Open that Junk Mail!

September 19th, 2009 | 9:38 pm | Posted in Finance | 2 Comments »

I always open all of our mail — even the stuff that’s just blatant junk mail – and here’s the reason why:

Yep, the fine folks from Arbitron mailed me a genuine $1 bill.

No catch. That dollar is real and it’s now officially mine.

In short, it’s just a cold marketing tactic.

You’d think that it’d be a rather expensive method — essentially costing nearly $1.50 per piece mailed — but in reality, turning a cold prospect into a hot prospect (or even a customer) for such a low sum can be extremely profitable even with a failure rate exceeding 95%.

And it’s that high failure rate that makes me wonder how many folks out there are just tossing their $1 bills into the trash with all of the other junk mail.

At the very least, be sure to open any mail from Arbitron… There’s a buck in that envelope!