Finding 'The Perfect Customer'

Finding 'The Perfect Customer'

marketing by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

A two-year-old postcard marketing business thrives by flipping around the meaning of junk mail. It's delivered almost $2 million in revenues so far.

Jim Schimpf is rubbing the stink off junk mail, one personally inscribed, glossy postcard at a time.

It's no easy task, as the common piece of traditional postal-delivered junk mail has spawned an entire industry -massive industrial shredders and full-service businesses - designed entirely to fight it. And the term junk mail, long weighed down with a negative connotation, has only been made worse by spam mail, its computer-age cousin.

But Schimpf, a 2004 Review 40 Under 40 winner, is utilizing patented software that allows junk-mail senders to almost handpick the recipient of their solicitation. The idea is to turn junk mail into a micro-targeted ad.

"Junk mail is mail that goes to the wrong set of eyes," says Schimpf. "We are going to put a custom-made message to the right set of eyes - the perfect customer."

The business for this is Opportunity Knocks, a two-year-old unit of Lakewood Ranch-based ProspectsPLUS!, a marketing company that focuses on postcards and mailings for Realtors and home-selling agencies. A ProspectsPLUS! niche is producing and sending out 'just sold' and 'just listed' cards to clients nationwide.

The marketing methods seem to be working, as both the parent company and the subsidiary have grown significantly over the last few years. ProspectsPLUS! had $7.5 million in 2006 revenues, an 88% growth over the $4 million it had in 2005. The company is projecting about $9 million in 2007 revenues.

ProspectsPLUS! has about 30 employees, not including the 12 on the Opportunity Knocks staff, and it moved its headquarters from Palmetto to a $1.1 million, 7,200-square-foot complex in a new Lakewood Ranch office park late last year.

Meanwhile, Opportunity Knocks, which Schimpf started in June 2005, is expected to pass $2 million in its own revenues by the end of the year. Revenues grew 425% last year. Schimpf says the company has a national presence, with several of its 1,000-plus clients outside Florida and eight of the dozen employees are in revenue-generating positions.

'Your new neighbor'

About three-fourths of Opportunity Knocks' current client list is made up of small-scale mom and pop-style businesses, such lawn and landscaping companies, maid services and home improvement firms. Schimpf, though, envisions a day when that client list can grow to include a bigger variety of businesses, including insurance agents, financial planners and medical practices.

The system starts by first finding the right place to send postcards. For example, a landscaping service that works on a house on one street might want to pick up customers in the same neighborhood. The owner can go to his Opportunity Knocks account, put in one address and the system, using software created by ProspectsPLUS!, will then use a pinpoint longitude and latitude search to find a specific number of homes in that area.

After the business owner sets the amount of cards he wants to send out, Opportunity Knocks takes over. Schimpf says the company prints, laminates, postmarks, labels and delivers the cards within two days of the order. Some cards are personalized, with names followed by pitches, such as "Jim, is it time to remodel?" or "John, your new neighbor just moved in" - a postcard for a new car dealership opening near a home.

Schimpf describes Opportunity Knocks as just a part of any company's marketing and advertising campaign, adding that if radio and newspaper ads were the big-picture blanket targeting an entire market, the postcards would be the micro-ad of the campaign targeting specific clients. The service has a minimum cost of $425 a month, which covers 800 postcards; there is also a one-time start up fee of $495.

"We are leveraging technology to help small businesses with their biggest challenge - to drive business prospects through the door," says Schimpf. "From a direct mail perspective, you can't do anything more than that."

Sleet and snow

Before Opportunity Knocks, Schimpf wasn't doing anything related to mailing glossy postcards. Instead, he was running several Palmetto-based health businesses, including a wellness spa and a personal training and self-defense company. The physical fitness part of the business was a cinch for Schimpf, who played football at Appalachian State University in North Carolina.

It was through those businesses that Schimpf was named a 40 under 40 recipient. And it was through the personal training side of the business that Schimpf met Jim Morton in 2001, who was then running ProspectsPLUS! in a nearby office.

Morton, who was a real estate seminar speaker in a previous career, was looking to expand the business he started in 1994 in the basement of his Las Vegas home. He believed the location-tracking software could work in markets beside real estate, but he didn't have the time to run a new division.

Schimpf, Morton says, was looking to leave the health business and had the entrepreneurial skills he was seeking. Schimpf took over from there, creating a business plan and a marketing strategy for Opportunity Knocks.

While successful so far, Schimpf is a long way off from catching his friend and mentor in terms of clients, revenue and stature. Prospects Plus, for instance, says it has over 60,000 customers - about 54,000 more than the 6,000 Opportunity Knocks has.

But Schimpf hopes that will change as more businesses realize the low-cost, pinpoint marketing he could provide through Opportunity Knocks. Not surprisingly, Schimpf cites industry awareness as his biggest challenge to growing significantly over the next few years.

"This will work with any small business looking to do targeted direct marketing," says Schimpf. "Anywhere the mail goes, we can go."

REVIEW SUMMARY

Business. Opportunity Knocks, Lakewood Ranch

Industry. Mail marketing

Key. Company helps small businesses identify a micro-targeted section of a neighborhood for advertising.

executive reading tip

Count Jim Schimpf as one of several Gulf Coast executives who use the Jim Collins book Good to Great in improving his business. Schimpf, who still regularly preaches the book's mantra - good is the enemy of great - to his dozen staff members, cites three principles from the book that he finds important:

•The best you can be: This is known as the 'Hedgehog Concept.' For Schimpf, it means focusing all of your efforts, energy and finances toward one thing you do great. "There will be times when you'll be tempted to divert," Schimpf says, "however the elite companies stay focused and simply do their 'hedgehog concept' better than anyone in the world."

• Utilize your talent: To be the best, a great leader not only has to get the people on the bus, Schimpf says he learned from the book, but he also has to get the right people in the right seats on the right bus going in the right direction. "You may have all the talent in the world," says Schimpf, "but if that talent is not leveraged in the right positions, the organization is poised for a let down."

• The virtue of patience: In the book, a flywheel is a metaphor for a business gaining momentum. After figuring out your hedgehog concept and then putting the right people on the right seats, it then takes a great amount of patience to let the concepts grow. But Schimpf says it will pay off, as with each cold call, each meeting and each new customer, he has seen his own company's flywheel start spinning.

-Mark Gordon