Do Mailed Newsletters Work Anymore? The Truth for Painting Contractors

Do physically mailed newsletters or printed collateral even work anymore? In this digital age where everything is social media and digitally connected, folks have thought that this medium no longer performs. And the truth is, it’s untrue. As I’ve worked with hundreds of painting contractors, one of the key elements in our program is that we reach our audience with both physically mailed and emailed newsletters.

And I’ll tell you this, our owners, who are three, five, seven million dollars, if you ask them what the one marketing medium was, the one thing they do in their business that they would never give up and that they would highly recommend, it’s physically mailed newsletters. Why is that the case? Let me tell you. First off, what’s this thing in my pocket right here? It’s my phone.

All the social media, all the texts, all the emails, all the phone calls come through this device. But guess what? Physical mail is the only medium that arrives at the customer’s home, and it arrives in a receptacle that is completely different. There’s a saying in marketing, “Look around at what everyone else is doing and never do that.

If you just do what everyone else does, you’re just going to get what everyone else gets. But because you’re in a crowded field, you’ll only get a percentage of that medium because your competitors are using it also. It’s always best to compete on a stage of one. Secondly, as someone who has published a newspaper for five years and who has spent 20 plus years using mailed communication to lists in politics and nonprofits, I can tell you it works even better in painting.

Why? People place more trust in mail communication than digital communication. Study after study has shown that. Number two. People consume long-form content in physical form far more than they do digital. Think about it. Are you more likely to read your favorite magazine from cover to cover if something really interests you or if all that content is emailed to you and you have to click and navigate, will you consume as much? The answer is no. There’s too much friction.

There’s too many steps. Another thing to consider is that your prime demographic, the folks that are the most affluent who are the least likely to paint the house themselves, are folks that are 60, 70, and 80 years old. They still love consuming printed content. And while email is getting harder and harder to deliver and open rates continue to go down and down, and text messages are not far behind them.

The mail gets read. I’ll tell you a quick story. I was at a wedding and my sister-in-law was getting married, and my daughter at the time was about four or five years old, and I watched her out in the dance floor and she is dancing with a lady that I recognize. In my mind, I think, “Here’s somebody that’s a member of the family.

I’ve probably met her multiple times.” And so, I immediately felt at ease with her, with my daughter. She came up and gave me a smile. I felt like I knew the lady. Well, who was she? You wouldn’t think it, uh but she was a Mary Kay representative. Somehow, my sister-in-law had talked my wife into selling Mary Kay, and we really didn’t sell any Mary Kay.

We just bought Mary Kay and kept Mary Kay at the house. I think she did it to make her sister feel good. And so, the reason I recognized this lady is because I always check the mailbox, and she had a little, very simple, plain as it could be, black and white newsletter, and it came to my house each and every month, and I would see the lady’s face on it.

And because I saw that face over and over again, I had this sense of trust and familiarity that was completely manufactured. I had never met the lady. And so, mediums are mediums. If you think about your favorite author, if you think about your favorite talk show host, uh your favorite TV host, you’ve never met the people, but you have seen them.

If you have read books, you have read about them, and so you feel like you know them. You may even want to meet them. Even watching videos like this with me, it does the same thing. And so, I’m here to tell you, if you do nothing else with your marketing budget, first, invest in mailed and email newsletters that are consistent.

But, the content really matters. It can’t be paint, paint, paint. It can’t be discount, discount, discount. It can’t be you treating your clients like a human ATM machine. There’s a specific content mix that works in newsletters. We’ll talk about that in another video. And in fact, most of the content doesn’t need to have anything to do with painting, but rather providing helpful information and establishing a personal connection between the owner, and the staff, and the client.

So, does mail still work? Absolutely, and in fact, it’s working better every day. I’m Brandon Lewis, The Painters Academy. If you have questions about marketing to your list, email me brandon@paintersacademy.com. That’s brandon@paintersacademy.com. You can also visit our website, paintersacademy.com, to download one of our many free reports. Talk to your clients. They will refer, they will repeat, and you will get further along faster in your painting business.