We are looking at mailing 20,000 local businesses that could use our hosting services and wondered what percentage of responses we should use as a benchmark for the mailing.


Anyone with numbers to share?

Haven't tried it ourselves, but IMO if you get 5% you're doing great.

5% would be fantastic!
BTW, are you using a service to do this, or are you doing it yourself?
If so...which service?:spiny:

Haven't gotten that far yet,.....we're just getting numbers at this point as ROI is most important.

We already know who the target market is, how many there are, the mailer design costs and the cost to attain the addresses of the businesses. Now, we'd like to know how many we should expect the campaign to return (throwing all variables aside like: look of mailer, price of services we offer, etc)

I can tell you from spending a number of years in the marketing industry that average direct mail responses are around 1%. That of course varies depending on you medium. Sales letters typicly get trashed people don't want to read them. Your best be is large 6x9 post cards, full color front side back can be black text, with a captivating message on both sides, try to make it a great offer, something special. Give potental customers a reason to contact you, Have a strong call to action....

ex. Call us today to find out about our special priceing offer on...

or

Visit our website to learn more about...


good luck

Great suggestions!

(not too shabby for your 1st post! keep it up!)

Thanks for the feedback.

just a friendly reminder,
just because it is someone's first post, doesn't mean it is their first day in business :)
If you find a good service, please email me!

hehe. Never implied it was his first day of business.....a simple "thanks and nice post" is what it actually says.:D

I'll keep you posted on what we learn.

:blush: sorry.
Thanks, I look forward to hearing from you.

I've used direct mail for a few different products for clients, but never for hosting. But I'd confirm the rough estimates given by thenexthot -- a 1% response rate is considered to be pretty good for a non-targeted campaign like yours. That is, assuming you'd be mailing to small businesses regardless of whether or not they've ever given any indication to anyone that they have any interest in webhosting.

For a targeted mailing, you might expect more, but even then 3% is pretty good; 5% would be called very successful -- unless you have some dream list like "business owners who have indicated that they only buy in response to direct mail offers!" :)

Of course, much depends on the mailing piece you're sending.

Expect results from about 1/2% (or less) to probably no more than 2%, if that, and only if targeted.