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Question About Follow-Up After Mailing

by bhuff85
4 replies
I have a local restaurant/bar directory here in my city that tooks quite some time to develop. My goal with it first was to develop a strong presence locally and get people to start using it AND signing up for the email list (more on that in a second).

After launching my directory to the general public by doing some promotion and advertising here in town, things are really starting to pick up steam. I not only have active users, but I have built up a decent list of subscribers (the point of the email list is to send out coupon notifications from local area businesses).

All of the businesses I have setup currently have a free basic listing. I've ordered nearly 1,000 6.5" x 9" postcards that I plan to send to all business I have listed. Basically, the postcard tells them that their business has been listed for free on my directory and has a strong call to action that encourages them to contact me to find out how they can increase their customers and sales through the directory itself.

My goal here is to get an appointment with them to show them why they need to upgrade to a stronger listing, as well as add coupons and such.

The plan is to follow up after the initial mailing. This way, they will already be familiar with me when I call up and can immediately recall the mailing.

My question is this - How many days do you recommend before I follow-up?

I don't know how many people here have approached things like this before, but I figured someone here could point me in the right direction when it comes to the follow-up.

So, what's a good time to make that follow-up call and introduction?
#followup #mailing #question
  • Profile picture of the author Blase
    Done that been there.

    I started a local directory about 4 years ago.
    I had to stop working it before I really got started for reasons
    I won't go into here, but the site is still up and gets a lot of traffic.

    To answer your question.

    When I mail locally the mail would arrive the very next day to the
    business owner, so I found it best to call the day after that.

    Word of WARNING! Only mail out the number of pieces you
    know you can follow up on in 48 hours!

    If you know you can't make phone calls DONT mail!

    Only mail when you know you can call.

    I also found that when I called it was best to mention the free
    listing they where getting and I was calling to make sure I had
    all of their info correct in the listing.

    I asked if they would like to see their listing? Then I got their
    email address to send them the link. Then I put their name
    and emaill address into a no optin autoresponer. Then I started
    sending them free high quality marketing information to help their
    business, no sales stuff at all.

    After I had built up know, like and trust I would call back
    to get an appointment. I told them I was making some
    improvements to the site that they might find helpful, plus I had the
    statistics on searches for them from google and data from
    my directory site. Then I went and sold an upgrade account.
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    "Nothing Happens Until Something Is Sold"
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    • Profile picture of the author sandalwood
      bhuff,

      You asked:

      "So, what's a good time to make that follow-up call and introduction?"

      The previous poster hit the time frame on the head. When we did local mailing, we would call the third day following the mail date. We never waited any longer. If they got the mailer wonderful, if not, this gave us a chance to introduce ourselves and tell them what is on the mailer.

      Turned a cold call into a warm call immediately. Did everybody become a client? No. But it did increase our visibility/awareness AND put new clients on the books.

      Hope that helped.

      Tom
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    • Profile picture of the author bhuff85
      Originally Posted by Blase View Post

      If you know you can't make phone calls DONT mail!

      Only mail when you know you can call.
      100% agree with you here. I'm planning on mailing around 50 each time to ensure that I can follow-up with each and every one.

      Originally Posted by Blase View Post

      I also found that when I called it was best to mention the free
      listing they where getting and I was calling to make sure I had
      all of their info correct in the listing.

      I asked if they would like to see their listing? Then I got their
      email address to send them the link. Then I put their name
      and emaill address into a no optin autoresponer. Then I started
      sending them free high quality marketing information to help their
      business, no sales stuff at all.
      I like the idea of grabbing their email address to send them a listing link. Can't believe I missed that one!

      I think the mailing + follow-up will definitely produce significantly better results than just cold calling alone (which is why I chose to go this route). I won't get the mailers for about another week to 1 1/2 weeks from now with print & delivery times, but I'll definitely come back and follow up on this post with some of the results!
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Roncone
    I would say 48 hours as well.

    I took on a telemarketing job once a little while ago, it was me and two other people working for a start-up. When we started, the marketing manager was relentless in telling us how the calls had to be done by "x" day.

    I never understood why he was so adamant about having every single call made by a certain date, when the mail went out to hundreds of businesses all over the state and likely got them at different times.

    It was only after that I approached him about this, and he told me that, in his previous mailing experience the response rate to physical mail SIGNIFICANTLY dropped off post-48 hours of receipt of the mail.

    In fact, like Blase said, he told me that after 48 hours, it was extremely cost-inefficient to bother paying someone to make the calls, because of the extremely high rate of failure after the 48 hour mark.

    Best,
    -Mike
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    Founder & Web Strategist at Grae Web Strategies

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