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Direct Menu Mail Strategy?

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NYFLPizza

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I have about 20,000 homes that I want to hit with my new menus.

Is there a certain strategy I should take with staggering the mailings, or should I just blast mail them now all at once?

Some factors to consider:
  • A new shop opened up down the road about a month ago. They did a direct mailer to some similar areas as they opened.
  • Another new shop will be opening up down the road, supposedly within the next 4-8 weeks.
  • Homes east of our shop are higher income and more likely to create a return. I’ve considered mailing to that area two times and just getting some cheap door hangers for the areas West.
Thoughts?
 
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Why not mail 2,500 per week clockwise around your restaurant, until all 20,000 households have been targeted. This will have a huge impact on sales, keep your staff busy (and happy), and fight off competitors over the long-haul.

Once the initial campaign is done… update your menus (change cover), remove poor-performance coupons, and test out new offers. Repeat.

With this strategy your customers/local households receive new menus every 60 days and constantly have a reason to call, click, or visit with their business.

I’ve seen this strategy work over and over again - hope this helps!

Chris
 
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I send out about 1000-1500 menus every week, hitting every house in my delivery area a few times per year. Consistency is key as people move, die, & change eating habits often.
 
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RobT:
I send out about 1000-1500 menus every week, hitting every house in my delivery area a few times per year. Consistency is key as people move, die, & change eating habits often.
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Smart man!
 
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I definitely wouldn’t do all 20,000 at once. That would be a service nightmare! I generally get a 5% return on my mailings and I do 1,500-2,000 a week. I couldn’t imagine sending out 20,000 at one time. There’s no way I would be able to handle an additional 1,000 orders in one week. Like mentioned above, consistency is key. Keep doing them week after week. Some weeks will be better than others but keep at it and you will see your business grow. Good luck!
 
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Divide your delivery area into quarters and mail each quarter 4 times. Hitting 1/4 of your area will have far more impact than doing a blanket mail drop.

PT Barnum describes it best in his book, ‘Art of Getting Money’
“The reader of a newspaper does not see the first mention of an ordinary advertisement; the second insertion he sees, but does not read; the third insertion he reads; the fourth insertion, he looks at the price; the fifth insertion, he speaks of it to his wife; the sixth insertion, he is ready to purchase, and the seventh insertion, he purchases.”
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This works for the newspaper, and is equally true of direct mail. I see a lot of people saying drop the whole area, but in terms of adding customers and ROI, frequency will trump the shotgun effect every time.
 
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Recently a guy in my chain did 10k postcards 3 consecutive weeks to cover his 30k addresses. He went from his 14k a week to just over 18k for the 3 weeks and the following week. His service times were so poor that the 5th, 6th and this week he was back down to his 14k level.

$5700 investment to generate an extra $12,000 in revenue was probably a waste of money. Performing so poorly means the majority of those folks wont be back - at least for awhile.

I have one of my shops that has 28k addresses and I used to do 4,000 cards a week for 3 weeks in a row then week 4 I did my inactives(lazy customers) in my database and hit NEWBIES with a card as well. Week 5 I took off then started the cycle again.

I did this for 4 years religously. Built my store from 12k a week to a record 27,546. I stopped somewhere down the line for reasons I can not remember. My sales leveled off at about 22k a week and have been there since - I dont do hardly any advertising in that store now, I should get back on it soon to see if I can push back upwards.

Anyway - thats my take.
 
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Performing so poorly means the majority of those folks wont be back - at least for awhile.
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In my experience, if you screw up the initial transaction you just don’t ever get a 2nd chance. We botched multiple things when we opened our Columbus location and we could never recover those customers. Slow and steady wins the race when you are driving new business.
 
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Some testing will be required to determine the best frequency…Seems to be my best result was about every 6 weeks…Depending on your competition the frequency may be less or more often…
 
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Some good suggestions here.

What about days to try and hit them? Is it better to hit them earlier in the week on the slower days where we want to increase, or later in the week when we’re already busy, but it’s on days where they have a better chance of using them?
 
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NYFLPizza:
Some good suggestions here.

