Alright, alright!  I know what you’re thinking.  Junk mail.  Am I right?  Well, if you’re using direct mail the way 99% of business use it, then yes, junk mail.

And wasted marketing dollars (especially  for a small lawncare company.)

But let’s take a look at how to make it work for you.

Typically, your first step in direct-mail would be to design a campaign.  What? A campaign?  Is this some sort of Crusade or something?  YES!  Exactly.  You’re wasting your money if you only send one mailing.  Or even if you send multiple mailings which aren’t consistent.

You should decide what the purpose and thrust of each campaign will be.  To brand your company?  To sell new fertilization jobs?  To dominate a neighborhood?  You must know so that you can design each mailing.

You should target an area (the area you want to concentrate in) and blanket them with your campaign.

Your List Of Prospects

Next, you would typically buy a list of addresses with names.  But, I wouldn’t.  Instead, collect these names and addresses yourself.  This allows you to “laser-target” your market.  There are resources at your public library in the reference section which contain listings of homeowners by street address (along with much useful information such as telephone, years in residence, etc.)  Target a few streets and be sure everyone on the street gets on your list.

A little more complicated method would be to use the whitepages.com.  Just click on the People Search tab, then click Find Neighbors tab.  Here you can enter an address on a street and your search will return all the neighbors’ names with address on the street (minus all the other useful information.)

Just a side note about collecting this information—if you use telemarketing, this is a primo way to target your market, but be aware of the laws surrounding the “Do Not Call Registry” (more on this in another post.)

The Package

The next thing to do is design your campaign pieces.  Letters or postcards?  Trifolded paper in newsletter format or a complete package in a manilla envelope?  Now, spend some time here with me.  This is very important.  Your package must raise enough curiosity to get opened and be read.  Whether its intriguing words on the envelope, the size of the envelope, the method in which it was delivered, something about the package has to make your prospective customer want to open the package.

Need some ideas?  How many large manilla envelopes do you receive in the mail each week?  Do they get opened?  Probably so.  If you received a birthday card sized envelope with nothing on the outside but your address handwritten, wouldn’t you be curious to see who sent it?  Use your imagination.  Since this mailing is on a small scale (you probably aren’t going to target 5000 people all at once) you may be able to afford to send a package that would  have been cost-prohibitive on a larger scale.

What about including some novelty item?  Well, the general rule is that if the novelty item is actually useful, it will likely be kept around.  For example,  my kids hang pictures on the refrigerator all the time.  So I always keep those business card magnets that come in the pieces I receive.  Benefit to me : extra magnets on the fridge.  Benefit to sender : their name and number always in sight close to my phone.

That’s about enough to digest in one post, so stay tuned for Part II, where we’ll cover what to actually say in the pieces you’ll be mailing.