Direct Mail

Michele Rushworth · 01-24-2005, 10:49 AM

Thanks, Richard, great suggestions!

Lisa Brazell Cook · 01-25-2005, 11:34 PM

Can any of you refer me to someone to design a postcard for me. Thank you.
Lisa

Mary Sparrow · 01-26-2005, 08:09 AM

Lisa, Jennifer Geary did mine. She is a member of this forum. I think she is quite good with graphic design.

Michele Rushworth · 01-26-2005, 04:30 PM

Lisa has decided to hire me to do the graphic design work for her postcard. Her paintings are great and I'm sure she'll do well.

I have 7 years of experience as a professional graphic designer prior to becoming a portrait artist. If anyone else is interested in having me design promotional print materials for them, just send me an email.

Mike McCarty · 01-26-2005, 04:41 PM

I previously wrote:

Quote:

I was talking to Modern Postcard about purchased lists. They indicated to me that for a list of families in my little burg which have a combined income of over $150,000, homeowner - single family dwelling, and with home valued at $775,000+, the number of available contacts that fit this demographic profile was 939.

I asked if they might take off the "single family dwelling" indicator, because I thought that there were oodles of condo owners in this area that would be nice to include.

Having dropped this criteria he came back with the number 1008. This is curious to me. Sarasota is nothing if not littered with million dollar condos, yet he only picked up 69 more hits.

I'm dubious about these lists but don't know of another effective way to do it.

I have since contacted a local list company. I gave the same parameters to this company and they came back with 8000 on the list. I think you could make differenct conclusion from this. One is that local knowledge is best. They also spoke of their ability to pin point neighborhoods and not zip codes, which in this town would be very inefficient. Again, they talked with local knowledge.

Mike McCarty · 02-11-2005, 09:31 PM

I hope to make my first post card mailing next week from here in my new surroundings. So far I have been very pleased with the local mail order company. They have worked up a list from their internals that is very targeted. In the defined desirable areas I took 850 names (holding back 150 of the 1000) off the top of a list of 25,000 that met this so called high value home / condo list. The last one on the list sorted by descending value, number 850, had a value of $1,719,500. I can only imagine what the top dog would be.

They are charging me $50 for a one time use of the list and about another $100 to handle the mailing. I'm having the cards mailed directly to them where they will be processed and pre-bundled for the mail man.

The cost looks like it will be very close to $1.00 per card. A folded card that is 6" x 8.5" after folding (no small matter). Full color front and back and black and white inside. It has a total of six painting images and four photographs with just the essential amount of plagiarized text.

As for the paintings that I used -- I took one each from four of my favorite artists on the forum, one Bougeureau and one JSS. I figure that should do it. Just seeing if you were paying attention.

Kimberly Dow · 02-11-2005, 10:25 PM

So - which one of my paintings did you use?

Kimberly Dow · 05-01-2005, 05:32 AM

I have a question -

I'd like to give this a try (the link Mary posted above with the sale is now at $49 for 1000). I would like to push more 'figurative' portraits though. It's what I enjoy most and think I am better at as well. Does anyone think this is a bad choice when it comes to marketing?

Richard Monro · 05-01-2005, 06:08 AM

Kim,
Go for it! Your figurative portraits would look great on anyone's wall. They obviously say more than a typical portrait does and thus will have wider appeal. Direct mail is a very smart and relatively inexpensive way to self promote.
Some suggestions:
1- plan multiple mailings ( at least 1/month for 6 months. A full 12 month campaign would be better.)
2 - Use a standard post card size. Saves on postage
3 - Use a simple 2 sided postcard with enough caontact info to get buyers to you website, gallery and/or studio. 4 sided postcards add unnecessary expense for the return.
4 - Mail to the same list each time. Remember it is the image/message recall that you want to establish.
5 - Don't change a campaign unless it stops working or is an obvious bomb - i.e. response rate drops well below 1%, 2 to 3% is typical and more than 5% is a raving success.