Almost every marketing program I have seen includes a section on direct marketing or "stuffing 1000 envelopes with stuff no one will read." Dave Dee suggests sending different variations of the same letter THREE times to same person.

Here are my problems with this approach

1) Its a waste of paper. Call me a greenie or a hippie or whatever but it is far too much paper to send out to people who probably won't read it.

2) It is expensive. Photocopying and printing 5c-20c Postage 50c Envelope 5c. So you pay 60c cents PLUS per letter. (multiple it by thousands...)

3) Its boring. I became a magician to have FUN and enjoy life, not to spend hours stuffing envelopes!

4) It can be effective but more often then not, these campaign's success are spotty at best.

Now I do use mail outs. E.g. I send letters to schools for my school shows (this is a spefically targeted mail out). But is this the best use of your marketing dollar?

Nicholas, if you are suggesting that direct mail is not the best use of your time and money you may be right. A return of 1% is HUGE for a direct mail piece. No doubt you need to send big numbers to realize any actual return.

A spacifically targeted mail out does the trick. Your goal is more to keep up a mailing list and your name on their lips, rather than to actually intorduce yourself. This is a great idea and you should not stop this practice.

I am made nervous by your contention though that you became a magician to have fun and enjoy life. This is indeed a business so you need to approach it as one. Keep that in mind. You seem to be on the right track, but do not let fun enter into the equasion.

Good Luck,

Danny

As has been mentioned, standard mailings may not bring about a great return, however Targeted Marketing to a direct target group can and does work amazingly well.

The idea here is that you are not just sending something out to someone at random in hopes that they have a need for your services and solutions. You are creating and researching and forming a rough contact list that fits your target market that you feel your show is perfect for.

However, this list will not do you any good unless you learn to qualify your leads list. By this it means to do a simple cold call to make sure that information you have is correct and that the person you are sending to is a "decision maker" who will be the one who determines if you get in or not.

Qualifying your leads is a critical step I do to obtain great returns on my mailings. Now when you cold call, it 1) does not take much time at all to do and 2) you are never selling to them when you do it. You are simply stating who you are, what you do, that you heard about their event and wanted to confirm a contact person so you can send information for possible consideration. It really is that easy.

What you will find out is that 80% of your original contact list info. is not accurate. But through the qualifying process, you can get the exact name and contact info. for the person who makes the real decisions. This is key so that your mailings get in the proper hands. Now your mailings are worth something to you because you know you are mailing to a decision maker and not just guessing.

Not only that, but now you have made an initial contact that you can use in your letter you mail out or in a phone call to this new person or even an e-mail. You can state that (such and such) at the office etc, said that you might find my information useful to you for such and such event. Now you are not a strnager so much as you are someone who was recommended to them.

Now they are expecting your mailing to come to them and there is much greater chance of them opening it, reading it and acting upon it.

Does it take a little bit of time? Sure it does to do what I explained above. But the results you can get from it are so well worth it. It is a form of active style marketing that really puts YOU in direct control of the selling process.

Once you learn to use these tips and to act upon them yourself, you will realize that this way of thinking soon becomes habit forming to you. Instead of it feeling like work, it happens naturally as a habit.

And, once you receive that first success.. nothing breeds more success then success. This means you will want to keep doing it because it simply works.

It is one method of really making your mailings work much better for you.

Hope this helps.

Kyle