Marketing my forum and here's what the Ai said...

B

bennylava

Active member
The nature of my board is such that direct marketing will be a big help. Because it's only related to my locale. So I'm planning on using mailbox advertisements.

And then I asked the Ai about the conversion rate. It says that on average, 500 mailbox cards will get you 22 customers. And I did mention that it was a free service. But it looks like it would be quite expensive to get 1,000 members because mailing 500 cards costs around $400.

I regularly get ads from local businesses that I know don't have thousands to spend on mail ads. It will be a flower shop, or a painting service. I suspect there is some cheaper way to do it, because I even get ads from small churches sometimes.

So how many letters are they sending? If we assume it's roughly 500, does 22 new customers make it worth the $400 expense? Would this pan out for a forum?

Any insight here would be greatly appreciated!
 
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javakhir said:
research better to find cheaper. 500 cards costs around $400 is something expensive made for fools.
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Well upon further research, it looks like $435 will buy me about 88 members. The cards being about $0.29 each, mailed.

There's another noteworthy statistic, but I don't know if it applies here. Most of those 88 people won't be active participants. That's probably ok, because even lurkers will still be exposed to my monetization methods. As long as they're regular lurkers.
 
What subject is the forum, are there any other criteria for members other than local, and how local is local (city, county, state etc)?

$435 for 88 members, where you're going to be lucky if 10-25% stay as more than one- or two-time lurkers is generally not considered a good investment.
 
bennylava said:
The nature of my board is such that direct marketing will be a big help. Because it's only related to my locale. So I'm planning on using mailbox advertisements.
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Do you live in a city or crowded area and is it legal to post in other people's mailboxes there?

Seems like you can save a ton if you buy a paper cutter for $25 and a ream of paper for $5. You could go to the library and print out 500 sheets of an ad that's 1/2-sized sheet of paper to cut and have 1000 flyers for the low cost of $30. You would then just need to value your time of passing out 1000 flyers, or if that's even reasonable with walking distances.

bennylava said:
$435
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So, how much time do you value the extra $405? That's $25 an hour to reasonably get 1000 passed out if you're in a city (also to people walking by).

I've done it when starting my first business. It took about 10 hours to get 2000 flyers done and passed out (1 ream but I believe A1-sized so I could cut into 4ths). I would do this neighborhood by neighborhood and take 3-4 hours a day passing them out in each area, probably passing out around 10,000 in total. It was pretty effective to get 10-15 clients that paid monthly, and stayed for months to years. So, the ROI was there when I did it to continue to do it until I was maxed out and started getting referrals.
 
sorry for my mistake, now I got him. mailboxes he means physcial delivery of leaflets, in UK leaflets are pain in the *ss! no one likes it, thats why low success.
 
javakhir said:
looks like AI has incorrect information! what is your tematic?
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I am unfamiliar with that word, but I just use Perplexity.ai

frm said:
Do you live in a city or crowded area and is it legal to post in other people's mailboxes there?

Seems like you can save a ton if you buy a paper cutter for $25 and a ream of paper for $5. You could go to the library and print out 500 sheets of an ad that's 1/2-sized sheet of paper to cut and have 1000 flyers for the low cost of $30. You would then just need to value your time of passing out 1000 flyers, or if that's even reasonable with walking distances.


So, how much time do you value the extra $405? That's $25 an hour to reasonably get 1000 passed out if you're in a city (also to people walking by).

I've done it when starting my first business. It took about 10 hours to get 2000 flyers done and passed out (1 ream but I believe A1-sized so I could cut into 4ths). I would do this neighborhood by neighborhood and take 3-4 hours a day passing them out in each area, probably passing out around 10,000 in total. It was pretty effective to get 10-15 clients that paid monthly, and stayed for months to years. So, the ROI was there when I did it to continue to do it until I was maxed out and started getting referrals.
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Thanks for the recommendation! I had considered delivering them myself, but I didn't consider making them myself. I was thinking that a nice looking postcard-type ad would surely have to be made at a print shop. And by the time they made it, might as well let them cut it too.

There's also those doorknob hangers, but personally I'm not a fan of those things. If I'm going to get unsolicited ads, at least let them be in the mailbox with everything else.

Sounds like you did pretty well advertising by mail.
 
I worked as a postman for 4 years in West London, UK. If you want to deliver leaflets speak to your postman & deal with him, you can pay him 50 pounds he will deliver them to his area to 600 houses or flats, each postman delivers 2000-5000 mails each day.
The second option is to deliver them yourself, this one is better, you won't spend money on delivery, & more important: you will walk a while.
If you deliver them on 25 December on Christmas day, you can earn money, many people will give you tips.
You live in the USA, then accept my apologies
 
bennylava said:
Sounds like you did pretty well advertising by mail
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Very low conversion rate as you can tell, but the retention rate made up for it.

You can save a ton of money doing it by yourself, and if you see it works, you could determine if paying $400 is worth it by the amount of conversions that you get.

If I got 25 for the first 10,000, I wouldn't mind paying to do it after that, for as long as the conversions stayed consistent.
 
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