A quick example of how direct mail can be both simple AND highly profitable

I’ve written a lot of posts over the years about how to use direct mail in your cleaning business.

One of the first articles on direct mail was all the way back in 2010! Another post talking about how much I made off one letter was a few years later.

I’ve written a bunch of others over the years as well, and I do so because I’m a HUGE FAN of the results. Now if you have been following me here at Cleaning 4 Profit you’ll know that we retired to sunny Florida.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t have anything interesting to share! I’ll cut straight to the chase. To make a long story short, my wife took a small job at a marina to keep busy. Maybe 20 hours per week on average. The job was really just answering phones for a business that does half-day fishing trips for only $50.00 out in the Gulf of Mexico.

The job was nice and easy but VERY BORING. So she decided to create a real nice flyer that explains the benefits of the trip. She highlighted the cost of course, which was only $50.00. She shared that the you go out 20 miles, you can bring your own food and drink or purchase some on-board.

She went to explain that whatever you catch can be filleted by the crew so you can eat it the very same day. All in all a VERY SIMPLE FLYER. Then she made a list of who to mail it to! She thought for a few minutes WHO was the TARGET MARKET. Basically who would respond the best to this flyer.

So she created a list of all the RV parks and civic organizations (Veterans Clubs, Moose Lodge etc…) and drop it in the mail. The thought was this would give the best chance at booking a decent sized group, as people tend to do these trips in groups of 10, 20 or 30 at one time.

Anyway, all she did was mail the flyer, no business card or sales letter was included. The list only totaled 61 places to mail. So it wasn’t a ton of places, but the results were amazing! Out of 61 flyers mailed 5 individual parties were booked, with one group booking TWO PARTIES.

So that made 6 parties in total! Each group averaged roughly 25 people (that meant each group booked brought in about $1,283.00). Adding it all up totaled $7,700.00! All this was accomplished for roughly $40.00 in costs (printing the flyers, stamps and the cost of envelopes).

Where in the world can you get a return on your investment that is that good? Those were amazing results for a super simple direct mail campaign that was thrown together rather quickly. As you can see, direct mail DOES WORK when you take the time to think through your benefits, AND mail your piece to the proper target market!

Direct mail was a BIG REASON why we were so successful in our cleaning business. While we recommend including a sales letter and business card, you can see how even a basic mailing can reap sweet returns if you take the time to think through the actual benefits your service provides and mail to the proper audience. Go make it happen!

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