No. No legitimate advertising company can guarantee a specific number of customers, calls, leads or sales, and one that does is telling you something about itself rather than about your campaign. What an advertising company can do is control the parts it is responsible for, be plain about the parts it is not, and give you a way to judge the result for yourself. This page is that division of labor, written down.
What an advertising company can control
An advertising company controls delivery, targeting, design, visibility, exclusivity, repetition and tracking, and nothing past that. For a shared postcard, that means:
- Distribution and delivery. Every household on the carrier route receives the card on the mail date. Not a share of them, and not whoever an algorithm picked.
- Geographic targeting. Which ZIP and which routes: 5,000 households per mailing, with a 10,000 option.
- The design. A spot that is legible, says one thing, and gives the reader one thing to do.
- The size and visibility of the spot. A larger spot is seen more. A small one is still on every card that goes out.
- Category exclusivity. One business per category on each card, so a plumber is never sharing a piece of mail with another plumber.
- The option to mail again. The same homes on the next mailing, so the card is not a one-off.
- Tracking tools. A QR code, a landing page, a unique offer code, so you can see what came back.
What the advertiser controls
The advertiser controls everything that happens after the card is opened, and that half decides more of the result than the card does. It includes:
- The offer. Whether there is a reason to act now, or only a name and a phone number.
- Reputation and reviews. A household that likes the card looks you up before it calls. What it finds is yours.
- Pricing. The card can bring the call. It cannot make the quote competitive.
- The service itself.The mailing introduces you; the work earns the neighbor’s job too.
- The sales process. What happens on the call, how fast a quote goes out, whether anyone follows up.
- Whether the phone is answered during working hours.
That last one is the most common reason a campaign fails, and it has nothing to do with the card. A call that goes to voicemail at two on a Tuesday afternoon is a customer for whoever answers next.
What nobody controls
Nobody controls the season, the weather, a competitor’s promotion the same week, or the economy, and any of them can move the result of a single mailing. A pressure washing company mailed the week a tropical storm comes through gets a different result from the same card mailed in a dry April. A restaurant mailed the week a chain opens down the road with a coupon is competing with something nobody saw coming.
None of that is anyone’s fault, but it is one reason a single mailing is a poor test of anything, and why a run to the same homes gives a fairer reading.
Why a guarantee from somebody else is usually a warning sign
A guarantee in advertising is almost always a guarantee of something other than customers. Read the fine print for the word the promise attaches to. It is usually one of three things:
- Impressions. A count of deliveries or of screens the ad appeared on, which says nothing about who read it.
- “Leads”, loosely defined. A form fill with a fake name, a wrong number, a call that lasted four seconds. If the definition is loose enough, the guarantee is easy to meet and worth nothing.
- Running it again at your cost. A promise to mail again if the first one is quiet, with a second invoice attached. That is a discount on a second purchase dressed as a warranty.
What we will promise instead
We promise the parts we control, in writing, and nothing we do not.
- Every household on the route receives the card.
- It mails on the date on the calendar.
- One business per category on the card, so no competitor of yours is on it.
- A proof before print, so what mails is what you approved.
- Honest tracking. We help you set up a way to measure the mailing and tell you what it shows, whether or not it flatters us.
How to judge it without a guarantee
Judge a mailing by break-even arithmetic: what a customer is worth to you, and how many the spot needs to produce to pay for itself. A spot on a shared card to 5,000 homes starts at $249, with design, printing and postage included. If one customer is worth more than that, a roof, an HVAC system, a season of lawn care, the mailing needs one. If a customer is worth a $12 lunch, it needs a great many, and the question becomes whether the offer can produce them.
The ROI calculator does that arithmetic for your own numbers, and how to measure direct mail ROI covers the tracking. Judge it at six weeks, not two, because cards get kept. If it is still quiet then, what a quiet first mailing tells you is the next page to read.
That is not a guarantee. It is the honest version of one: a number you can hold us to, and a way to check it.
Common questions
No. No legitimate advertising company, in any medium, can guarantee a specific number of calls, leads, customers or sales, because half of what decides the result belongs to the advertiser: the offer, the reputation, the prices and whether the phone is answered. What a direct mail company can guarantee is delivery to every household on the route, on the mail date, with no competitor in your category on the card.
Delivery to every home on the carrier routes, the ZIP and routes you mail, the design, the size and visibility of your spot, category exclusivity on the card, the option to mail the same homes again, and the tracking tools that let you see what came back. Everything after the card is opened belongs to the business on it.
Look at the offer before the medium, judge it at six weeks rather than two, and separate awareness from response. Our guide on what to do when the first mailing does not generate calls walks through the diagnosis and when the right answer is to stop.
Read what the word attaches to. It is usually a guarantee of impressions, which is a count of deliveries rather than of anyone who read it, or of leads defined loosely enough that a wrong number counts, or a promise to run the campaign again at your cost. None of those is a guarantee of customers, and a company that will not say which one it means is telling you something.
Work out what a customer is worth to you and how many the spot needs to produce to cover its cost. A spot on a shared card to 5,000 homes starts at $249 with design, printing and postage included, so a business whose average job is worth more than that needs one customer. Then track the mailing with a QR code, a landing page or by asking every caller, and judge it at six weeks.
Keep reading
New guides, and when the next card mails
Straight answers about advertising a local business, and a note when a mailing in your area opens. No pitch you did not ask for.
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