Archive for December, 2009

Dec
29

Vacation Rewards Program: Great Way To Get New Customers

by Jim Negron, under Direct Mail Marketing Tips

Vacation Rewards ProgramPostcards are an affordable and effective way to reach clients in your neighborhood. Getting postcards mailed on a regular basis is half the battle. But even if you mail to every home in town, your postcard still needs to attract attention and then motivate your prospect to contact you. You need a strong offer to get the best results. How about this headline: FREE VACATION with Any Purchase!

Would a free vacation to Disney World, Las Vegas or San Francisco attract new customers? You bet it would. With our new program, now any size firm can afford to launch a Vacation Rewards Program for their business. A free vacation is a great sales incentive. In addition to attracting new clients, it can be used to build loyalty with existing clients. You can also reward customers who send referrals. It can even be used to motivate inactive customers.

With our Vacation Rewards Program, you can present your customer with a travel certificate for hotel accommodations for up to 2 to 6 nights. The only charges your client will pay are hotel taxes and small housekeeping fee (both are usually less than $29 per room, per night). Participating hotels include selected properties operated by Holiday Inn, Howard Johnson, Quality Inn, Travelodge, Radisson and others. The cost for each voucher is less than $4 although they have an actual value of $600 or more. By the way, there are no black out dates.

Seem too good to be true? Well, this is not a sales gimmick. You clients won’t have to sit through a high pressure time share sales pitch. They will be treated just like any other guest paying full price. So how do we do it? This program is administered by a company that is a professional hotel booking agent. They have been filling unused hotel rooms for over 24 years and can provide a list of satisfied repeat clients as references. Hotel Rooms are subsidized by theme parks and local tourist economies to increase traffic. Everyone wins, your client, the hotel, local attractions, restaurants, but most of all your business will benefit, because you’ll be adding new satisfied customers to your client list.

The program is valid for 12 months from the date your company enrolls. There is a one time fee of just $395 for 100 Vacation Certificates and personalize thank you letters. Complete instructions and promotional ideas are included with the package. You are not involved in the reservation process. All you have to do is present the certificate to your customer. The Certificate has compete booking instructions including a telephone number and website that are available 24/7.

Your clients will love the gift of a free vacation and you can generate more sales without discounting your product or service. Your cost is less than $4 per sale which is probably a lot less than the cost of discounts you may have offered in the past.

If you would like to find out more about this exciting program visit our new website http://vacationrewardsprogram.com

Dec
28

Bulk Mail Strategy: Target Neighborhoods Not Zip Codes

by Jim Negron, under Bulk Mail

mail-carrierBulk mail advertising is a proven method for increasing sales for just about any type of business. The goal of all advertising is to deliver results that justify the cost. That’s the tricky part. Advertising is often a “trial and error” process that can be expensive. Here’s a tip that can help improve the results of your bulk mail advertising campaign: Target Neighborhoods NOT Zip Codes.

It’s easy to target specific neighborhoods when you use Mail Carrier Routes defined by the United States Postal Service (USPS). Here’s an example of how targeting with Mail Carrier Routes works. There are about 160 million residential addresses in the United States. If you wanted to target just one state, say Arizona, you’d be down to about 2.6 million deliveries. You could then narrow down your mailing list to just one county, i.e. Maricopa County and you would still have 1.5 million. So, how about mailing to just one zip code in Maricopa County, like 85226? That would still give you a pretty big list, about 14.5 thousand! Here’s some good news, zip codes are made up of individual mail carrier routes. Each route includes the daily deliveries of an individual mail carrier, usually about 300 to 500 addresses. The boundaries of mail carrier routes are defined, and using a carrier route map, you can target very precisely. For example carrier route number 6 in our chosen zip code 85226 has just 450 deliveries.

Carrier route mailings are sometimes referred to as saturation mailings because they include every address within the boundary of the route. The list is complied by the USPS and is updated every two months, so it is very accurate. Carrier route mailing lists are usually presorted in the sequence that the carrier walks his route, and therefore can be mailed at the lowest postage rate available.

Using mail carrier routes is one of the best ways to compile a geographic mailing list. But what if you want a more targeted list, taking into consideration the age and income of your prospects? You can do it!  The average age and average income of the households within most carrier routes are available at no additional charge. Average home values are also available.Don’t forget about your own first hand knowledge of the area. In most neighborhoods, wealthy people live next to other wealthy people. The same goes for middle class and poor folks. A new neighborhood development with moderately priced homes will probably be purchased by young families with children. So, you can draw some demographic conclusions from a geographic list without paying for a specialized list.

Of course a good mailing list is just one of three important elements of a successful bulk mail advertising campaign. The product or service being offered and postcard design are the other two considerations. Each is vital. Try using mail carrier routes and target neighborhoods not entire zip codes and save money on postage in the process!

We have put together a video that summarizes the key points of this article. Feel free to check it out at

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