New prospect mailer?

[hogjowl]

I have a local welcome wagon lady handing out Poof Spotter bottles to new homeowners in my area. I need to find some way to introduce myself and my services to them ... in some kind of mailing. I have their email address, but I hate spam email and want to use regular mail for this.

I assume I could create a postcard with ServiceMonster's help and have them mail it, but I see no tutorial on their site that in any way references marketing. Has anybody here had them create something like this through them? If so, how can you get a prospective customer in the mailing stream along with your customers?

Or, has anybody seen a postcard or letter for this in any other source for our industry?

 

[Desk Jockey]

If you can't get what you want from Service Monster, contact Wayne Miller, tell him what it is you need and he will design you something have them printed and you just need to address the label. You can do it Saturday evenings while waiting for your clothes to dry after your weekly bath!

 

[hogjowl]

Do you have a link for Wayne Miller, Taco?

 

[Desk Jockey]

Here is his email wayne@pdqpostcards.com please don't mention I told you to contact him......I don't want any of the blame!

 

[hogjowl]

There won't be any problem if he works for free.

 

[Ken Snow]

HI Marty~ I know this isn't addressing your question, but take it for what it's worth. Because you don't like something may not mean that your prospects don;t esp if it has a perceived benefit.


What about emailing a little personalized tutorial on using the spotter that you make up. In the subject line you could put "here's some tips in case you have some spots on your carpet from the move into your new home"

Make it friendly, brief, easy to understand and close with "If you have any problems removing spots, please feel free to call or email me for aditional advice at no charge"

No sell, no "when your ready to clean call me, nothing else at this time as it is likely months to a year before they need to have anything cleaned anyway and if they do need something now they will tell you. Start to soft sell in subsequent emails or mailings. For me this takes it out of the spam realm and becomes assistance. It would be pretty odd if someone was bothered by it.

Ken

 

[Desk Jockey]

I like that Ken and like you I've been thinking of what could be done to get Marty's customers to buy in on an offer.

What I came up with is, lie. Yep lie, it's your best bet.

Tell them you sold the business and someone other than yourself will be doing their cleaning this time.

Can you imagine how many will call for service......not to have to deal with Marty....yep that's going to a very successful campaign! Of course your son will have to do all the cleaning for a while too!

 

[hogjowl]

That's a good idea, Ken. One that I will consider. In the mean time, ServiceMonster and I have a training call set up for Tuesday afternoon. They say they can handle the mailing for me, but there is no tutorial on their site to instruct me on how to create it.

I may do both ... the email and the postcard. Not all at once, of course.

 

[Mikey P]

Good to know they offer that service.

Let us know how it works please.

Especially the designing of the cards artwork

 

[Hoody]

I imagine in service monster you could somehow load a customer list, or manually enter them as your spotters go out and tag them as 'Prospect' as the customer type. Then send an email/post card to all of them more easily. After you perform services for them you could re-classify the customer type, and continue your marketing efforts to gain more of them, and whatever it is you're doing to retain repeat customers(3,6,9,12 month postcards).

Its been a bit since I've used SM, but I clearly remember being able to tag them as a certain referral source, or customer type, and then being able to populate a list via that tag.

 

[hogjowl]

The "training call" was a joke. Not in a bad way, but still a joke. The dude called me and asked what I wanted to do and then said ... I think we can do that, hold on ... 2 minutes later he comes back on the phone and says "yeah, we can do that" and then proceeds to tell me what I already knew. Put the customer in as a prospect ... blah, blah, blah. Why couldn't the first person I talked to just tell me that? Anyway ... ServiceMonster still rocks. Now, all I have to do is figure out what to say on the postcard.

 

[Desk Jockey]

Give it to your wife to write.

After all didn't she get you through college, I KNOW you couldn't have done it on your own.

 

[mirf]

Ken,
I like that! I am going to borrow it with a slight twist. I am going to email to those I have the addresses of, snail mail those I don't. Offer to deliver a bottle if they are out. Reply by email only.

P.S. : Steve T if you are listening you should put Ken's idea in SFS tips

 

[hogjowl]

My wife is very academic in her writing approach. She is of no help in marketing. She used to cringe back years ago when I was mailing the Joe Polish newsletter out. She swore he had to have been educated in Alabama.

 

[bob vawter]

Good to know they offer that service.

Let us know how it works please.

Especially the designing of the cards artwork

don't forget the hose border around the edge.......