Hey has anyone used direct mail marketing to get some customers? Ya know like make up a post card with a promo on it and mail it to a bunch of local bussinesses?

I have been doing good with just online marketing but am working on bringing my company to the next level so I was just wondering if anyone has used this method of advertising??

Any comments?
Thanks

Did not work for us, could of been the list we used though. We bought ours from Dun and Bradstreet.

Maybe it was the list. What we were thinking of is buying a list of all newly formed bussiness's and promoting a speacial that would allow them to get their new bussiness on the web at reduced prices. But as you know list's can be kinda pricy to buy depending I guess on which agency you buy from.

So I was hoping to get alot of comments on this topic
Thanks Nodehost for replying

We have tried it also and gotten some response out of it but not enough response to pay for the advertisement. My heart belongs to spam because getting the email list is free and emailing is free. But its not so free when your ips get blackholed If it where legal to do and it didnt cause so much problems and headaches, I'd continue to spam.. There very little overhead and it works. For the cost of a cheap dial up line you can send your message to millions till it gets shut off. Honestly i do beleive that it is truely the best way of getting new customers and the best way to get into alot of trouble. The person responsible needs to consider whether it is going to be worthwhile to deadl with the though of their network being blackholed to the rest of the world.

Acutally my company does direct mailings so it would only cost us the cost of buying peoples names. I just was unsure if people acutally get customers from this method. I know this method is popular for advertising other services.

Thanks for your comments .... people keep them comin'

I got plenty from Interland

It works great and there is software out there like sonique that will pull fresh names for you. Direct mailing(Spam) seems to work better than anything else and it has the lowest initial cost.

Alan,

By direct mailing, do you mean by email or post mail?

Thanks

Something to consider.....

My company (another branch) does direct mailing for computer repair and networking, ect... and it works awesome! We have just only launched our hosting and so have not ventured to do direct mailing as of yet.

Now, when using direct mail the first thing to consider is how: Are you going to purchase a list and do it yourself? If so, then how are you going to pay for postage? There are several ways.... one of which you just go buy several thousand stamps (and time consuming) or are you going to have it metered. In which case you would need to buy a bulk mailing license (it's a few hundred dollars per year.) Or the third option may be to get a device from pitney bowes....

The second option, which by the way is what we do, is to simply use a direct mailing company. A direct mailing company would be, for instance, valpak coupons or money mailler (i don't know if they have those where you live but they are great) they typically start around $600 - $700 per month for 10,000.

No matter what you do make sure you look into demographics. Hosting is a specialized business. It isn't like a computer, where 8 of of 10 homes have one. Not everyone will want to host! Probably not even 50%. You want to look into startup businesses...

Hope this helps!