Q: We are working on our fall catalog and I wanted to follow up with you on how you go about a second mailing that we talked about in Feb.
We would like to try this out and see if it works for us. Can you give me the details?
A: 1.First, tell me if you have a mailing list (names and street addresses) of people who have taken your courses before?
If no, then you absolutely want to begin collecting that data immediately and for all registrations moving forward. Even if you know a name, you can look them up online or a phone book and get street addresses.
If yes, proceed:
2.Print out all the names for the last 2 years on mailing labels. If you already work with a mailing house, they probably can work with your file and not even need (nor want) labels.
But if you are doing it by hand, then you run them out on labels. While you are at it, it does not hurt to ask a printer or mailing house for a quote on how much to do this for you.
3.When you print your next brochure, save enough brochures for the second mailing for your participants.
4.When you distribute your next brochure, distribute it the same way you do now. No change.
5.1-2 weeks after someone gets the first brochure in the mail (let’s assume you do some kind of household mailing. If not, you should) you label and mail the brochures to the past participants.
The post office will tell you if you can use the same meter bulk postage stamp as for your first household mailing, or if you need a different one.
If different, just “paste over” the bulk permit with the different bulk permit.
After the first time you do this, this all will be almost no-time for the second mailing.
POST PROJECT. You already have in your database how many past participants took another course from you, say in 2012 calendar year.
Now with the second mailing, you can go into your database and measure how many past participants took another course from you after you started the second mailing. You will see an increase. You will be able to calculate the ROI.