I can argue with it....

I don't think it applies in all circumstances. One of my businesses deals with new homeowners and every person in my area that purchases a home gets mail from us.

They get the advertisment one time. The frequency is not nearly as important as the timing in this case. We hit them when we know they are looking for our products.

We've tried multiple mailings a few times and it's never been cost effective for us.


In my custom furniture business, we build high end home offices and entertainment centers and pretty much anything custom that our customers need.

We do no advertising at all. We have a handful of contractors and designers that we work with that constantly bring us more business than we can handle.

But, the end user of our products is rarely the contractor himself. It's typically a couple with a multi-million dollar home.

Those people we want to keep around for future business and since they've often spent tens of thousands of dollars on our stuff, we can afford to do whatever it takes to let them know we want their future business.

6 months after their work is completed, we send them a $100 package from www.brownies.com with a nice little note "just checking in" to make sure our product is everything they expected it to be and to see if it needs any adjustments of fine tuning.

Even if we don't do any more work for them at that point, almost everyone calls us back to thank us for the brownies.

We make sure that when they need something else, or when they know of someone looking for something custom built, that we are unforgetable.

The chances of them going with someone else are close to zero.

So, to answer your question, I think there's a time and a place for each method of advertising but one shouldn't be compared to the other as far as effectiveness.

Jim