What about days to try and hit them? Is it better to hit them earlier in the week on the slower days where we want to increase, or later in the week when we’re already busy, but it’s on days where they have a better chance of using them?
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I drop my EDDM mailings off at the post office Tuesday morning. They end up getting delivered on Wednesday. I’ve tried dropping them on Monday (delivered on Tuesday) and got lower returns.
 
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I also target a Wednesday delivery of menus. That gives time for them to see the menu and think about it before the weekend.
In my experience, which may be different from others, if you mail too often, without making major changes in what you are mailing, people begin to ignore it. We were hitting most of our delivery area, every month, with menus for several years. The graphics on the front of the menu changed monthly and coupons on the back rotated through several that had proved most popular with our base. In the last year that i did this, looking as sales numbers, you could not tell when the menus hit. People would be arguing price on items that we had increased prices 18 months earlier “My menu says a large is $1.00 per topping”
It became apparent that by sending the same basic piece every month, we were being considered junk mail and being tossed by the majority of our customers. We cut back on frequency of mailings and mixed in various types of fliers and sales did not go down and you see a bump when a mailing goes out.

Just my 2 cents and I am probably wrong.

Rick
 
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Hi NYFL,

Josh from the Mail Shark here. My suggestion is to find a handful of direct mail companies that specialize in the pizza industry and interview them all. Whoever has the best product, service, price and who brings the most industry knowledge to the table should be a viable candidate to work with.

Just because a company can mail your menus a certain way doesn’t mean that it will be the best strategy for what you are looking to accomplish. It also doesn’t mean that it will fit your budget.

When it comes to direct mail there are many other important factors other than how many pieces you will mail each week.

Without discussing your location, local market, what marketing efforts your are currently involved in/have previously done & understanding your business model, it is difficult to make a general statement with regards to what I think will be best for you.

If you would like more information about what we do, you can check us out at www.themailshark.com
Or you can reach me on my cell 484-269-3715 with any specific questions.

Regards,
Josh Davis
VP Sales
Mail Shark
www.themailshark.com
Cell: 484-269-3715
 
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NYFLPizza:
Some good suggestions here.

What about days to try and hit them? Is it better to hit them earlier in the week on the slower days where we want to increase, or later in the week when we’re already busy, but it’s on days where they have a better chance of using them?
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I drop on a tuesday and they usually hit on Thursday Friday or Saturday. (This is dropping off @ bulk mail center). It sometimes hits the following Monday or Tuesday.

I am switching over to Every Door Direct Mail next month, and am looking forward to having a better control over which day it hits & post office is 2 minutes away. Dropping it off at the destination post office will most likely go out the next day.

The day the mail hits the box can make or break the response i believe.
 
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Good morning!

Just a quick note - for those of you managing the EDDM mailing services yourself, always start with the smallest drop possible.

To RobT’s point, the first time you drop off your EDDMs, you will learn how long it takes them to get into homes.

For some areas, it might be next day. For others, it could take 3-5 days or even more.

Always start with a small “test mailing” when possible. From there, your average delivery times should be about the same.

Good luck, and happy marketing!

P.S. Don’t forget you can request FREE EDDM MENU SAMPLES if you want to print new menus for your mailing campaigns.
 
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Here’s another question.

How far out do you guys attempt to hit with the mailers? At this point, I have a good idea of where most of my customers are coming from. They live off of the main road I’m on, and about 5 miles out each direction.

Even though there are some people that live closer to us but are an exit south off of I-75, we don’t seem to get too many of them. Big reason could be because I never reached out to them. They would certainly have to pass plenty of pizzeria’s to get to us. It’s just one of those things down here where every road off the interstate is built out, so most the time you don’t have to take the interstate for day to day purchases.

How far out do you guys go with your mailers? Anyone operate in a similar are to what I’ve described?
 
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I mail mostly 1.5 mile radius around my store.

My delivery area is 2 miles around, and i do not want to go further out, because of time it takes to go to & From.
 
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Maybe the population isn’t as dense here. I have about 20,000 single family homes in a 4 mile radius. We do however take some deliveries as far as 7-8 miles away. It’s almost always east and west however, not north and south.

I wonder what would happen if we hit some areas we haven’t targeted before and a threw an extra delivery driver or two on the schedule.
 
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When you run a delivery 7 or 8 miles, are you actually making any money or just creating cash flow?..
 
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