Direct Marketing with Mailbox Flyers:

To get started with a low budget, I believe mailbox flyers are the best idea. They are inexpensive and extremely

effective. My success rate has been in the range of 1-5%.  However, this is good considering such a low cost, and many of these customers I have maintained for years. I do not condone this method as it is illegal. However, in my experience when I have done this I have found that I only get caught about 1 out of every 5 times I hand out mailbox flyers and this merely results in a warning from the post office or police station. I have always stopped after this warning.  When they call they usually say that next time I do it I will be charged postage for every parcel I put in and there may be legal action.  Apparently even if you put it behind the flag of the mailbox this is still illegal, and it just ends up blowing around the neighborhood anyway so this probably isn’t the best idea.

A photocopy only costs about $.08 and you can fit 3 to a page. If you do the math, if you are getting 1 customer for every 100 you put out (1% return rate), it will cost you $2.66 for that customer

(plus, of course, your time). However, this customer, if you sign a $25 weekly contract with them, will make you approximately $625 per year.  Well worth your efforts.

When I have marketed this way in the past, I have gone with a florescent colour paper, so it stands out from the rest of the mail.  I try to time it so that I

am putting them in the mailboxes after the mail comes but before the homeowners get it.  I have found that if I put them in before the mail comes, the mailman usually just takes the flyers out of the mailbox, hence your wasted efforts. If you do it right after the mail comes, you are more likely to have it mixed in with the regular mail and go unnoticed.

I generally try to put a few thousand of these out per year. It works best working in a team, having one driver and a passenger handing out the flyers. It isn’t bad for the first hour or so, but after that it gets very old, so I usually do it in 3 hours blocks, in which time you can put out approximately 1000 flyers.  When you get good, you can do “drive bys,” which can be slightly entertaining for a little while.

If I don’t want to do it, I can usually find a couple of friends happy to do it for $15 per hour or so.

Using this method one would think you would only get stingy customers; however, surprisingly I have managed to get wealthy customers willing to get a full range of services using these ideas.

Keep in mind that although many of the leads will come in the day or two following the placement of the flyers, leads trickle in throughout the season as people tend to hold onto these flyers and call later in the season for whatever reason.

Here is an example of a mailbox flyer I put out a few years ago, printed on flourescent yellow cardstock paper: