After you build up a customer base, contacting them with a flyer or catalog is a great form of marketing.  This was one of the best forms of marketing I used, but I don't rank it with the other ad mediums because it's basically a by product of them, not available at start-up of your business.

 

Results varied but were always very good.  If I sent a mailing out to everyone who opened an account on my website, even if they didn't buy anything, my response rate was between 5%-10%.  If I sent a mailing to just those who made a purchase in the past on my website (actual buyers), the response rate was 10%-20% depending on what new products we had in. 

 

After you send out your catalogs, you can then begin building a "catalog buyer" list of your own from those who made a purchase from the catalog mailing.  You can then send these customers who are proven buyers a catalog every month and expect a great response rate each time.

 

I never lost money using this form of marketing but it's important to keep your catalog costs down, which we will discuss in another article.

 

IMPORTANT NOTE:  Throughout my articles you'll notice a couple ad mediums that made very good profits, but most lost $10,000 here and $20,000 there.  So where did the money (profits) come from?  Emailing old customers and sending out catalogs and flyers to them brought in at least $5 million in sales for us.  This easily made up for any other ad medium losses.