Post Cards!

[Scott]

Trying to expand my wife-unit's bizness into the residential market.

We have 4k postcards, only showing 2k because the other 2k went out today, and a chit load of labels and stamps. Yeah I know, pluck, peel-stick, peel-stick, stack, 4 thousand times! But we're being positive and knocking out about 1,000 per night.

4,000 postcards =$250
4,000 stamps = $960
4,000 labels = $35+/-


We'd be tickled if we got 40 customers , but we truly expect less.
We targeted the upper end homes for this 1st batch but I probably have another 4k targeted homes in mind that I'd like to hit before Mid-March.
I'll post my reponse rates early March for the 1st batch; calls vs actually signed customers.

[steve-o]

how did you get the addresses ?

steve

[MASTERMOWER]

Ahh, the fun of stamping/ addressing postcards.

How many repeat mailings do you intend on doing??

[Scott]

I earth googled over the interested neighborhoods, guesstimated that there was a crap load of pools, probably the worst area was 2 in 3 houses didn't have a pool. Butt then there is the upside, just a few ways down, I counted 72 pools either next door to each other, backyard to backyard, or across the street from each other. So with that info, I went to my county appraisers office webpage and downloaded the labels.
The process was the same for all 5 neighborhoods

[Scott]

Yeah I know this isn't about the green industry but the principle is the same

Ahh, the fun of stamping/ addressing postcards.

How many repeat mailings do you intend on doing??

It was in the mid 70s today and should be warming up for swimming come April. They should be getting their cards Fri/Sat. I'll follow up with a simple tri-fold flyer with some basic facts about setting up for spring/summer/fall swimming. I'll be mailing flyers mid March for this batch and then 1st April for the 2nd batch.

[Scott]

sweet, we had 3 calls today before 3pm. Hopefully we'll get more through next week. One is commercial which means every freakin day! Yeah I know, that's good for the bills but not for the family time or vacation time.

[MASTERMOWER]

Yeap, a different industry, but the principle is the same...lessons to be learned.

sweet, we had 3 calls today before 3pm. Hopefully we'll get more through next week. One is commercial which means every freakin day! Yeah I know, that's good for the bills but not for the family time or vacation time.

Care to elaborate what you included on the card which may have prompted the (so far) good response? From what little I can see, the design looks simple and uncluttered?

Who'd you use to print the cards?

[vaughnslawns]

nice,best wishes got a thing from nebs today for hangers. 500/$54.91---1000$78.73----2000/$119.00... what all do you offer?

[Scott]

we like overnightprints.com, yeah there are cheaper but we've never had a problem with anything they're offered and they have never mess up our orders.
Our bizness cards are similar except they have our names and #s on the bottom two corners. Could they be improved? yeah. Are we happy with what we got? yeah. Will our follow up flyers be different? yeah. We plan to keep our flyers simple like the cards but with tidbits of info. We felt that we just need to get our name out there and if they want the real deal, they can always call.

Anybody want some left over country ribs?

[Scott]

what all do you offer?

besides the general maintenance, we offer to remove and replace all exisiting equipment/parts
we planned on going to the state convention to get spun up on the latest leak finding equipment and spa/heater repair but my lil eggplant festival dates clashed with convention.

[Scott]

whelp, so far we've recieved 38 phone calls which in turn gave us four new customers and six pending. Most of them told us what they're currently paying and that they're happy with their current provider but wanted to shop around. My wife wanted to entertain them but I told her that we will not play that game. "go look at the pool, figure our price and stick with it, there is plenty of business for all of us here to be haggling over $25 a month".

We also got seven green pools cleaned which paid for our expense of the mailings. So not to bad overall plus we got her name out there. AND we still have 1,000 cards to mail out.

[MASTERMOWER]

Sounds good...

Just be sure to mail the rest out! I'm fairly lazy about ordering a bunch, but not mailing all of them out. Then the postcards just lay around and stare at me.

[Clean Lawn]

has anyone tried post cards for lawn services and received a positive response? I tried door knockers but we only received 2 phone calls which is pretty sad compaired to the couple hundred that were passed out door to door.
trying to find new ways to get a new lawn services business name out there and rolling.

[steve-o]

has anyone tried post cards for lawn services and received a positive response? I tried door knockers but we only received 2 phone calls which is pretty sad compaired to the couple hundred that were passed out door to door.
trying to find new ways to get a new lawn services business name out there and rolling.

postcards is all i use. they work for me.

steve

[clcare2]

has anyone tried post cards for lawn services and received a positive response? I tried door knockers but we only received 2 phone calls which is pretty sad compaired to the couple hundred that were passed out door to door.
trying to find new ways to get a new lawn services business name out there and rolling.

Door to door we only expect 1 call per 250 that are put out. So don't be disappointed, you just need to do a larger number of drops.