On a Postcard

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One of the seemingly ridiculous yet unfortunately quite accurate rule of thumb in marketing is that you should expect a response rate of around 1%.

If you’ve not come across it, perhaps you think that it’s far too small and you can beat it. Many people think that but few manage to do much better and most get even lower response rates. That’s of course why we are all innundated with junk mail at every turn. They need to send out 100 letters just to get one person replying.

Remember that rule well if you’re a small business. It’s all too easy to get caught up in the production of flashy brochures for a mailshot only to find that you’ve sent out 100 $1 brochures and only had one person buying. That’s fine for high value items of course but we know of one B&B who responded to every enquiry by posting out a brochure (total cost around $2 each). Sure they got some bookings but each one cost them around $200 which was none too profitable considering that they only charged $50 a room.

So don’t bank on any more than a 1% response rate in your costings.

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