SHARI AND THE LESSON OF DIRECT MAIL | 2007-02-28
NOT SPAM
NOT SPAM
I sent the mantra to 12 people that I know personally. I got replies from exactly no one. Well damn, I don't care. They have been told.
Comment by shari
ME:
Shari, most people think that twelve mail outs and no replies is bad. But the grassroots conservative movement, back when liberals absolutely controlled ALL media, as based on direct mail.
Here's the way it works.
1) You rent a random three thousand names off of somebody's much bigger list. That is enough to make a statistically valid test of that general list. If you were a conservative interested in prayers in schools, you might rent three thousand off of a list of a hundred thousand who have given money to support some other conservative religious cause.
2) If you get a TWO PERCENT RETURN on that list, it is a wild success. That means not one in twelve, but one in fifty. You almost always lose money on a test.
3) Now you decide to go ahead and rent the whole hundred thousand because you only lost about half the money you spent on the test. Why on earth would you do this, knowing it will cost you money?
Because when you mail the whole hundred thousand, you can expect two thousand people to respond. Actually two percent is ridiculously high, but this is for basics.
You have now found, by the only way then possible, two thousand people who are interested in YOUR cause and will give you money. You put those two thousand on your OWN "house list." These are people you can appeal to from time to time and you will get a ten to twenty percent return from them.
4) You mail your house list to fund your organization, but you keep testing other lists.
When conservatism was a grass roots movement, this was about the only way groups survived. Now the neos have brought in the usual big Jewish money which has control and conservatism gives the finger to the grassroots.
But dealing in direct mail teaches you that people don't respond to even small group mailings more than we do. I get a HUGE number of things that I read, but I respond to very, very few.
My local newspaper has a circulation of at least a hundred thousand. They print almost every letter to the editor that is not blatantly Politically Incorrect. People who read the editorial page send in maybe a half a dozen letters a day. Call that a response rate of one in ten thousand. Cut out the repeat offenders and it is down to on in twenty or thirty thousand.
But every day the newspaper keeps putting out editorials anyway.
You will note that when I get comments here I am a happy old bigot.
Now you know why.