EDDM campaign with delivery start up

[pizzadoodle]

Sorry it is very late so if some of this is a little nonsensical please forgive me. We have decided to start delivery and do an EDDM campaign. We are doing 50,000 11 x 17 menus and sending them out 2500 per week for 10 weeks to cover a 3 mile radius. We are currently dine in carry out only.

My first question is what kind of a return should I expect from these mailers? I am anticipating a 4% return is this reasonable? Am I crazy for doing this many per week?

Second question is I believe I saw in the archives that driver can do roughly 3 deliveries an hour. What should I do for hiring drivers and how many should I have each night once these start to go out?

Not sure if anyone can really answer this definitively but I am under the impression that ENOL insurance (I think is the right acronym for the employee owned liability insurance) is not required at least in Colorado does anyone know? While I know I should get this I am hoping to skip it to start. What else can I do to protect me if I don’t have that?

We are planning on doing free delivery with $25 dollar minimum or a $2 charge $15 up to $25. no delivery less than $15 what are your thoughts? I know there are many similar topics in the archives I have seen.

lastly for our mailers we are thinking of doing

1. Free personal pizza with drink purchase
2. 2 large pizzas 1 cheese 1 one topping for $25 normally $31
3. Free appetizer with $35 purchase I personally think it should be $30 but wife disagrees
4. gluten free garlic bread and a 15" gluten free 1 topping for $20 normally 24.25

Our box toppers would then have $5 off any purchase 25 or more.
2 large pizza deal similar to #2 above
one more

I come from a place that never advertised or accepted coupons yet did $50,000 a week so I hate coupons

 

[royster13]

1st of all welcome to Think Tank and “Good Luck”…

Return can vary widely depending on size of your market, competition, how aggressive your offers are, etc., etc…So how big is your market?..How does your product and/or price compare to other competitors?..How many competitors do you have?..How aggressive is their marketing and/or offers?..

As far as offers I think coupons are hard to lose once you go down that road…IMO you can probably get away with some “very aggressive” coupons for a short period of a “Grand Opening” and then lose them in favour of package deals that ARE not really great deals but just easy to order combos…As far as discounts, I think “add-ons” are better…So instead of 6.00 off a 31.00 pizza, add-on an order of “garlic bread sticks” at no charge…

And know your ideal and actual food cost of every menu item, deal and/or combo you offer…Nice to have “cash flow” but way better if you making money as well…

As far as “employee owned liability insurance” I have no idea what is legal or not…But what is “smart” is to have it…Without it, all your effort and investment can be destroyed in a “split second” by a careless moment of a delivery driver…DO NO GO DOWN THAT ROAD!..

PS…The archives offers 10s of 1,000s of good and some bad ideas…It will be well worth your time to read and read and read some more…

 

[famousperry]

my thoughts:

definitely lower your $25 minimum

although the insurance is not required is that going to stop any lawyer with half a brain from suing you…don’t kid yourself

delivery needs to be done right so why not get your feet wet and get all the kinks out before you start promoting a service that is new

we do mailings of 1000-1500 at a time to handle the bump in business accordingly…success depends on the quality of the piece being mailed and the offers

i hope your POS is delivery focused

 

[durbancic]

famousperry:

my thoughts:

definitely lower your $25 minimum

I think he was referring to a FREE delivery with a minimum $25 order. Anything 15 to 25 is a $2 charge, correct me if I am wrong.
We have a $2.50 delivery charge on any order from $7.50 to $25 in food purchase, then FREE above $25.

Dan

 

[josh]

When you say you are anticipating a 4% return what exactly do you mean. I am assuming you mean 4% in coupons received back or 2,000 coupons. Or are you talking about a 4% sales increase or a standard ROI = Gain – Cost/Cost?

The wide majority of operators count coupons alone which is not at all an accurate way to analyze a direct mail campaign. I would encourage you to try and not take a very short sighted approach to analyzing this campaign by coupons only. To give you more insight we had conducted a case study for a mom & pop shop in our local market. We added call tracking to the mailers and had the owner collect coupons so that we could compare. What we found was that there will be more calls from the mailer during the weeks after the pieces are all mailed then during the actual mailing period. It is important to not be two weeks into the mailer and say it isn’t working yet….In our case study you will also see that there were about 3 times more phone calls received than coupons redeemed. Thus you cannot only count coupons only and expect an accurate analyzation of ROI.

I urge you to watch the video as I have not yet seen another comprehensive study like this concluded looking at coupons to call ratios for Pizza Shops. I believe Taradel did one but only offered call tracking results. Our more comprehensive approach adds transparency to the coupons vs calls and gets to the root of return based on how operators are really tracking results.

I did just post this in another thread so apologize for the redundancy but here it is.
Here is a link to our case studies page. http://www.themailshark.com/about/case-studies/ Once on the site please choose the Call Tracking case study.

If you don’t like clicking links you can simply go to our new website: http://www.themailshark.com and click on the Case Studies tab.

Quick note about the coupons, I don’t see any Delivery specials?? I know you hate coupons but I would consider kicking off the delivery with some type of offer or at the bear minimum a heading that says Delivery Special.

Last note: if you didn’t print the 50,000 menus yet I would consider a much smaller quantity as a test run. If you mail 2,500/Week, you are sitting on 20 weeks of mailers. A lot happens in 20 weeks.

Josh Davis
Vice President of Sales
Mail Shark
Direct: 484-948-1611
E: [email protected]
http://www.themailshark.com

 

[Chris]

Pizzadoodle,

Your questions require a much more in-depth understanding of your customer demographic, USP, and competition (among other things).

For example:

• Do existing customers (and/or the local community) know that you now offer delivery?
  How long have you been in business without delivery?
  How is this campaign integrated with your other marketing efforts/social media/etc.
  Why aren’t you offering a combo/party coupon with football season kicking off?
  How are you tracking results?
  And the list goes on…

Before you invest in direct mail, optimize your campaign for success.

Feel free to give me a call to discuss marketing best practices and strategy – I won’t try to sell you anything, just want to help.

800-481-1656 x122

-Chris

 

[RobT]

I am still mailing 1500 menus per week for 4 years now . Consistency !