Evolution of an Enterprise, Chapter 8: Air Mail

Josh Somers and Binh Uebinger aren’t looking for a huge return from their first professional marketing effort. Just a 1 percent return would be gravy.

The duo, owners of aircraft-detailing company Voyager Industries LLC, is planning to mail nearly 800 postcards to prospective clients within 200 miles of Springfield by the end of April. The postcards will feature the Voyager logo and some information about its services. The cards aren’t complex – just a way to get Voyager’s name known.

“We can’t rely on word-of-mouth any longer,” Somers said. “We’re not going to call 800 certified pilots, but we will take the time to send them information to let them know that we’re here.”

The mailings, including postage, are expected to cost Somers and Uebinger about $350, which could be easily recouped with just one job. If just 1 percent of the postcards bring in new clients, thousands of dollars in new revenues could be coming their way. The Voyager owners are affixing postage and addresses themselves to save money.

Somers and Uebinger already have made business cards and flyers on their home computers, but this is their first professional marketing effort. They hired Jesse Kuhn of New York-based Rawtoastdesign for graphics work, and Kuhn, a childhood friend of Uebinger’s from St. Charles, will outsource printing. Kuhn, a Missouri State University graduate, already has a Springfield business connection in Creative 3 LLC, a children’s book publishing partnership with Terri Johnson and Sherry Cook. Creative 3 publishes Quirkles, for which Kuhn is illustrator.

Somers and Uebinger say the timing is right to embark on their first mass-mailing campaign. Spring and summer are expected to be their busiest times of year, and they want to take full advantage, Somers said.

“The bugs are coming back out,” Somers said. “Even if you don’t want us cleaning your plane all the time, (we’ll) get it ready to maintain for the summer.”

Voyager has about five regular clients, but Somers and Uebinger are expecting to quadruple that number during the next 90 days because of their marketing efforts and the warmer weather.

They’ll keep hitting their target market with postcard mailings in about another 30 days. Then, they may scale back to quarterly mailings depending on the amount of success they have with the first couple rounds, Uebinger said.

Somers said they dug up pilot contact information from Federal Aviation Administration data, but the men are hoping to gain access to an even greater pool of potential customers. Somers and Uebinger joined Frederick, Md.-based Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, and they would like to get access to the list of AOPA’s roughly 4,000 members in Missouri, Uebinger said.