As I continue to grow my fan base, I suspect many of the people likely to be interested in my music, and many Classical music fans in general, will be somewhat older (40+). I have received polite expressions of concern in the past from older fans who may be less tech-savvy than all of us, and for whom even a simple email autoresponder series may be a barrier to entry. One supporter politely explained how it took her two weeks to regain access to her PayPal account (previously registered in a now-defunct bank account) to purchase my digital album, while another older couple expressed sincere interest in the work but asked for a CD in the mail, adding that "Dave hates to buy stuff online." In previous years with Kickstarter campaigns, I have faced similar polite expressions of confusion and frustration from well-meaning older users.

I remember learning that one of the first rules in business is don't try to change your customer. With this in mind, am I crazy to consider starting a "snail mail" autoresponder series?

Obviously this entails more financial risk than email autoresponder series, but perhaps not to an impossible extent. A CD single in a sleeve for the first autoresponder might be $1-2, depending. 6 subsequent mailed letters (including postage) will cost roughly $3.00 total, if my math is correct. If I ask for $10 for my album (payable as a check in the mail), a return of $10 for a $5 investment is not a bad ROI.

Obviously I can't count on every subscriber buying my CD, but I wonder if a fringe benefit of using snail mail might be higher conversion rates. Perhaps people will be more responsive to the obvious effort and investment required to send 6 letters by mail, as opposed to 6 emails. Additionally, many older people who may be suspicious of Internet purchases should be perfectly comfortable with paying by mail with a check, and many for whom mp3's are a foreign concept may have well-stocked record and CD collections and are more comfortable listening to recorded music on these formats.

Right now my biggest question is finding a tidy way to collect snail mail addresses. I currently use MailChimp for my email autoresponder series and am designing a sign up box with spaces for snail mail info. I have also recently discovered postable.com which offers similar snail mail collecting services. There may be some more potential pitfalls to consider but I look forward to testing this idea soon.

Has anyone ever tried a snail mail campaign before? Anyone find that people are more or less likely to give out their snail mail addresses versus their email addresses?

Thanks for any thoughts.

Ezra