How I made $800,000 by mailing an ugly letter with a $2 bill attached. Yes, really!
Marketing, if it works is amazing! It almost feels like magic. It’s like writing your own blank paychecks.
Here are two examples of marketing that paid off:
1. Marketing magic part one: Mailing letters and postcards worth $800,000 in net income over 10 years
I purchased a residential property management business in 2005 for $40,000 (I sold it in 2015 for $150,000). When I bought the business it had 30 or so properties (doors is how we put it) it was managing. This brought in about $2,000 to $2,500 per month in net income. Not enough to live on obviously.
Of course the business needed to be larger.
My ex and I created a sales letter offering our management services to a list of 700 people who owned property in St. George, but didn’t live here. The letter had a $2 bill attached to get the owners attention. We followed up the letter with a second and then a third letter (the same letter but with a $2 bill printed on the letter instead of attaching another $2 bill) and then followed those letters up with ugly postcards I created based on the letters we sent.
What happened? In 24 months we added 100 new doors (about 75 new clients). Our mailings took the net income of the business from $2,500/month to about $8,000/month.
The growth was at times overwhelming. Magical to say the least.
2. Marketing magic part two: Mailing postcards brought in $450,000 (lifetime value) of additional customers.
I started a window cleaning business in 2017 which I still own and run on a limited part time basis. By 2020 I had topped out at about 100 customers on my mailing list. I wasn’t trying to grow the business at that point.
In 2021 I made my first venture into hiring employees. Because of this I needed more customers (a little backwards but who cares).
What I did: I created a fairly plain postcard 8.5” X 5.5” advertising the window cleaning business. I then used Every Door Direct Mail from the post office to mail that postcard to about 4000 homes. I had to build up the number of cards mailed to 4,000 by mailing to 1,000 then 2,000 etc. As the money came in from the new customers I reinvested that income in more postcards and more mailings. I always sent the same postcard each time.
What happened? In 6 months I added 300 new customers to my mailing list. In other words I quadrupled the number of customers I had. Lifetime value of the new customers: $450,000.
So, based on these experiences plus other I know that to grow the house cleaning business I need to do as many mailings as I can.
You just need one magic letter or postcard to get rich.
Key search terms: letter, ugly, $2, bill, magic, sales, advertising, marketing, mailing, postcard, customer, post office, EDDM,
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