Here and Now-Direct Mail Advertising 10/6/10

The holiday selling season is here and now it's time to "sharpen the knives". Because of the rising price of gold I have decided to emphasize my watch line which not only promotes my store but is also one of the items with the most generous profit margins.


As you have read, for the past few weeks I have been working on some new watch designs, debuted them on my website and integrated everything with my Facebook pages, eBay store and Blog.


I am now preparing to reinstate sending postcards to my customers who have upcoming events. These customers are numbered over six hundred that have purchased from me in the past three years. I have painstakingly taken their addresses, birthdays, anniversaries and spouses birthdays and developed a program of sending them a total of six post cards each week. Four mail pieces before their "event" and two after. This comes out to an average of sixty customers a month.


I am also taking down their email addresses and will incorporate that into "Constant Contact" in order to send everyone an advertisement at least once a month. More on an email campaign in another posting……


Budget:

At this time I am using Printingmadeasy.com which averages about 70 dollars per 1000 double sided postcards. Of course the idea is to have at least six different designs. When you figure the cost it is about 420 dollars for 6K postcards. This number of postcards should last you over 15 months.

Here's the math: Six different postcards, 1000 of each style @ 70 (this includes shipping to you) = 420.00. The monthly average number of customers with events are 60. I mailout a total of 360 postcards per month. 6000 postcards divided by 360 = 16.6 months. So figure for your budget's sake that the postcards will run you about 25.20 plus 100.00 for postage for a total of 126 +/- per month.

The tedious part is designing the postcards themselves. This is advertising on a limited budget. If you have any idea about selling you will realize that you have best results when there is "need". Obviously your advertising will hopefully ingrain the idea to your prospect that they have a "need" for your product.


Postcard Design:



As I stated before, at this moment because of the climbing price of gold I am using my watches as the focal point of my sales. My watch brand promotes my store name and allows me the most profit margin. So I am emphasizing/pushing them.
When I sort my customers I divide them as Anniversaries, His birthday, Her birthday. I try have the cards I send match that criteria. Meaning I try to feature Anniversary jewelry, Hers, etc.

I produce my own pictures so I have made a solid investment in digital camera equipment (Nikon Coolpix 4800) a good photo editing program (Adobe) and most of all…. a light box (MK GemBox). I will add links and write ups on the equipment and programs used in my future postings. In the meantime if you have any questions please feel free to ask.

Once I am happy with my edited pictures I upload them to the Prints Made Easy website and incorporate them into my postcard design.

If you look at my postcard designs you will see a clear and "catchy" phrase. I also try to get the most "bang for the buck" by pushing my website on all my advertising. The customer may not be drawn by the image on the postcard but most probably they will find something that will draw their attention on the website along with all the detailed information of the item.


Website Design:


I originally started my website as Vvs1blue.com but I have decided to use something that would identify better with the store and therefore I am slowly incorporating everything with the website into LAJlrs.com.


The bulk of my sales have come from eBay so I have opened an eBay store and use their "Markdown Manager" application to set up weekly sales. Because of this you will notice that I use my website to present "galleries" of the jewelry I stock. Sometimes the pieces may not be available on eBay but the prospective customer may always contact me and inquire. I will try to have a page for the items listed on the galleries with the item specifics. I also try to have link for my newsletter and blogs. In the near future I am publishing my first book and I want to exploit my best customer base, my existing customers. I have also linked the website to Facebook and my Facebook company page. There are still numerous glitches that need to be ironed out and one of them is to try to get what I have termed as "information" flow, describing posting once and having it embedded in all my sites.