Although most companies have abandoned direct mail for more cost-effective email, you shouldn’t discount this valuable tool (most Realtors don’t). The majority of the people that get emails don’t actually open them or spam filters snag your email before it ever reaches the intended inbox.

While direct mail is more expensive than email, it still works. Direct mail allows you to reach high level customers and prospects that don’t open emails. It also helps reinforce your email message and reminds your customers of the offer you may have emailed them. Plus, with fewer people using direct mail, you’re better able to stand out among your competition.

Direct mail simplified

However, direct mail is complicated. Many factors contribute to its success or failure, which makes it difficult to do effectively in-house. This is where new company MailSnail comes in. The startup takes the hassle out of direct mail. You don’t have to worry about finding a designer, a print-house, a mail-house, or even customers. MailSnail takes care of it all for you from their easy to edit design templates, to printing and delivery of your custom mailer.

MailSnail lets you craft your mailers to your specific needs. You can choose one of their templates and add content to create a custom mailer that fits you. You can also upload your own design.

Schedule ahead of time, customize fully

MailSnail also lets you schedule your mailers ahead of time, so you can send your direct mail when you need. Other features the company provides is the ability to segment your customers for easy management and send geographically targeted mailers to new potential customers.

The startup also touts their ability to send a mailer to any size audience. Send your customized mailers to thousands of addresses or only a handful – it’s completely up to you.

MailSnail gives you the power of direct mail without the hassle. While the startup hasn’t officially launched, if you’re interested in trying the service, you can sign up on their site to get beta access.

#MailSnail

We’re living in the digital age, so more likely than not, your business is relying heavily on internet marketing, leaving behind those old newspaper advertisements.

But wait, not so fast. According to the latest marketing research, there may still be some value to providing discounts and coupons via local newspapers. An August 2015 study by CreditCards.com found that newspapers are still the most popular source for discounts and coupons amongst price-conscious consumers.

They found that 37.7 percent of female respondents, and 30.1 percent of male respondents cited newspapers as their go-to for finding discounts and coupons, compared to the internet, snail mail, email, or direct offers from banks and credit cards.

Breaking the stats down by age

However, the picture becomes a little more complicated when you break down the statistics by age. The CreditCards.com study revealed that consumers ages 18 to 49 are mostly getting their discounts from the internet. Youngsters under age 34 are also more responsive to coupons in their mailboxes than to newspaper coupons.

For all respondents over age 49, on the other hand, newspapers were their first source for coupons, leveling out the average such that newspapers still rank number one when all age categories are combined.

A similar August 2014 study by Valassis, a direct mail marketing service, found less variation across age groups, with millennials, gen Xers, and baby boomers all stating that they used paper coupons far more than digital ones.

Gender and income influences

Shoppers with higher incomes don’t seem to worry much about finding coupons and discounts, whereas lower income shoppers rely on them heavily.

Nonetheless, the CreditCards.com study found that 30.6 percent of female internet users use coupons when shopping for their day to day amenities. That’s nearly twice as much as men, of whom only 16.8 percent use coupons regularly.

An overlooked opportunity?

In short, it appears that supplying discount offers and coupons in your local paper may not be such a bad idea, especially if your customer base is largely female, and over the age of 50.

While advertising a multi-million dollar listing may not yield results, inserting a coupon for a free analysis or an offering to waive $500 off of closing costs, could be a tool your competitors are ignoring. Time to open up a newspaper to see if there’s opportunity for your brand.

#Newspapers

Marketing is essential to any successful business. However, more often than not, this requires some sort of advertising budget. If your business is just getting started, scraping together enough funds to create an advertising campaign can seem overwhelming.

There are so many marketing options from social media to old school print mailing; it’s hard to decide which route will work best for your business. Of course raising the funds isn’t the only way to increase your budget; sometimes you just have to think outside of the box and tap into your creativity.

Leave it to Russia

One bar in Russia came up with a great concept for thinking outside the box when it comes to marketing. They wanted to promote their bar, but had very little money to work with, so they reached out to Red Pepper with an idea.

Whenever they received tips, they would give 50% to the bartenders and invest the other 50% into advertising. The first day, they generated 54,350 rubels (approximately $847.12). This was enough to launch their two week advertising experiment.

Add billboards into the mix

They decided to run their ads on outdoor TV screens (much like our billboards) and created a new ad each day from the tips they received. These ads promoted the bar, encouraged additional tips which would fund the next round of advertising, and thanked patrons and bartenders who had donated money to the current campaign via a tagline on the ad. At the end of the campaign, they had raised over 281,270 rubles (approximately $4401.83).

Every day, the budget increased, due to increased tips from increased exposure. Pretty impressive given they started with nothing.

What can you learn from this experiment?

Not everyone can start a business with no money, but everyone can get a little bit more creative with marketing efforts. Strike a bargain for advertising space in exchange for your services. Share advertising space with someone else. Take your advertising old-school and use print media through a third-party which often offer steep discounts. Every bit you can save, allows you to spend somewhere else and stretching your dollars is more important now than ever before.

#Marketing