In the midst of Superbowl on Sunday Domino’s Pizza delivered more than 900,000 pizzas. Map technology was instrumental in. How can 60,000 pizza restaurants offering 3 billion pizzas a year be competitive in an industry where the reputation and revenue are dependent on “fast and hot, delivered right to your door?” Global Positioning System (GPS) technologywhat technologies made it possible to create up to date maps!

Here’s how you can make use of this amazing invention to boost your direct mail’s effectiveness, even when you’re only operating one store that has local customers.

GPS might be mapping out of space However, the desktop mapping technology is an “weapon that can cause massive destruction” for those who are competing with marketers. You can look at your database information and detect patterns that have an element of geography. For businesses that sell services and retailers this translates to “Which places or areas do I have the best position to provide my customers with the best service?”

Retailers usually serve an area of trade that extends from about 10 miles. Service firms prefer to create “routes” to make the most of the amount of time they travel. By seeing a visual of your customer data, it’s easy to see where you should bulk up your marketing efforts and where you should scale back–neighborhood by neighborhood–instead of by zip code, which is the way most companies think of their target area.

Instead of sending mail to “everyone within a 3 mile distance,” marketers can use mapping to examine geographical trade areas on an even finer scale including routes of carriers, zip+4’s, as well Census Block Groups, in order to track the return on investment. Remove areas that are not served which will reduce the cost of advertising and improve the results!

Future mailings could thwart weaker or less responsive neighborhoods and increase the amount of mail to “like” regions with a demographic profile which will result in a mailer’s goal: less mail pieces, greater outcomes. You can also apply demographic information such as home values and income, business population and so on. on the newly-mapped areas to provide another layer of insight.

Competitive Analysis

Mapping can also be a tool to analyze competitive trends. By plotting your store and the stores of your competition, and after which you can analyze the markets’ income, age and zip code penetration and so on. There are some truths that can help you develop an offensive marketing strategy , or better choice of site.

Mapping is a useful tool even if the sole marketing resource is a customer’s list of addresses and names but without transactions (purchasing) data or any other information, since crucial geographic data can be added and then analysed. Chain stores and franchisors rely on mapping technology in order to define areas of operation and to drive customers to their destinations based on natural and artificial barriers (highways bridges, rivers and bridges.). Marketing professionals can increase “inquiry to close” rates, schedule sales calls more efficiently and realign their sales territories. They can also assess the sales force’s activities.

Mapping projects can be completed “in-house” by a relatively affordable software purchase of $300 to $400 or they can be contracted out for more advanced results that connect back to databases or spreadsheets data for continuous analysis. This could cost between $50 and $2,500. If your company serves pizzas or runs an extensive dealer network that includes 1,000 HVAC techs, the mapping process could give a visual element to data analysis, which is usually more readable than graphs and spreadsheets.