How to make more money off your mailing list

The cleaning business is EXACTLY LIKE just about all other businesses.

The goal is to create recurring revenue each month by convincing enough people to do business with you.

It sounds simplistic, but it really is THAT SIMPLE. People however tend to complicate things (I sure did a lot of that when I was new). In particular many beginners I work with who aren’t making the money they want, or having success fast enough, suffer from some variation of a common problem.

In many cases revolves it around this belief that they are worried about being a pest to prospects. For instance, when we performed a direct mailing to a set of prospects we may mail to them every 30 to 60 days over and over again. Maybe 6 or 8 follow up mailings in total.

I did that because I modeled myself after all those big credit card companies. They think nothing of mailing their special offers to me “time and time again”. Are they worried about being a pest? I don’t think so! I don’t think so in the least!

But for some reason new business owners are worried about this. Basically they are concerned about coming on too strong. They even say things like “I don’t want to be pushy” or “I don’t want to be a pest or a bother anyone”. While no one wants to be a pest, repeated mailings and reaching out to prospects in general is part of your job description.

Why REPEATED MAILINGS is the key to success

But for those of you who need some cold hard facts to believe, study after study clearly indicates that there is a need for follow up with repeated mailings to your prospects (and lots of it) if you want to get customers. In other words you need to reach out to prospects time and time again. One of the last studies I saw reported the following…

• 2% of sales are made on the first contact
• 3% of sales are made on the second contact
• 5% of sales are made on the third contact
• 10% of sales are made on the fourth contact
• 80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact

Now why is that the case? Well, it’s because of what’s called the sales funnel (aka “purchase funnel”). At it’s core it’s about the different STAGES people go through before they make a buying decision. The four stages are: Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action. The more you reach out to people the more stages you get through!

Pretty amazing stuff huh? This is why many people have a problem getting customers when you hand out flyers and do direct mail. They basically quit too soon. All those people they gave out info too only saw it once. And what did the study show for only one contact. About 2 percent! Incidentally, that is right about what I got on all my first mailings.

But the real magic happens when you keep mailing and reaching out to people time and time again. When you reach out to your list the fourth time you are up to 10% on average. That’s a huge difference. So the moral of the story here is to not do a one and done direct mail campaign. When you do you are losing out on all the business that comes from repeatedly reaching out to them.