Looking ahead to a possible next stage in your business,
note that the same company (GEM) is one of many that will
imprint their products with your name or brand.
This opens the door to marketing your own line of products
-- not from a huge initial investment (and risk) situation
but as a natural, relatively inexpensive continuation of
your current successful venture (you already have the
customers and all the facilities in place).
Simply add your line of items to your flyers when ready
for this step.
As order come in for your $2 eye shadow box, include a
flyer for additional products (including more eye shadow
boxes) in every package you mail.
The flyers should describe each product, list their
advantages and possibly, testimonials taken from customer
letters (you can use their state and initials, but not
their name unless they give you permission).
Don't forget to include an order form:
Make it EASY for customers to order your products!
When there is no response, wait a couple of weeks and
send out another batch of flyers, and again at six weeks.
When there are responses, start the same cycle over again,
until run out of products (you don't have to, you know).
After 6 months or so (depending on how long the products
last), contact them again to see if they need replacements.
When there are lulls -- periods of no response, you can
occasionally send out another offer, something that mentions
you haven't heard from them for a while and are making a
special offer to regain them as customers.
Each step is dutifully recorded on that customer's card, so
you always know exactly what the situation is with each one
by glancing at their record.
Some companies use color suspense systems -- like yellow tags
for those who get reminders in two weeks, green for non-
responders, etc.
Periodically you have the option of gathering these names
into groups of 1,000 and selling them to a broker, or offering
to rent them yourself -- to non-competitive operations of course.
Many mail order oriented companies routinely exchange names
with non-competing businesses.
In preceding paragraph, we used the words "sell" and "rent"
with mailing lists. Names on a rented mailing list are to be
used for one mailing only by the renter.
The only exception is that any who answer the one mailing also
becomes the "property" of the mailer (because they corresponded
to him).
Selling a mailing list means that the buyer can contact the
names as many times as he wishes -- or that he can rent them
out. Included in every rented mailing list are "plants" names
of people who report back to the list owner who contacts them
and when. The penalty for reusing names illegally can be
severe -- the large mailing list brokers make sure they keep
this "crime" in check by full prosecution whenever it is
discovered.
