EDDM Postcard for B2B promotion

Hey Dan, it's always a good thing to have carrier routes chock full of businesses on them!

The reasons I really like EDDM for b2b is:

1. only sixteen cents for postage
2. the fact that you can send very very large pieces
3. the ultra fast delivery speed

Now I have no clue what you're planning on promoting but in my experience, for b2b to work best with postcards you need to send the biggest ones possible to cut through the clutter (EDDM makes this significantly more cheap than paying $1 to send 'flat' sized pieces normally), and to follow up with more postcards, phone call, email, or any combinations of those.

The speed that EDDM gets delivered is great because you can time your follow-ups perfectly. With a regular standard class mailing, it's impossible to do but EDDM gets delivered within a day or two like first class.

I'd definitely go 8.5x11 or 9x12 though and maximize your opportunity with the EDDM postage.

Thanks Bob.

What types of promotions have you seen do well? Free consult, % Off, Flat rate discounts, Free samples, BOGO??

No problem.

Myself, I've done B2B postcard marketing successfully with selling my print services, which I mimic vistaprint offers. I don't think that's going to really help you much. I also sell a service to contractors via postcards that isn't probably going to help you much.

I do however print B2B stuff for a bunch of my members, and I see a lot of results (ranging from very good to zero response).

Dan what service are you offering? I print so much B2B stuff for others that it might be more beneficial to tell you what seems to be working for the service you're offering.

I do strategy coaching. I do very well in getting clients through referrals and direct contacts. When you help someone create systems for their business they will tell others. I am plugged into a good ecosystem which yields me a continual source of face to face time with new people.

I'd really like to take this to the next level and begin to reach out via different marketing channels. It is easy to get a dramatic return for most small business folks just by creating solid advertisements, re-aligning their branding, using a competitive advantage, implementing testing and tracking in their marketing, and creating referral systems.

I teach that getting your basic marketing plan set up correctly is the foundation before moving on to more advanced forms of marketing such as direct response and internet marketing. This may go against what many here believe, but I believe that the internet is actually a fairly advanced form of marketing which requires much more care and feeding with much less reliable results. The more standard forms of marketing produce predictable, reliable, steady streams of revenue for a business owner.

Well, I have been good at getting customers myself. I am now building the marketing systems into my own business.

You can see an example of the draft postcard I am considering here:
http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...-best-you.html

Thanks Bob. Your expertise is valued.

Dan it looks like you have a pretty solid service there, I like it. I totally understand what your saying about getting a basic marketing plan together before getting into more advanced stuff.

I know when I first going into business I took some direct response things from my past employer that worked like gold and tried it but had to learn the hard way that you can't always just start using it without a solid foundation first.

The whole predictability thing is huge and it's something that always lights my clients eyes up when I talk about. (I sell direct mail services so this is a big selling point for me and it's usually the 'predictability' aspect that gets people converted away from the mindset of just trying things out here and there to see what works).

I think EDDM could be a tough sell for this though, personally, because of the lack of targeting messages and targeting the right businesses. If you have some disposable cash to put into it and give it a shot, I'd say you need to hit them at least 3 times and then follow up. That's my opinion. I would probably do a sequence that builds up from a very generic (or non-existent) to a very strong offer at the end of the sequence, followed by a manual follow-up.

If you can show some powerful testimonials you might get some really good response by the third mailing.

I like your postcard idea in the other thread, stuff like that is always interesting.

I'm going to PM you a technique for mailing that's something I keep pretty confidential but it'll knock your socks off.