. Hit half 1 on weeks 1 and 3. His half 2 on weeks 2 and 4. Track your results. If 1 and 3 are your “weak” weeks, how much did you spend and how much did your sales go up? If your increased profit is greater than the cost to send the advertising, you’ve won anyway. The big companies probably have a nationwide schedule and don’t fine-tune it to local areas. In addition, if you hit their “off” weeks, your return percentage could be higher since there are less places to compete with.

If you have one really big employer in your town, call them and find out when they pay. That will do a lot of good for your marketing plan.

I believe the general consensus (and if I’m wrong, someone pipe up) is that you want to hit your customers every 2-4 weeks.

If you end up with $100 in extra bottom-line profit by hitting houses on the “off” week, that’s still $100 EXTRA in your pocket at the end of the week. With repetition, that $100 should grow.

 

[td_VP192]

snowman:

I believe the general consensus (and if I’m wrong, someone pipe up) is that you want to hit your customers every 2-4 weeks.

If you end up with $100 in extra bottom-line profit by hitting houses on the “off” week, that’s still $100 EXTRA in your pocket at the end of the week. With repetition, that $100 should grow.

I think you’re right on with your belief that you should hit your customers(potential and actual) every 2-4 weeks.

By the way… compounding growth is soooooo sexy. :twisted:

 

[Dmitri]

guys, if i understand correct , i should make sure that every house in my area gets my menu every 2 or 4 weeks, so look - i have probably 25000 households i want to serve. so, 25000 divide by 4 is 6250 pieces a week - a little to much, and the price including menu print and postage will be about 1500, and thats a week. i want to make sure i didnt misunderstood anything.

 

[royster13]

If you can not afford $1,500 per week you need to reduce your target area…The important thing to remember is repetition…From my experience a 5 week rotation works best but until you test it in your area you will not know…Many pizzerias will spend 4% to 7% of their sales on marketing and you need to do it all the time…RCS…

 

[NicksPizza]

Dmitri:

guys, if i understand correct , i should make sure that every house in my area gets my menu every 2 or 4 weeks, so look - i have probably 25000 households i want to serve. so, 25000 divide by 4 is 6250 pieces a week - a little to much, and the price including menu print and postage will be about 1500, and thats a week. i want to make sure i didnt misunderstood anything.

You may need to further subdivide the market and target specific areas that you want to drive sales into. Then roll to the next section after you hit section one repeatedly. You could use 1-3-5 mile radius for targeting. I can see that doing the whole thing in one bite could be expensive. The moutain is moved one stone at a time, so smaller bites and longer range marketing plan could do you fine.

You might even better look at saturation mailing to postal delivery routes - price is at about 17.7 cents per each, but you can get it to 14.4 cents each if dropped at your BMC (Bulk Mail center) or as low as 13.5 cents if you take it to the destination sectional center facility (DSCF). your postmaster can tell you where those are. We just made a mailing to 2015 addresses last Friday and learned a lot. At 13.5 cents, your cost drops to $843.75 for postage. Not tiny, but nearly half. Look for USPS FORM 3602 R! and see Part H.

FINALLY! An advantage to working a tiny market . . . it costs only $350 to mail something to every address in our zip code :shock: OK, so it isn’t so much of an advantage, but I take what I can get.