October 2002

Traffic Generation Technique
Inserts

Don't overlook collaborating with people that still have the guts to do direct mail.

Many of them would probably be happy to include an insert in their mailing advertising your complimentary or non-competitive website / product. Mailing costs are skyrocketing so anything they can do to help handle the expenses of the mailing will give them a better chance of being profitable.

Another way you can approach them with this is to offer to make them an affiliate so that if someone buys from the mailing they get a commission that might be much larger than what they could reasonably charge by charging you for letting the insert ride along with their mailing.

You might end up with a hybrid deal where they get less than they would normally charge you up front with the affiliate program inclusion making them more money on the back end.

I have no idea what this would cost you or how people charge for this because I pretty much avoid direct mail. Get a direct mail book from the library to dig into the details of this off line way to drive traffic to your website.