We have used it when out on storm recovery and have done it two ways.
First was to do a winshield survey of the areas we targeted through GIS, Aerial photography and storm damage reports.
The survey identified addresses with tree issues and we recorded the address. From that we went to the Grand List in either the town or county and obtained ownership info. that led to several mailings over a couple months. We found that after about 8 weeks we'd get about a 5% response rate.
The other method we used was to use GIS information to identify lots that contained trees. From there we gathered owner information and did the same multiple mailings procedure. Since we were less targeted on our addresses we found about a 2% response rate.
We used in-house designed post cards for the campaign to a) save money b)make sure that our ad could be seen without having to be opened and c) the recipient could put it on the bulletin board or fridge for future reference.
We continued to get calls for over a year after we stopped mailing to those areas too.
We've had several "bundled" direct mail outfits approach us and despite all thier fancy demographic claims, they still couldn't predict more than a 1/2% response rate. We have yet to look seriously at such a program again.
