Direct Mail

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.

Mary Sparrow · 05-01-2005, 07:31 AM

Kim, go for it! For the price you really don't have much to lose, but if I remember correctly 49 dollars was for one side, it went up to around 89 to put something on both sides. I, according to the above statistics, had "raving success" - just completed my 7th portrait from that mailing and I only mailed out 100! I have had several more people comment they want one so there is no telling how many I will end up with out of that. Now to figure out who to mail these other 900 cards.

Richard Monro · 05-01-2005, 07:41 AM

Mary,
Your conversion rate (making the sale) of 7% is astounding. In typical direct mail terms one would expect only 1 conversion to a sale for every 20 responses. For the typical 3% response rate the conversion rate would normally be about 0.15%. Congratulations. You are doing something special in your postcard that we would all like to see. Could you post it for all to see and imitate (with your permission of course)? Could you also tell us what demographic profile you used to develop you mail list? Nothing succeeds like success.

Mary Sparrow · 05-01-2005, 08:21 AM

Richard, I can almost guarantee that I have several more coming in from that 100 alone.

My card is posted earlier in this thread. There are a couple of things working in my favor. I paint children, I have 3 between the ages of 2-6 so I started my list from their play school classes. I live in a small suburb of Charlotte where you will find most people have portraits done of their children. I then contacted a couple of previous clients, one showed up with a list of all of her old sorority sisters with young children. This list was great because it got me out of just my town. It is sort of a situation where they all have to have what the other one has

Her list was a little gold mine. The mother of the last portrait I did (Lydia in unveilings) is in Atlanta, she is so excited about hers she wants more, and she emailed me yesterday to tell me she had four other friends that were planning to call. The brother sister pair has also resulted in another contact not on my mailing list. This word of mouth thing is great!

I'm not exactly expensive, so that makes a sale easier I'm sure. I doubt I would have gotten this sort of response, if any, had I just mailed out postcards to people that had never heard of me.

Michele Rushworth · 05-01-2005, 10:49 AM

My experience with direct mail has been somewhat different.

I'm mailing a 6x8" card to a purchased list of about 300 of Bill Gates' neighbors. I sent out the third monthly postcard mailing to this group a couple of days ago, and so far, not a single response. I'll probably send one or two more mailings to this same list and then stop if nothing happens.

Mary Sparrow · 05-01-2005, 11:00 AM

Michele, I think though the difference here is the personal thing. Every person on my list either knew me, (which actually was a small percentage) or knew someone that had a portrait done by me. For the people that I didn't know such as the client who gave me all of her sorority sisters, I signed it with a personal note such as "Millie says Hi!"... She said for me to do that and I think it was a great idea because that prompted them to call her to catch up and in the meantime she gave an extra push on the portrait by telling them she was getting ready to have another one done of her daughter.

I honestly think if I had sent these out to the same type of potential clients that had never heard of me that the response would have been very different.

Mike McCarty · 05-01-2005, 11:09 AM

Michele,

I don't have any way to quantify, or prove this, but I have a feeling. I did my mailing to the ultra rich as well and right up to the point when I sent them out I had a sense that I was doing it wrong.

I believe that this group of people (maybe out of necessity) have developed systems to screen unwanted crap (perceived or real) from their lives. Even to the point of having their mail screened.

I had a strong feeling that I should have made my aim lower. I don't mean the middle class, I'm just saying that I have a bad feeling that the goods never get delivered to the very, very rich.

I mailed 850 cards and got 0 response. Well, that's not completely true, one old man called me twice and stood me up to discuss painting an eleven people portrait from his family photograph.

Of course this theory prevents me from considering the possibility that they all had a good close look at it and still decided that it was crap.