Postcard From Woody – Promote Your Blog Offline
A couple days ago I received a strange postcard. Take a look:
Front:
Back:
It probably would have gone straight into the recycling bin but 3 things caught my attention:
- It was profoundly low key. Plain white card stock, so ugly it was intriguing.
- “Woody Maxim” … LOL, with a name like that I had to take a look at the blog.
- It had my name and home address on it.
Let’s Visit Woody!
When I followed the link to the blog, I found this post about the postcard campaign. You can read about what and why in the post.
Promoting a blog in a direct mail campaign is something I haven’t seen before. Another great reason to create your own products, since I doubt the return on investment would be worth it as a purely traffic building tactic.
Another tip to pick up from Woody is to create a special offer for the people who receive the postcard; that way you can track direct conversions.
A Peak Behind the Scenes
The big question is:
How did Woody get my name and home address?
The short answer is that he purchased a targeted mailing list. Ever wanted to know why some gurus will offer ridiculously cheap or even free physical products?
So they can build a list of niche targeted addresses.
You see, unlike with an email address list, a list of physical addresses can be sold or rented without consent or needing to disclose and with relatively little fear that it will damage your reputation.
While you can go to jail for sending spam email, you can send spam physical mail without consequence. It’s weird that it should be like that, but for now it’s true.
In short there is very little way for me to be certain who provided my name and address to Woody.
My guess is that selling these address lists is quite profitable and will provide a very worthwhile secondary income to any low-cost info product sold in physical format.
A Win-Win
From his post it looks like Woody is happy with the results of his mail out. Also, because the approach is novel, he got me, possibly others, to blog about it. 
If you figure that a Review Me from this site is about $150, then we really should add that into the ROI calculations.
For the list seller there is a bonus income stream from selling his list with very little risk of backlash.
Maybe there’s a CD or DVD version of Real Blog Videos in my future marketing plans!
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Comments ( 5 )
Brian added these pithy words on Jun 11 07 at 4:03 pmQuicksprout just had a post today about branding yourself with postcards. I was actually thinking about doing it as a way to network a little more.
Chris Crompton added these pithy words on Jun 13 07 at 8:15 amVery Odd… I got the same postcard here in North Carolina a couple weeks ago and I kept it too. He said he only sent it out to 625 people.
Jon added these pithy words on Jun 13 07 at 8:34 am@Chris, then you have to think about who we may have both purchased an Internet business type of physical product from and then you’ll have a pretty good idea of who is selling their mailing list. Just who I suspected in the first place, the initials JB will give you a hint
Chris added these pithy words on Jun 18 07 at 3:14 pmFurther proof of that…
There’s a testimonial from Woody Maxim on that back of the MuVar 2007 CD from JB.Wonder how I can rent his list.
Jon added these pithy words on Jun 18 07 at 11:31 pmHey Chris, maybe JB is Woody Maxim? Since it’s doubtful you’ll ever be able to contact JB, why not leave a comment on Woody’s site and see if he’ll put you in contact with the list seller? Let me know if you have any success.