So, I’ve been doing a little research in to direct mail. I know that it’s kind of a touchy subject, but it’s kind of like billboard advertising – most people don’t pay any attention, but the ones that do more than pay for your efforts.

So, how to approach it? Well, it’s my first time, and I want to do a test run with A/B testing. I’m using some pretty interesting resources to pull it off, so I thought I would share.

• hotpads.com – HotPads.com offers national “Heat Maps” with different demographic information by county/parrish. The key one for my use is going to be Household Income. This allows me to zero in on counties with an ideal income area.  I then hand select the cities from those counties that qualify.  I’m actually hand typing these.  It would be nice to have someone do this, but we’re talking cheap right?
• osha.gov – The Department of Labor / Occupational Safety and Health site gives you a directory listing of SIC codes, so if you’re trying to drill down on specific professionals to market to, this is the place to find what you need.
• usadata.com – This site allows you to get contact information for the SIC codes in the places that you’ve selected.  In this example, I took all the major and medium cities in a specific section of a state, selected those cities on the site, the SIC code for the professionals I want, and then generate a usable mailing list for approx $0.20 per lead and up.  Pretty cool.

If you figure a full color mailer @ $0.39/ea or better plus postage then you’ve got ($0.20x + $0.39x + [post]x + setup on mailer) = a direct mail campaign.  If you can get bulk mail post ($0.15/ea?) then you’re looking at $750 for a 1000 pieces if you do the setup yourself.  If you figure a response rate of 7% then you need those 70 to give you $11 /ea to make it back?  Not bad…