Mail Shark type program or Million Dollar Letter

[pcuezze]

As soon as our Groupons taper off (next 30-45 days) I’ll be in a position to invest in other marketing strategies. I’ve always hung doors in the surrounding neighborhoods, but it’s labor intensive and very difficult to be consistent. We’ll keep doing it, but I’m going to supplement it with some mailings.

So, if you had to choose between mailing program like Mail Shark or doing your own Million Dollar Letter, which would it be? My thought was, even if I get a better return on the Million Dollar letter, the cost per letter is higher and the amount I could physically prepare and send would be substantially lower. Those two factors seem to make it a wash for me.

I really like the direct mail companies that operate on a schedule because it insures consistency in marketing. Frankly, as a consumer, I think direct mail in general is cheesy and I would instantly throw either away. But they obviously work for a great deal of people and I like to make money

I’ve read all the posts about Mailshark and the Million Dollar Letter and there is lots of good information. If I were honest with myself, I think I’d have a hard time being consistent with the Million Dollar Letters. Anyone find that to be the case? Should that be my deciding factor?

Thanks in advance for the input.

Patrick Cuezze
Next Door Pizza

 

[brad_randall]

We considered doing Mailshark for a moment but then asked the question, “what do we hope to accomplish?”

Drive new customers? New Mover mailings are more effective for that and allow the offer to be more aggressive. Or we could have our customer database removed from a mailing-house list to find new prospects and target them with introductory marketing.

Reactivate lazy customers? That’s the job of 30/60/90 day mailings. And with 3 separate mailings we can hit each group with 3 different messages or offers. Maybe some publicity, like sending a press release for a new menu offering to the local paper’s food section editor, would help in that regard too.

Drive frequency? We can do more cost effectively with box top flyers and opt-in emails. Or for free with facebook, twitter and foursquare.

After thinking about it, we decided that blanket mailings don’t really do any of this stuff particularly well. It just lacks focus. But if you’re not doing anything else, then it’s surely better than nothing.

A properly-prepared Million Dollar Letter mailing list sent out hand signed and hand address with actual stamps in the corner (instead of a bulk mailing permit) is a great way to drive new customers… if you can do it consistently. If not, then find some alternative (Moving Targets or something similar) that may not be as effective but which accomplishes a specific, ongoing goal.

Questions to consider: What am I trying to accomplish? What are my options and which method is most effective? Can the most effective one be done consistently (&cost-effectively) or should I settle for one of the other options to be sure it gets done?

 

[Rockstar_pizza]

my 2 cents…wait 1 cent…my wife took the other cent…sorry…Mail shark. Brad is correct in you have to ask yourself what are you trying to accomplish. What I love about mail shark is you get your FULL COLOR MENU in front of your customer. This has really turned us around. We should be slowing down but instead we are noticing all three of the items brad mentioned, We are seeing new customers, we are seeing existing customers more frequent and with the package deal type coupons we are seeing bigger tickets. We also were able to drive people to our dining room, which I love.
The million dollar letter is a decent idea, the key to that is making it personable. Dollar for Dollar I would say mail shark especially when considering ease of use…
BUT STAY TUNED I may have something good coming up. gonna do some more research and I have a few follow ups but if my math is right I am gonna be a very very happy camper…
chow

 

[josh]

Hi Brad this is Josh from the MAIL SHARK,
I agree, “blanket mailers†by themselves are not enough, that’s why we believe and offer a fully integrated approach to pizza marketing. We can now offer Pizza Operators the following: 1,000 weekly mailing pieces a week all year long featuring: 2 cycles of menus, 1 Postcard, 1 Scratch Off, and 1 Magnet throughout the year. 2,000 box Toppers each month, with every month being a new design with fresh coupons. 50 new mover postcards, mailed by themselves and not in an envelope at Half the Price of Moving Targets. Online Ordering Site with unlimited transaction and no sharing of YOUR sales dollars. We can offer all of this to Pizza Operators for ONLY $349/wk.

We agree that marketing is more than just saturation mailers. This is why we have developed a turnkey solution under one roof that allows you to coordinate all your marketing and not have to organize it yourself with multiple vendors or personal attention on a daily or weekly basis. You can do what is most important and focus on business operation and customer service.