The Best Direct Mail Strategies for Painting Contractors

Posted by Emily Howard | Tue, Jan 28, 2025

 The Best Direct Mail Strategies for Painting Contractors

Since we’ve focused on Neigh­bor­hood Dom­i­na­tion with offline ini­tia­tives this month, I thought our cov­er­age would­n’t be com­plete with­out the wis­dom from our tal­ent­ed part­ners at The Best Post­cards on stel­lar strate­gies and big trends for 2025

Ash­ley Bus­sard, part­ner at The Best Post­cards, walked me through how data-dri­ven tech­niques and advanced track­ing have evolved in direct mail, mak­ing it an even more effec­tive mar­ket­ing vehi­cle for paint­ing con­trac­tors. She shared key strate­gies uti­lized by home ser­vice indus­try pros and dis­cussed how their ser­vices have grown to meet a new landscape.

Tar­get Audience

For one thing, tar­get­ing is real­ly impor­tant. Make sure you’re mail­ing to the right peo­ple,” said Bus­sard. If you don’t have a data whiz on staff, don’t wor­ry, The Best Post­cards has a data ana­lyt­ics team who can tell you a ton about your customers. 

When we are intro­duced to a new com­pa­ny, we get a cus­tomer list from them. Our data depart­ment can then cre­ate a demo­graph­ics report that includes how much mon­ey their aver­age client makes, the aver­age val­ue of the homes they paint, etc. We also build a heat map which is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the exact car­ri­er routes you should tar­get based on the num­ber of jobs that you’ve done on any giv­en route.” 

Go Hyper-Local

If you have vehi­cle wraps and yard signs, then chances are the neigh­bors of your cus­tomers have seen your logo (anoth­er rea­son to keep the job site clean and road rage at home). By going hyper-local you can build on all those brand impres­sions with direct mail deliv­ered to the neigh­bor­hoods you’ve been work­ing with. This also builds on the trust that you’ve already built with their neigh­bors,” says Bussard. 

Mul­ti­ple Response Options and Tracking

You have the space, so use it wise­ly. Be sure to include mul­ti­ple response options: phone num­ber, web­site, and even throw in a QR code to give prospects even faster access. QR codes to spe­cial­ly cre­at­ed land­ing pages or microsites allow you to track direct respons­es from the mailer.

If you don’t want to go through all the work of cre­at­ing a track­able place to send your new-found clients, The Best Post­cards can still give you a pret­ty sol­id idea of how many of your new cus­tomers were in the direct mail campaign. 

We know the mail piece is more often than not guid­ing the recip­i­ent to the inter­net, and not every­one is going to enter a track­ing num­ber. For years we noticed that Google was get­ting a lot of cred­it for peo­ple who were react­ing to direct mail pieces, so we decid­ed to use our data tech­niques to cre­ate bet­ter tracking.” 

Today you can send a list of your new cus­tomers back to The Best Post­cards and they will scrub it against your send lists to tell you which of the new cus­tomers received a mail­er, how many mail­ers, and what mail­er they received. Now you have data!

Fre­quen­cy

While we still see direct response, direct mail is a brand­ing exer­cise. It’s meant to make you a house­hold name, and that’s done with fre­quen­cy,” says Bus­sard. If you have the choice between a sin­gle expen­sive spend and mul­ti­ple inex­pen­sive spends — go with frequency. 

While direct mail cer­tain­ly won’t be your only mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy this year, it presents a unique and valu­able oppor­tu­ni­ty. Bus­sard says, Our goal isn’t that a home­own­er search­es for painter near me’. We want our cus­tomers to be brand­ed so well that cus­tomers search for them by name.” 

To learn more about The Best Post­cards, vis­it www​.thebest​post​cards​.com.

About Emily Howard

Emily has always been passionate about the trades and joins us after 15 years as editor-in-chief at American Painting Contractor. Last year, she traded her full-time desk job to explore a career in farming. Today, she balances her two passions by farming fresh veggies at a small farm in the summer and creating content and marketing strategies for the painting industry in the winter. Emily is dedicated to clean data, smooth systems, and telling the stories of the painting industry.

When she isn’t working at a desk or in a field, she enjoys Colorado life with her two dogs and fiancé: hiking, snowboarding, tending her plants, and making pottery.

     
   
       

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