Do you know where your members live? Then why not mail to the actual streets that have a high percentage of your members living there? A penetration report gives you the ability to do just that. Selecting the right zip codes is obviously important. However, the neighborhoods streets, subdivisions and apartment and condo complexes in which your current members reside, are the lifeblood of your club and have been proven to provide the most viable prospects.
A carrier route number is a numeric system that identifies your postal carriers route number(s). Each postal carrier is assigned a carrier route(s). There are generally between two- and four- hundred addresses in a given carrier route.
Here is an example: I recently met the sales manager of a large aluminum siding company. All of their marketing is direct mail and telemarketing. I asked him if he knew what carrier routes his customers lived in and he didn’t know. His company was sending out several hundred thousand direct mail pieces each month. A large portion of these pieces were actually going to neighborhoods that had all brick homes that would never need siding.
The penetration report now gives him the ability to mail to the neighbors of people that have already had aluminum siding put on their homes by his company. This is super targeted marketing. Instead of just mailing to an area that meets your demographic requirements, this report gives you the means to send direct mail pieces to your members’ neighbors.
Why is this important? Isn’t it great when you’re on tour and a friend, or neighbor, comes up to you and your guest to say, “Hi Bill! Are you joining here? You should, it’s a great club.” Many of your members will brag to their neighbors that they are a member of your club. This a very powerful, unsolicited referral.
Remember to delete your members from this list if you don’t want them getting offers to join your club. This will increase your postage, because you are not doing a saturation mailing. It will cost you a little more than just doing a zip code mailing, but it’s the right way to do business.
So how do you produce a penetration report for your club? Simply call your direct mail house and ask them if they can provide this information to you. They may have to write the software to produce it. There will be a charge for that and also each time the report is run there will be a charge, but it is worth it!
At the bottom is an example of a penetration report produced for a health club that identifies which carrier routes have the most members living in them. When health clubs use this report to hand pick which carrier routes to hit, their direct mail response rate increases dramatically.
Armed with a penetration report you can super target market your mailings. Without one, the closest you can come is the right zip code and some good demographics. Stay tuned for next months article, How To Make The Best Cents of Direct Mail Rules & Regulations!
Happy Target Marketing!
Jim Martin is the President of Powerful Promotions. He can be contacted at 877.822.5577, or visitwww.powerfulpromotions.com.
