Week 10: Marketing...Continued

Opulent Diaries Picture Rozinas Diary .jpeg

Who would've thought that envelopes were such a bummer? I expected to pick these up from my local stationers and they didn't stock the ones I was after. I thought okay not a problem, i’ll just pick them up from the Tesco/Post Office on the way back from work. They didn't stock them either! This is getting a bit ridiculous now. Surely WHSmiths will, but you guessed it….nope. Wilko, Poundland and Amazon later I decided to customise my own. Just in case you were wondering I was after coloured envelopes. This is the current industry practice as there is a firm belief that these standout and therefore more of a chance of being opened. Then an epiphany; why use these at all? If everyone’s doing these then surely the landlords will be sick of them. I thought of gold colored envelopes as this is one of the colours of my branding but they reminded me of wedding invitations so I scrapped them. Imagine the horror to the landlord when he opens with a smile thinking its a party invite only to discover a letter with my ugly mug plastered all over it. He/she will definitely not relinquish their property! 

In the end I settled for custom branding so it was back to Helloprint uploading my artwork. I chose one of my iconic pictures, the image of my yacht on the envelope as (a) it was very fancy and stood out and (b) it was all over my website as part of the overall brand. So one can cross reference the two. I placed my order which will take 1 week, my initial thought….7 days!! I can’t wait that long. To make matters worse they printed my yacht upside down. I’m so glad I noticed that on my verification email. You see, I got all the time consuming elements done way ahead of time, something as small as the envelope came to bite me, who’ could've known. Moral of the story no matter how much you try, how much you think you're doing the right thing……’IT’ will find you, and there is no escaping that. Anyway, envelopes arrived, letters were signed, dated and sealed with a kiss (Not). Postage sorted for the not so local listings. 

Then finally the hand delivery of the remainder of the letters (60 approx). I grossly underestimated this task. It took me an entire week (few hours in the evening/week-nights) to get the mail out. All this had to be done after my usual day job and 10pm was the cut-off in case any of the landlords caught me dropping off the letters so late. I failed to factor in time, fuel and effort for the sake of saving a few lousy bucks. You think what is in a postage stamp but a single stamp is 70p X 100 and you do the math. Which on the surface doesn’t seem too bad but factor in print, paper, stationery etc the continuation of this campaign every 6-8 weeks and it sure adds up and on the scale of 1-10 in terms of effort I will give it 9.5. Why not 10? Because I am one of those annoying people that never gives out a 10. What you save in stamps you soon make up for in terms of fuel, exhaustion and humiliation. Now, my sales skills aren't too bad but I didn't like the idea of having to explain myself to the owner/occupier why I am posting a document in this hour of the night. Team opulent were sneaking around the bushes and waiting for the lights to go out then run and post the letters (oh and don’t get caught out by the dog barking). Because even though the landlord had called it a night their loyal friend was very much awake behind the fence waiting to give you a heart attack. Might I make you aware you will also lose some of your material in mud/puddles as during the great escape with a dog on your trail your Olympian gene which you never knew you had will be activated. So always factor in collateral damage and have some extras printed!