Posted by Brent_IL on September 17, 2003 at 10:04:30:
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Direct marketing using audio tapes or CDs? - Posted by Craig
Posted by Craig on September 16, 2003 at 15:47:00:
I searched the archives and didn’t find anything related to this subject, so I thought I’d throw this out and maybe open a new discussion.
I’m currently reading a foreclosure course that is heavy on direct marketing. The techniques the authors suggest for contacting people in pre-foreclosure include sending a combination of letters, postcards, and audio tapes or CDs. Reason being, most people (presumably) in pre-foreclusure do not open mail from people they don’t know, and are already inundated with postcards, letters, etc from other investors and bill collectors. The idea of sending audio tapes or CDs is intriguing, but I wanted to see if anyone else has experience with this method or would like to provide some feedback.
Thanks,
Craig
Re: Direct marketing using audio tapes or CDs? - Posted by Brent_IL
Posted by Brent_IL on September 16, 2003 at 21:35:22:
If you are going to try this, I?d advise you to put your sales presentation on a read-only CD. I?m not sure if it will be helpful, but here is my experience.
In the mid 1970?s, I sold life and health insurance and tax shelters. My friend and I made up a small sales-oriented booklet and an accompanying audio cassette tape that explained the pages of the booklet to the prospects as folks read along. We dropped them off at small manufacturing businesses and told people that we would be back to get their feedback in four days. We thought it would end other forms of prospecting for us.
When we returned, most of the tapes were sitting where they were when we left them. The businessmen said they didn?t have a tape player at the shop and didn?t remember to bring the materials home at night.
We got the brilliant idea to preempt this problem by dropping off a battery operated tape player with the cassette tape and the booklet. If I remember correctly, the players cost us about forty dollars each. We bought batteries by the case.
Our call backs improved only slightly. Overall, we made some profit, but consumed an inordinate amount of time doing it. After losing about 250 tape players due to damage, dust and debris, and shrinkage, we called it quits. I gave away cassette players as gifts for 10 years.
Fast forward to today. Almost everyone who owns a house has access to a computer with a CD drive. I know my son pays under $20 for 100 R/W disks including shipping. He complained that the price had increased from $14. I don?t use the audio/visual facets of the computer, but I think it is relatively easy to burn CD?s. There are duplicating services that cost only a little more than the blank disks if you bulk order. Inexpensive envelopes are available that fit the CD?s and protect them during mailing.
Consider this anecdote when developing your list. Every five or six weeks for over a decade, I?ve received a ?Try AOL® free? disk in the mail, probably somewhere over 60 or 70 in total. The kids used them as Frisbees®. I tried AOL® at an acquaintance?s home, and I despised it. It took forever to log on. Once connected it was slow. It kicked me off of the net with no explanation. I couldn?t see the need for keywords (still don?t) when a browser-sponsored search engine or Google search worked better.
In the quest for a good connection with longer download times, we?ve tried every major national provider. My daughter uses instant messages and buddy lists and other communication tools that I don?t care to learn about. Recently, she wanted to try AOL® because her friends used it. I objected and regaled her with a long list of anti-AOL® complaints. The same day as our conversation we received yet another set-up disk from AOL®.
I?m posting this via AOL®. The fees are higher than MSN® and over 200% greater than NetZero®. I guess persistence and continually remailing a good list works.
Re: Direct marketing using audio tapes or CDs? - Posted by Chris S
Posted by Chris S on September 17, 2003 at 08:44:06:
you don’t need full blown aol for the instant messenger. try going to their site and only downloading thte IM piece. It’ll get her what she wants and keep you from getting AOL. Win/Win if you ask me.
Chris