[MCNetwork]

Sales genie is a list provider so I guess they work

[JayBallentine]

The other day I got two emails exactly 5 minutes apart from Seamless and Grubhub. 6:51 and 6:56.

On the surface you may think its coincidence, rather I am positive it was a function of their aligning their marketing with the data.

I was curious so I hit up Quora. Turns out for Grubhub their orders spike after 7:30 pm. They got to me 39 minutes before theyd anticipate that I order.

The content of the Grubhub email was meaningless, Seamless offered me $5.

I had yet to eat, so that $5 plus the convenience put me over the top.

Simple story but there is a LOT in their to parse and deploy if you're ambitious enough.

[atag40]

Thank's Jay, like I wasn't hungry enough as it is.

[atag40]

Any thoughts out there on mailers?

I noticed on another thread that MCNnetwork believes that lead sources are drying up.

What do you think about creating your own leads? Are the infousa lists over saturated? If so, would it make sense to carpet bomb mailers to businesses with appropriate sic codes?

[MCNetwork]

Mailers are an MCA marketing strategy that's been going on for quite a few years now. You just have to see if it's worth the return on your investment because they can be pretty expensive and the conversion rate is pretty low. It depends on how deep your marketing budget is.

[Finance1]

I agree with MCN about mailers. We were heavy into mailers back in 2010-11. Response rates can be big with a UCC list but we all know the kind of quality there. Lotsa chasing ghosts. But with a 3-5% response rate it sure blows the phones up. This doesn't mean closing lots of deals though.

A good targeted mailer with select SIC codes can average 1-2% response rate but lists cannot drill down as much as you think. You will end up getting calls from a lot of too small to fund businesses.

The snap-pack check letter worked the best for us. Outperformed every other piece. At the end of the day though the cost per closed deal averaged $750. Mail is not cheap. And it's not for someone to test out 2k pieces with their last $800. The only way to measure results is to mail enough to smooth out the flukes. 5k pieces min before you know what's going on.

Small drops produce seriously skewed results. For example, if you take a list of 6k and mail 3 separate drops of 2k, the results of each 2k can be wildly different for no definable reason. If you are a small mailer of 2k pieces, you can either hit it big or lose your shorts.

We mailed around 200k pieces in 2011. I kept an inhouse staff super busy with calls but there is no way around a cost of $750-1000 per funded deal and that's just the mail costs.

[MCNetwork]

Yes, mailers bring a very high customer acquisition cost but if you can stick with it long enough and have the budget to support it, you will offset your expenses with income from the renewals and residuals. The problem is that not too many ISOs can afford to spend 10k-20k per month on mailers and still have funds for other marketing campaigns. You don't want to rely on mailers for your primary strategy though. It should only be one component of a multipronged approach.

[Chambo]

"there are plenty of six figure incomes in that phone book Bud Fox!"