Good Lord. See, here’s the thing. The last month has been a bit of a struggle for me work and money wise. First of all, I still haven’t built up any financial reserves coming out of my divorce. I work in a business where I make appointments with small businesses and self employeed individuals, and then call on them and sell them corporate benifits-primarialy discounted health insurance. We are a national non-proffit organization that gives individuals access to a national group of over 400,000 other self employeed people, and as a member of such a large group they can get better coverage at lower rates than by getting an individual policy. It’s a good job, a product with a high demand, and I do well. This last month, tho…OY!
First, September 11. Needless to say, the following week and a half to two weeks was rough. Nobody wanted to see me in the wake of the attack, and I understand that. I wasn’t too worried because I had taken a big step: advertising.
I have been doing this for three years, and I do pretty well. I want to do better than pretty well, I want to be in the top ranks at my company, the $150K/year plus range. To do that, you’ve got to develop your own sources for leads. I took the plunge and arranged several mailings. Sept. 24th 90,000 direct mail pieces hit West Baltimore, all replies to come directly to me. The day it hit, I had 20 replies. I had 50 within the week. I was elated! This kind of response was well worth the $1200 I spent. There was one small problem. I misread the mailing details. I had thought the mailers would be going to the western Baltimore suburbs. Uh-uh. They went into West Baltimore, as in the city. As in low income areas. Even then, it shouldn’t have been THAT bad, except that those people who were interested and claimed on the phone to be able to afford what we had to offer either stood me up or gave me some version of “oh, I didn’t realize you needed the money now. I’ll have it next week/next month/ some unspecified time”. The whole mailing was a disaster. I either got people who thought they were going to buy something without any money, or who weren’t able to grasp the concept that an “appointment” means that someone is going to show up to see you at the time you said you’d be there. I made one appointment for 2 hours in the future, and when I got there was told “oh, she went to get her nails done”!!!Good God! Do these people think I have nothing better to do than hump my ass up and down North Avenue?? I say again, Oy!
Well, October brought my monthly bonus check, and I was able to pay my Ex-wife half the money I owe her and my rent, so I’m OK there. I also knew that my second mailer was going to hit today. Another $1200, but this time it was 90,000 houses in Harford County, which is where I live and is also an affluent, fast growing suburb of Baltimore. Things are looking up, right?
Wrong. There are 3 ways to reply to the mailer. You can mail it back. OK, no problem there, I’ll start getting those in a few days. You can respond on my business website and that’s working just fine too. Far and away the majority will respond by calling the phone number on the mailer, and herein lies the problem. I have a dedicated local line for getting replies to my advertisements. You can either leave a voice message or you can fax me. Voice mail is turned into a .wav file and e-mailed to me, faxes are sent as text attachments. This has worked beautifully in the past, and at $12/month it’s a lot cheeper than a second phone line. By 8:00 tonight I had noticed no messages in my inbox. Hmmm. I called my number. “bee-bee-beep. Your call did not go through. Please try again later” WTF??? I call again. Same thing. Try it on my cell phone. Ditto. I call the company that supplies the number and am told they are having technical difficulties in the 410 area code, and my number will be back up tomorrow.
So now I’m totally boned. How many people are going to get this mailer today, try to call, and not call back when they get this message? A lot, I am sure. Even if the line is back tomorrow, day one is always the biggest response. They offered me a substitute number to use until mine was back. THAT DOES ME ABSOLUTELY NO GOOD!! I’ve already mailed the pieces with the non-working number on it.
Look, Sept 11 I can take. Even the 1st mailer wasn’t that bad, I look on it as a learning experience. But if this goddamn fucking phone problem takes all the teeth out of todays mailing…I’m well and truly fucked. Just fucking shoot me, OK?
