Direct Mail

PokerTony

Does anyone know what companies are used for direct mail marketing in Ireland? Is it an post or are there other ones too?

Spocker

The one company I know of is Precision Marketing Information

RuggieBear

Dr. Spock wrote:

The one company I know of is Precision Marketing Information

iirc an post either owns pmi or part owns them;)

Thomas_S_Hunterson

Oh not more junk mail

MarketingMan

An Post are the carrier pigeon so to speak, but their are a plethora of direct marketing agencies out there who will do everything from creating or selling databases, to designing, printing & mail-merging the actual mailing & then post-aim sorting it and delivering it to An Post. Was there any particular part that you were interested in or was it a full start to finish service yoiu were after?

Obelisk29

Have a look at the Irish Direct Marketing Association website www.idma.ie.

dvdfan

I had a bad experience with anposts direct mail, some houses got the leaflets and others didnt, got lots of excuses why this happened and they eventually agreed to do another couple of thousand to compensate and even though this was way less than the supposed original amount i got a way better response, so it seems obvious they werent posting them all.

mneylon

dvdfan - what kind of return did you get?

dvdfan

hmm, was about 3 years ago, cant rember exact returns but posted around 10,000 and got a bad response, then after they agreed to post another 3,000 because the posting has hit and miss we had a double the response from the 3,000 compared with the 10,000 which would suggest that they probably posted less than 3,000 origionally, but i suppose the response would depend on alot of factors so its hard to know.

I found the direct mail posting to be effective in generating interest and sales but only over a short period. Made some long term customers out of it, but i think it would be best to have an alternative advertisement aswell as people will need to remember where to get your contact details in the future when the leaflet gets thrown out or lost.

For example regular customers would be very likely to save my number in their mobile or have our catalogue but customers who used us on a less regular basis like once or twice a month would have forgot our number and most likely lost the leaflet and/or catalogue. They would need somewhere else to find the number like a paper advert, golden pages, website etc and would also need to remember the name of the business to find me through the latter 2 options, so an easy to remember name helps in this case.

I also found keeping contact details such as address, mobile and email was helpful, then i could use tools like o2.ie to send 250 free texts a month to send out special offers to customers i havent heard of in a while, email again was handy but only accounted for about 5% of my business so not as effective and posting mail was effective but more expensive than the latter 2 so what i usually done was only contacted customers by snail mail who i had done alot of business with that i hadnt heard from in a while where i woould get a higher return and used text and email to contact customers that only dealt with me once or twice a month and who i would get a less response off.

In summary, direct mail worked well to get the interest generated and make a one time sale but its too expensive to continue on a regular basis unless you have a very appealling product with a high profit margin that would cover the costs. If your relying on regular customers, direct mail is good to promote your business but i think other forms of advertising would be needed to generate recurring business.

btw i tried newspaper advertising which was expensive enough and didnt get a good response and tried advertising on the back of tesco receipts which wasnt expensive considering the exposure but also didnt get a goodenough response to continue. Again i relied on my advertising creating regular customers and with my advertising budget not too high and my profit margin not too high, i found delivering mail myself, putting posters,catalogues etc in shops and using text,email and posting mail worked well for me but it depends on your product etc

mneylon

dvdfan - what kind of product or service were you selling?