3 ms·

Tackling the Direct Mail dilemma marketers face – need some feedback

2 points by annaseyborne 10y ago

Hey guys, I'm thinking of an idea: letting people print free photos through an application, then having advertisements printed at the back of these photos. Most direct mailers to people's houses aren't opt-in, and this would be a great way to have your advertisement readily read and taken home. Problem is, 1) I have yet to validate it with any consumers 2) Yet to validate with marketers 3) Am unsure of the costs - I did some quick googling and realized that USPS actually provides segmented direct mail targeting. However, these obviously aren't opt-in, so that's the angle that I'm looking to pitch my application idea. The problem is, these direct mailers that USPS provides are pretty cheap - if I'm printing photos, it might be hard to compete in terms of price. What do you guys think? Do you think you would sign on as a consumer, and do you think it might be profitable in the future? This is my pre-launch page: http://eternize.co. Feel free to give me feedback on this as well, I know my designing skills aren't the best so I'm definitely open to constructive criticism. Thank you!!! :)

Nexxxeh 10y ago
What's your target demographic for this? I can't see my generation or younger using it for themselves, but maybe I'm being pessimistic. I'd maybe see people using it to send photos to non-tech-savvy grandparents. My initial thought is nice idea but too trusting, you aren't being pessimistic enough. It's going to get destroyed by the Internet hate machine. Unless you do credit card validation as a bare minimum, some asshat on 4Chan is going to spot this, and you are going to end up sending pictures of corpes to grieving parents, or pictures of murders to their victims families or something. Whatever level of abuse filtering you implement will not be enough. In the UK there's a company, Docmail, who will print and post postcards very cheaply. Is there a similar company in the US?
- annaseyborne 10y ago
  Hey, the idea is for people to upload their own address and photos so they'll receive it themselves. Thank you for taking the time out to respond to me though! :)
  - Nexxxeh 10y ago
    How will you know if people are using their own details, or just the details of someone else? How can you verify that without requiring a credit/debit card?
al2o3cr 10y ago
Some thoughts: * you're likely to get killed on postage costs. Big bulk mailers get better rates by pre-sorting and barcoding mail (and by having lots of volume), which is going to be harder here. * marketers care a lot about reach, and this approach means that the reach you can provide to them is strictly bounded by the reach your company has. Unless you've got the best SEO team ever, that's not going to be compelling. * the sample promo on your site reads like it's intended to be geotargeted - so people in Peoria get codes to businesses in Peoria. This is a good idea on paper, but means you've got a massive chicken-and-egg problem; unless your initial site marketing is also very geotargeted you're going to have a massive challenge matching your initial advertisers to consumers in the same area. * building on that: if Peoria Barbers wants to get coupons to people in their area there are a LOT of other approaches that will get more impressions much more readily. As you've noted, these are not opt-in - but they can be targeted with all the existing marketing tools versus relying on your company's marketing to get prospects. * I'd recommend looking into how many photos people print at a time - my zero-data guess is that the distribution is bimodal, with a bunch who print none and a bunch who print a lot. If that's backed up by data it's a problem for your startup; eight photos is more than the first group has interest in printing but far less than what the second group wants. * I'll second the other poster who recommended a LOT of content-filtering and/or address verification: randos have used the FedEx "free mailing supplies online" tool pretty extensively to annoy people, and that didn't even allow uploading shock images.

2 points by annaseyborne 10y ago

Nexxxeh 10y ago

What's your target demographic for this? I can't see my generation or younger using it for themselves, but maybe I'm being pessimistic. I'd maybe see people using it to send photos to non-tech-savvy grandparents. My initial thought is nice idea but too trusting, you aren't being pessimistic enough. It's going to get destroyed by the Internet hate machine. Unless you do credit card validation as a bare minimum, some asshat on 4Chan is going to spot this, and you are going to end up sending pictures of corpes to grieving parents, or pictures of murders to their victims families or something. Whatever level of abuse filtering you implement will not be enough. In the UK there's a company, Docmail, who will print and post postcards very cheaply. Is there a similar company in the US?

annaseyborne 10y ago
Hey, the idea is for people to upload their own address and photos so they'll receive it themselves. Thank you for taking the time out to respond to me though! :)
- Nexxxeh 10y ago
  How will you know if people are using their own details, or just the details of someone else? How can you verify that without requiring a credit/debit card?

al2o3cr 10y ago

Some thoughts: * you're likely to get killed on postage costs. Big bulk mailers get better rates by pre-sorting and barcoding mail (and by having lots of volume), which is going to be harder here. * marketers care a lot about reach, and this approach means that the reach you can provide to them is strictly bounded by the reach your company has. Unless you've got the best SEO team ever, that's not going to be compelling. * the sample promo on your site reads like it's intended to be geotargeted - so people in Peoria get codes to businesses in Peoria. This is a good idea on paper, but means you've got a massive chicken-and-egg problem; unless your initial site marketing is also very geotargeted you're going to have a massive challenge matching your initial advertisers to consumers in the same area. * building on that: if Peoria Barbers wants to get coupons to people in their area there are a LOT of other approaches that will get more impressions much more readily. As you've noted, these are not opt-in - but they can be targeted with all the existing marketing tools versus relying on your company's marketing to get prospects. * I'd recommend looking into how many photos people print at a time - my zero-data guess is that the distribution is bimodal, with a bunch who print none and a bunch who print a lot. If that's backed up by data it's a problem for your startup; eight photos is more than the first group has interest in printing but far less than what the second group wants. * I'll second the other poster who recommended a LOT of content-filtering and/or address verification: randos have used the FedEx "free mailing supplies online" tool pretty extensively to annoy people, and that didn't even allow uploading shock images.