PostcardMania’s CEO, Joy Gendusa, has been telling entrepreneurs for months now not to believe the negative hype and get on the ball with promotion. In a 6 month research program of tracking which industries were doing well, Gendusa found a successful direct mail program working for the restaurant industry, and has decided to launch it for other industries to help them increase new customers.
The program, called the New Patron Birthday Program, capitalizes on a sort of ‘variable-data idea’ without the expense of variable data. By acquiring mailing lists containing birthdays of specific target markets for particular industries, a business can send a birthday card to a specific identity with a special offer enticing them to try out an establishment they’ve never patronized before. The birthday campaign is a program that has proven statistics that Gendusa knows will work well in additional industries, such as day spas, plastic surgeons, cosmetic dentists and even health clubs. She says “We’re already running a successful campaign for a plastic surgeon and I can assure you that women will jump at almost any free offer from a day spa.”
In Gendusa’s book, The Ultimate Postcard Marketing Success Manual, is the very case study that prompted Joy to create the New Patron Birthday Campaign for other industries:
· Industry: Restaurant
· Goal: Increased new business and increased repeat business for restaurant
· Customer: Villa Valenti
· The Campaign: Villa Valenti has close to 40,000 names on their mailing list and they mail approximately 3,000 birthday cards a month. The owner, Ralph, does not do extensive tracking, but said that there has been a substantial increase in business since doing so. He also emphasizes that in order to make it work, wait staff are trained to upsell additional menu items to increase the return on investment.
In an ongoing effort to create services that help entrepreneurs boom their businesses, Gendusa says she will only use programs have a proven track record in one or more industry before piloting it to other industries. So far, according to Gendusa, plastic surgeons, auto repair shops and restaurants are using this technique to gain more new patrons.
“In the last 4 month period, we used this program to create an additional $40,000 in gross income,” said Chip, owner of Splash! An Ocean Grill.
About PostcardMania:
Using a powerful, simple, extremely cost effective way of communicating with customers has earned PostcardMania Inc Magazine’s recognition as the nation’s fastest growing direct mail postcard-marketing firm with year 2007 revenues at nearly $19,000,000. Joy Gendusa began in 1998 with zero investment capital. Today, her postcard marketing firm employs over 160 people and prints 4 million and mails 2 million postcards representing more than 28,000 customers in over 350 industries each week. Visit www.postcardmania.com
