Rate of Return

Brett Lloyd Abbott, president of MYM Austin, Inc., a marketing firm geared toward pool builders, focuses exclusively on pools in order to garner better marketing results for his clients. “We’re selling a product that most people would deeply emotionally love to have,” he says. “You don’t have to do a whole lot more than show them a photograph of a beautiful swimming pool to get them excited about it.”

Even in a technology-driven age, direct-mail marketing can still be effective for pool companies. The key is finding a mailing list that accurately targets pool owners in your area. If you decide to purchase a mailing list, take precautions. Derrick Todd, owner of Aquanut Pool Care in Greenville, S.C., learned this the hard way.

While his experience purchasing a mailing list went well, Todd had to look for another list provider because the first didn’t have information on his service area. The second company supposedly had 6,000 addresses for the area he wanted. With a budget of $3,000, he sent out 5,000 mailers. “Normally, within one to four days after the mailers hit, your phone starts ringing, but nothing happened,” he says.

Todd started making phone calls. The first 20 people didn’t have pools, and most lived in apartments. “We started going through the list [they] sold us and found that 75 to 80 percent of the list was bad,” Todd says. “It took my team and me four months to go through the list using Google Earth to look at every house and find the ones with pools.”

Of the 6,000 addresses provided to Todd’s company, only 1,400 were good. While he did eventually get a refund from the company for the cost of the list and some postage, much time was lost. In the end, his recommendation for purchasing a mailing list is to go through it before sending out postcards.

Abbott says it’s worth the extra cost to purchase a mailing list that tells you whether someone owns a pool. And when it comes to purchasing a list, there are two ways to go: If you’re hiring a company to handle printing and mailing for you, see if they can also procure the list. “That saves you the hassle of researching providers, buying a list and then potentially having to reformat the list to meet your printer’s requirement,” Abbott says. However, if you’re going to buy a list yourself, there are hundreds of options — and he recommends sticking with larger, well-established national list providers.

Once Todd determined what addresses had pools in his area, he started working with that list regularly and building on it. “It has been my experience that, once you buy a list for an area, you should not have to go back and repurchase a list,” he says. “Pools do not normally get up and walk out of the backyard. And for someone buying a list, look at it as a foundation or an addition to their own list.”  

From there, make sure your direct-mailing strategy will provide the best ROI. Abbott recommends doing your first estimate when your target market is likely to start thinking about hiring someone to build or maintain a pool. “For example, if pool owners in your area start opening their swimming pools in March, then your first mailing should occur in February,” he suggests. After that, he recommends sending your mailer to the same people at least two more times at approximately three-week intervals.

Todd sends mailers twice a year. “In the spring, people may be thinking about liners or green clean-ups,” he says. “In the fall, they may be thinking about winterization or new safety covers.” While he’s seen success with postcards, Todd says he gets the best results with personal letters.

Abbott points out that the most effective format can only be determined by splitting your target market, sending two different formats to each half, and waiting to see which garners the better response. If you do go with postcards, Abbott recommends going with a minimum of 6 by 8 inches. “When designing your postcard, keep in mind that the entire purpose of the headline and graphics should be to get people to turn over the postcard and read the other side,” Abbott says. Whatever format you choose, Abbott says direct marketing requires a compelling message, hitting the right target market and mailing at the right time of year. And, as Todd reminds, after buying a list, check the first 500 to 1,000 addresses to make sure the list is usable before licking the stamp.