The Frugal Marketer

Cut costs, not corners. Dynamic tips for dynamic businesses. Brought to you by the Triangle’s WellthyLifeStyle

Frugal Marketing 101: Don’t break the bank on bad addresses. June 30, 2008

Filed under: General, frugal stuff, marketing — wellthylifestyle @ 1:48 pm

You have a database full of names. And you’re prepping a big postcard campaign.

However, you haven’t kept up with them. It’s easily been a full year since you sent anything to these folks.

If you send out this pretty postcard campaign, you are easily wasting money as a result. You have no idea how many of those addresses have gone bad. And a year is too long to wait to find out the expensive way that out of the 500 names you have, 113 have moved away. It may not be a big deal to you, but for others, the extra printing, labor, and postage costs might be better used elsewhere, no?

Here’s the Frugal Marketer’s way to reestablish presence to your database without breaking the bank on bad addresses:

  • Invest in some plain card stock from the office supply store. Create a 4×6 postcard in your desktop publishing program. Lay it out so that you fit 4 cards on one page. Keep it simple. Be sure to include the phrase “Do not Forward, Address Correction Requested” (call the post office to ensure that you put that text where they want it).
  • Print this simple postcard out on your laser printer, or take it to Staples or the UPS Store for black and white copies (remember, front and back!). You don’t need anything in color for this campaign. Cut with the paper trimmer.
  • Stamp with postcard postage (saving you 17 cents per right off the bat), and mail. Wait two weeks.
  • Within that time, those cards with bad addresses will start to come back to you. You can then remove them from the database, correct the address in the system and try anew, or give that customer a call to update the information.

Here’s an illustration of savings with this method:

5×8 postcard, color, 500 copies: $80
Postage @ 43 cents: $215
Total cost: $295

4×6 postcard, b/w, 125 copies (4 to a sheet): less than $15
Postage @ 27 cents: $135
Total cost: $150

So, in this example you have just saved $145, and accomplished what the first goal of marketing to a dusty database should be, which is cleaning up bad addresses to save money on future runs.

And remember, regardless of your campaign, always think of ways to cut postage costs first, because that’s where the most expense typically is.

 

Frugal domain names and hosting providers June 18, 2008

Filed under: frugal stuff, marketing — wellthylifestyle @ 12:54 pm
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I’ve used GoDaddy for many years, practically since their inception. By far they offer I think the best pricing for hosting, email accounts, email marketing, and of course, domain names.

In fact, often you can get your domain name for just $1.99 when you purchase basic hosting at $3.99/mo.

Did you hear that? You can get your website up and going for SIX DOLLARS. That’s right. Long gone are the days when domain names cost $36 (helllllooooo 1999?) and hosting was $20/month.

And with website templates, not to mention designers, more affordable than ever, there’s no excuse to not have at least a basic website. (Though remember, this is where you spend the money you saved in getting set up. No websites made by the brother-in-law!) GoDaddy also has a page designer you can use to ensure that you’ll have some semblance of a professional page.

There are other inexpensive domain and hosting providers to be sure, and GoDaddy has thousands of resellers, but just type it in and go there, and take a look at all the neat options available to you without breaking the bank!