Why Use Yodel for Local Message Sending?
Yodel offers a very unique method for sending your messages to local audiences. You don't have to build your own contact list or buy a mailing list. All you have to do is select an area or multiple areas on a map, craft your message, and send it out!
Yodel is still in limited release so not all geographic locations are supported at this time. We'll be rolling it out to more locations as quickly as we can. There are additional known limitations mentioned in our Disclaimers and Terms of Purchase.
How Yodel Works
The core of Yodel's process is making it easy to send messages to small geographic areas. This can be a few specific addresses, a city block, a neighborhood, addresses surrounding points of interest or routes, or larger areas like towns, cities, counties, or parishes.
Yodel is still a very new service, so a key part of making things work initially is how we'll send your message to known street addresses by default. This is how we can send your message out without the need of having a mailing list.
As recipients receive messages, they have the option of creating a free Yodel account so that they can gain some benefits of the system as well. They can choose to receive messages via postcard, email, or SMS text.
Creating Your Message
There are several simple styles for setting up your messages in Yodel. All are built to transition well between postcard, email, and SMS text sending methods.
You'll give your message a name and subject line. Create a short-form textual message with basic formatting that you want to send to your audience. You can upload an image or create a map-based image.
The target date is how you tell Yodel when you'd like recipients to receive your message. This acts as our goal delivery date, but it is impossible to guarantee that all recipients will receive the message on the exact same day. The printing and mailing process requires some lead time to accommodate, and we attempt to estimate deliveries to match your selected target date.
Sending Your Message to a Localized Audience
You have the option of sending messages as your own individual account (using your real name), or you can set up a sending group to send as a named organization (optionally including your real name or not).
Selecting one or more audiences for your message is pretty easy. The best method is to draw your area on a map and give it a name (receivers will never see the name). You can also load in specific addresses. All of these audiences get saved in a list for future use. Per message, you can choose to send to all addresses or limit to residential or business locations.
You can also include your primary address, if you'd like to get a copy of the message yourself.
What Does it Cost?
There are two factors that drive the cost of your final message send:
The number of recipients in your audience.
The style of message selected.
While you are making these selections, an estimated cost will be displayed on screen. However, it is important to understand that this is still an estimate and may not be the final price.
As your selected target date approaches, you will receive notification that the message is being prepared for printing and sending. At this time, the final audience list will be generated and an exact cost provided. You will need to approve the final cost before Yodel will continue the process of printing and sending.
Get Feedback & Analytics
Another advantage of using Yodel for your local area messaging is that receivers have the ability to react and respond to you, regardless of the method in which they received the message. Whether they received the default postcard or set their preference to receive via email or SMS text, they can use their own account to like, dislike, or type up a short reply back to you. By default these responses are anonymous, but a receiver can choose to include their name or contact information in the text of a reply.
Yodel also provides some stats and analytics for your message sends. After the message has been delivered, you'll see an additional tab on the message details screen that will provide a dashboard report that you can review.
How Does Yodel Compare to Other Options?
There are many ways to get your message out to your audiences. You can use standard local advertising options, email marketing, online ads, social media, broadcast news, newspapers, town hall meetings, or even local signage.
Each has their pros and cons, but Yodel's advantages are its quick-and-easy online access, targeted local audiences (drawn on a map) that don't rely on an existing mailing list, and its ability to be as small of an audience as you need (paying per recipient).
We hope you'll find our service a valuable addition to your local marketing and advertising plans.