- Product mailings are staged over time in order to avoid saturating all media outlets at one time. It is 411’s belief, based on many years of experience in providing products for review by the various media outlets, that information generated through smaller staged mailings preceding the larger mailings enhances the success of the later larger mailings thereby continuing to build a continually increasing “awareness wave.”
- The first mailing is to trade journals and Library publications as well as various small, but important, distribution outlets. This is the smallest mailing and serves to alert the industry that a new product is available.
- Usually, about two or three weeks following the initial mailing, a follow-up mailing of from 90 to 120 copies of the DVD is made. The names selected to receive this mailing are considered the most likely to respond immediately to the product with articles, reviews, notices and perhaps interviews for blogs, TV or radio broadcasts.
- This mailing initiates the subsequent follow-up process designed to keep each product recipient aware that what he/she has just received is an important new product and clearly worth writing about.
- Phone, email, texts and other communication methods are utilized depending on which method of communication the individual writer prefers. This knowledge regarding communication preferences peculiar to the various media outlets and writers is a by-
product of the many years 411 Video Information has maintained meaningful, personal contact with members of the media. - Another advantage that results from this personal contact is that products represented by 411 Video Information are always considered quality products, and as such unsolicited requests from the various media outlets (a direct result of the “awareness wave”) for products to include in yearly or seasonal roundups.
- Future mailings follow as appropriate.
- The third mailing is usually around 200 plus units to the balance of the selected media universe. This also requires extensive follow-up to ensure that the product is kept in the forefront of a given journalist’s cue, and to remind each recipient that the artist is available for interview and personal appearance on an as required basis. Several journalists also have radio and web outlets where personal interviews are in demand.