Last Thursday I put our house up for sale the following Wednesday, I received a postcard from an Irish Transport and removal firm called Libra Trans giving details of their service and encouraging us to call for a free estimate.

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.

Whilst the postcard is good there is certainly room for improvement. In particular the call to action could be strengthened. Currently it just says visit our website or call for a free quote. On the whole when I see a firm say they provide a free quote it doesn't really impress me. So you won't charge me to tell me your prices how very nice of you!

The website that Libratrans has lets them down - there were errors on the page when I viewed it in Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, and the quotation request form that is pretty crucial to their operation would not load. It is kind of disappointing to think of all the leads that they must so nearly have generated but then lost by having a website that does not do the job for them.

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.

An even stronger offer might have been to offer something of practical use to people moving house, like 3 free packaging flat pack boxes. Again this would have helped to focus in and identify people who are in need of the service. It would also facilitate contact between the company and the prospect and pain them in a good light. The cost to do this would be fairly low and I'm sure that if it was implemented the conversion rate that Libratrans currently has could be improved.

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.