First of all congratulations to Libra Trans for taking the initiative and implementing a targeted marketing campaign to a clearly defined target market, people moving and selling a house and therefore soon to be in need of a removal or transport firm. The card is well designed and does its job of catching attention. In the pile of other correspondence a colour postcard stands out.

In terms of getting the prospect to take action I thought the postcard could have been better, really all it says is visit our website or call for a free estimate. The offer of a free estimate is a bit of a cop out in my mind and is not a strong call to action. It is not like a company is going to charge you to tell you their prices now is it?

Unfortunately whilst the postcard mailer that Libratrans sent out was good their website really lets them down. When I visited I was disappointed to see that there were a number of errors on the page and the most crucial part of their website, the quote request form, was not working at all. When you think of all the trouble they have gone to in sending out the postcard mailer it is a real shame that the website lets them down so badly.

What other things could Libratrans have done to make this campaign more effective? Perhps the campaign could have been strengthened by offering a free incentive for prospects to get in touch. On their website they currently offer a checklist to prospects of things to remember when packing up the contents of a house. The content of this checklist could be reworked into a report and offered for free when prospects fill out a form on the website.

To make the offer even more appealing giving away something else of high perceived value and that would have been very useful to their target audience might have been even better. For example how about if they had offered 3 free packing boxes worth ?10? This would make people even more responsive as they would be thinking that is a good deal I think I'll get in touch. Whatever was decided Libratrans would need to test various other combinations of offer to see what got the best response.

So to conclude I think this was a good effort to generate leads in a targeted fashion. I'm not sure how they compile their list, perhaps they monitor the new properties on www.myhome.ie or maybe it is possible to buy lists of all the new properties. Or perhaps they just ask their drivers to note down all of the new for sale properties they pass.

Whichever way they do it you can bet it is nicely systemised and produces a good return on the investment. Lets face it the cost of a postcard and postage would probably be less that ?1 and the potential business could easily be ?1000 per client. It is a shame that the rest of the sales conversion process they are using falls a bit short; however even with what they have I'm sure it puts them well ahead of their competition.