How Often Should You Repeat a Mailing?

I am often asked this question and usually my answer is at least 2 or 3 times if it works the first time. I will explain why in a moment.

Here are some specific results that I think illustrate the impact of multiple impressions of the same advertisement to a single list.

Dick Larkin, The Yellow Pages Commando (If you haven’t subscribed to his newsletter, you’re missing a gem.), and I did a teleseminar in April. We both sent invitations to our respective readers. We received a total of 226 registrations.

The first invitation went out 2 weeks before the teleseminar. From this first round we received 31 registrations, which turned out to be only 13% of the registrations. We waited a week and then did a daily invitation for 4 days. The last invitation being sent on the day of the teleseminar.

Here’s what happened. The second invitation created 23% of the registrations, the third created 43.8%, the fourth brought in 12.3% and the 5th brought in 5.3%.

So what do we learn from this?

1. If you only send a mailing out once you are only getting a fraction of what’s possible.
2. Repeated mailings generate a classic bell curve of responses.
3. Mailings that arrive fast and furiously don’t negatively affect customer relationships and in fact increase your business.

So if you do direct mail, e-mail marketing or any other kind of direct response, don’t sell yourself short by only sending out one round of advertising. If you want to find out what all the excitement was about, and why so many people registered for the seminar, you get the whole teleseminar here.