Look at the offer before the medium, judge the mailing at six weeks rather than two, and separate awareness from response. A card with no reason to act now usually produces little whatever it is printed on, and cards get kept, so a verdict at two weeks is almost always early. And if the offer was strong and the phone was answered and it still produced nothing, that is real information: spending more on the same thing is not the answer.
We sell the mailings, so the honest thing to say up front is that this page ends with a section called “When to stop”, and it means it.
Awareness against immediate response
Awareness is a household knowing your name when the need arrives; response is a household acting on the card the week it lands; and different categories get different shares of each. A roofer may get few calls from a mailing and still be the name the household remembers when the storm comes. An HVAC company is in the same position: the card on the fridge earns its keep the day the system quits in July, which may be months after the mail date.
A restaurant is the opposite. Nobody keeps a lunch card for a season. A card with a reason to come in this week either works this week or it does not, and a quiet phone means what it appears to mean. A quiet phone after a roofing card is weaker evidence than one after a restaurant card.
High-ticket against low-ticket timing
The price of what you sell sets how long the decision takes, and how long you have to wait before the mailing can be judged. A $12 lunch decides in a day. A new roof decides in a season: the household gets two more quotes, talks to the insurer, waits for the check, and calls the name it kept.
The trade runs both ways. High-ticket categories should wait longer before reading the result, and need fewer responses for the mailing to have paid. Low-ticket categories can read it sooner, and need many more.
A strong offer against a weak one
A weak offer is the most common reason a first mailing goes quiet, and it is the easiest thing to fix. “We do plumbing” with a logo and a phone number is a business card mailed to strangers. It does not compete with other mail; it competes with the reader’s indifference, and loses.
A strong offer gives one specific reason to act and a date by which to do it. What that looks like for home services, restaurants and practices, and the offers to avoid, is covered in what makes a good direct mail offer. If the first card had no offer, you have not tested direct mail yet. You have tested a business card.
How to diagnose a quiet mailing
Go through six questions before deciding anything, in this order:
- Was there an offer with a deadline? One reason to act, and a date. If not, this is the finding and you can stop here.
- Was there a way to track it?A QR code, a landing page, a unique offer code, or asking every caller and writing it down. Without one, “no calls” may mean “no calls we noticed”.
- Was the phone answered during working hours? Check the voicemail log for the two weeks after the drop. Calls that went to voicemail went to a competitor.
- Was the category a fit for mail? Home services, restaurants, practices and new businesses tend to suit it; a business with no local service area does not. The cases are listed in is direct mail worth it.
- Was the area the right one for your customers? A card to the homes on the far side of the highway from where your customers actually come from is a good card to the wrong people.
- Did you judge it too early? Two weeks for a restaurant is a fair reading. Two weeks for a roofer is not.
Most quiet first mailings fail one of the first three, and those three are all fixable before the next card.
What to change for the second mailing
Usually the offer, sometimes the area, rarely the spot size. The offer is first because it is the most common fault and the cheapest to change: the second card costs the same as the first, and a stronger reason to act is free. The area is next, and only when the diagnosis says the wrong homes were mailed; changing ZIPs when the offer was the problem just tests the weak offer on new people.
Spot size is last. A larger spot makes a good offer more visible. It does not make a weak one stronger. When the offer was sound, mail the same homes again rather than new ones; the case for that is in how many times to advertise to the same neighborhood.
When to stop
If the offer was strong, the tracking was in place, the phone was answered, the category suits mail, and six weeks still produced nothing, stop. That is real information, and spending more on the same thing is not the answer. It may mean your customers are not defined by where they live, in which case a place-based channel was always going to reach mostly the wrong people, and a search or social campaign is the better next spend.
Nobody can promise you the second card will do what the first did not, and the reasons why are in can you guarantee I will get calls. What we can do is go through the six questions with you, plainly, and tell you which of the three answers this is: fix the card, change the area, or stop. Two of those cost you another mailing. The third costs us one, and we would rather say it than sell it.
Common questions
Six weeks, not two. Cards get kept on counters and fridges, and a share of the response arrives well after the mail date, later still for anything a household has to plan or budget for. A low-ticket business like a lunch spot can read the result sooner; a roofer or an HVAC company should not read it early.
No, and no honest advertising company can. Our guide on whether anyone can guarantee calls sets out what a direct mail company controls, what the advertiser controls, and how to judge a mailing without a promise nobody can keep.
Rarely. A larger spot makes a good offer more visible; it does not make a weak offer stronger, and a weak offer is the most common reason a first mailing goes quiet. Change the offer first, and the area if the wrong homes were mailed, before spending more on size.
Only after the diagnosis. If the card had no offer, no deadline or no way to track it, fix that and mail the same homes again, because the second and third cards to one area are usually where the response builds. If the offer was strong, the phone was answered and six weeks produced nothing, that is real information and spending more on the same thing is not the answer. The second mailing costs the same as the first, from $249 for a spot to 5,000 homes.
Go through six questions before deciding it did: whether the card had an offer with a deadline, whether there was a way to track it, whether the phone was answered during working hours, whether your category suits mail, whether the area matched where your customers live, and whether you judged it too early. Most quiet first mailings fail one of the first three.
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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