Direct response postcards were popular some years ago. Do you remember receiving a pack of cards in a clear or colored wrap and maybe 25 to 100 cards inside? One side was advertising, the other side was the prepaid postage image and address of the advertiser.
A good way to work with the cards, if you didn’t toss them out immediately, was to sit over a waste basket and rifle through the pack, keeping the ones you found interesting and tossing the others into the waste basket. The direct response industry said the advertiser was pleased with a 2% response. If you kept 2 or 3 cards, put your contact info on it, and mailed it, everyone was happy. The advertiser got a lead. You pursued a product or service of interest to you.
I learned about direct response cards while I was selling recruitment advertising for colleges. I sold the ads (a card), a mailing list was secured, and the specialized company would print and mail the card packs or decks. Nifty business.
Later I started a business, Golden Tennis, and got the idea of doing a card deck for the tennis industry.
[Note: I have started several businesses using my last name — Golden this, Golden that. This current effort, Golden Mean, follows this pattern. Another pattern is the total lack of success of any of the Golden enterprises! If anything they have all turned to crap — still I won’t stop.]
I was a teaching pro and knew lots of people in the industry due to national conferences and training events. I also took Golden Tennis to Atlanta for a huge annual tennis industry trade show. I was really into it. I was aware that I was stepping out on a limb trying to sell tennis products and tennis related travel into a very tight market. However, I secured a mailing list of 50,000 tennis players from a tennis association that had never, in its 100 year history, let their list go for marketing. Oh yeah, I was a helleva salesman or a really nice guy. Which ever got the job done.
I planned a quarterly mailing. I sold enough cards to pay for printing and mailing for two quarters. Just couldn’t get the deck big enough to pay myself! I worked the phones like crazy. I wanted it so badly. And here is where the Big Trip comes in.
A major target for sales were tennis resorts. I talked to many of their marketing people, and I decided to take a road trip and go door-to-door. My daughter Susi was junior high age and able to go with me.
We left Indiana and started for South Carolina. I had trained at the Van der Meer Center on Hilton Head Island. I know the people and thought this was a good place to start. From Hilton Head we headed south, catching every major tennis resort all the way to Miami! After awhile the facilities started looking all the same. Obligatory palm trees, rustic architecture, beaches, delightful club houses and fine dining.
When we finished the Miami resorts we traveled Alligator Alley to the West side of the state and started up the Gulf of Mexico coast. There were fewer resorts and our time was running out. Susi was doing a lot of reading. I was doing a lot of driving. After a stop at Saddlebrook Resort (a highpoint where I met the great Australian Davis Cup captain-coach, Harry Hopman — what a thrill to shake his hand) we decided to drive over to Disney World. It is difficult to remember our reasoning or lack of it but all we did was drive into this gigantic parking lot, make a U-turn and go back out the gate! We saw the Disney World parking lot — that was it.
It must have been that we were tired of traveling, tired of each other, just plain tired. We had gone to 50 gated resort communities and longed for downhome Indiana. The trip did not save Golden Tennis. I folded the project soon after the next and last mailing.
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An interesting adventure, well told.