My latest postcard marketing test

Happy New Year’s Eve! I hope that 2013 was your best year ever, and that you’re already working on making 2014 even better.

In the spirit of Continuous And Never-ending Improvement (CANI), and because I had some spare copies of Tax Resolution Secrets that I wanted to get rid of prior to the move to Georgia, I recently decided to test a new postcard to market for tax resolution leads.

I was definitely anxious to get it out the door, and I placed the Click2Mail order on Thursday, December 19th. That means that postcards were hitting mailboxes the day before and the day after Christmas. Definitely not the best timing, but I really wanted to do the test and it was better to get it out the door than not do it all (that’s a marketing tip in and of itself, by the way).

Note: This was a proof of concept test. You should NEVER do single mailings as part of your real lead generation campaigns.

Here’s what I did: I selected business liens between $15,000 and $75,000 in value across the entire country, with phone numbers only, and inched the date forward until I had a reasonable number. I ended up with 799, with a cutoff date for the lien filing that was only 10 days prior to my mailing date. After removing non-standard addresses, I ended up with 720 that actually got mailed.

For the postcard, I actually created a Frankenstein of three of my favorite (and best performing) plain postcards, then rewrote that draft into a cohesive unit with an offer of a free copy of my consumer paperback book about tax resolution. The postcard directed people to a web page specially set up to order the book.

Premium members that are actively logged in to the site and reading this article at the blog will see a link at the bottom of the article for downloading the postcard and a screen shot of the landing page.

I should say that part of the reason I wanted to perform this test was because I’ve received a number of comments from readers lately questioning the efficacy of postcards. In the past week, I’ve had 12 new, unique visitors to the special landing page I set up for people to order the book, and 2 people actually requested the book.

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At the same time, I have had three new people sign up for my email newsletter that I am unable to attribute to any other source through my tracking systems, so I am attributing them to the mailing. Those three will receive my autoresponder sequence for the next couple weeks.

One lead that ordered the book already tracked me down directly, and has been referred out to another tax professional for assistance.

This test definitely yielded lower numbers than I anticipated. To do a proper test, however, I would need to do at least two more mailings to the same list, and also do a follow up phone call to each, since I have all their numbers. It’s been a full week since they hit mailboxes, so I don’t expect any further response, but I will update this post if any come in.

Considering the fact that I was mailing right at Christmas, I’m not too disappointed with the results for just one mailing. I got one solid prospect that was referred out, another lead for the book offer, plus three more leads added to my email list. At a cost of only $330 to generate that, it’s not bad at all (especially if the one strong lead turns into a paying client). Two more mailings to the same list, plus phone calls, would definitely seal the deal if I were personally looking for an actual client for myself from this.

This is the sort of testing that you really should be doing on a fairly regular basis for yourself. It took me less than an hour to put the whole thing together and get it out the door — and most of that time was messing around with Click2Mail’s horrible online postcard editor.

In 2014, make a point of taking ideas and testing them for yourself. Use examples from my materials as a starting point, but get creative and think of your own ideas as well. Progress comes from this sort of testing. I can assure you that my collection of letters, postcards, emails, etc. that I have used over the years in my tax resolution marketing did not just spring into existence from nowhere. I had to create them, test them, improve them, test them again.

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You get to skip YEARS worth of agonizing marketing testing by tapping into what I’ve already done, but to find what is going to work for you and your practice, you need to take the reigns from there and press forward. That’s how you start the year off with a bang, and make 2014 your most profitable year yet!

Premium Members: If you are logged in, you’ll see the link to this sample postcard and landing page below.

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Download postcard –> Free Book Offer Postcard

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