Physical mail examples

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Adventure Temple Trail
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Physical mail examples

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

Many threads in this board's history have recommended that tournament hosts use physical mailers whenever possible to extend the reach of their contacts and expand their fields. Does anyone have examples of mailers that they have sent out about their tournaments in the recent past? If folks are willing to share, prospective users of physical mail in the future can have models to work off of in creating their own invites.
Matt Jackson
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Amizda Calyx
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Re: Physical mail examples

Post by Amizda Calyx »

This was one of the letters I sent out in mid-September (using my alias "Mike Bentley"...). It's pretty skeletal and is essentially a modified template letter, but it has the necessary information.
http://pastie.org/private/fkaazggwf4ikhxyuqqyfq
Joelle Smart
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Cody
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Re: Physical mail examples

Post by Cody »

Our mailer was targeted at mostly only-VHSL schools, so it may not be applicable to other areas.
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vcu-mailer.pdf
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Cody Voight, VCU ’14.
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jonpin
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Re: Physical mail examples

Post by jonpin »

We've sent letters advertising our middle school tournament to every middle school in Bergen County, every known academic team in North Jersey, and every team that has ever attended our tournament in the past. Because the local format is speed checks and one-part bonuses (or at least it was a decade ago, and I doubt it's gotten better), I include one page of NAQT tossups and one page of bonuses so teams have some idea what they're getting into. A copy of last year's letter is in this post.
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Grace
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Re: Physical mail examples

Post by Grace »

Has physically mailing invitations drawn in a noticeable number of new teams to tournaments?
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cchiego
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Re: Physical mail examples

Post by cchiego »

It depends on the region. It wasn't very successful in Southern California when we tried it, but it did bring a couple of new teams immediately to tournaments (out of 60 or so mailed) and, perhaps as importantly, put quiz bowl on the radar at a few schools so when we contacted them in the future they recognized what it was. On the other hand, I know of plenty of tournaments in the South who rely almost entirely on paper invites year after year and have little online presence that seem to draw huge fields of teams.

Anything you can do to get the info out and possibly across the desk of someone who can make it happen seems worthwhile to me.

What we're doing in the Philly region is designing a series of letters and emails targeted to the audience. I'll post some once Ben and I have finalized them, but in general we're trying to keep them short but including links to more info should people be interested.
Chris C.
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Re: Physical mail examples

Post by Stained Diviner »

Here is the letter IHSSBCA used last year for our kickoffs. Tournaments around here are able to increase participation by sending snail mail. On the other hand, that is becoming less important each year, and it may depend on your audience. Physical mail is more likely to end up in the right place if you are not certain who the current coach is.
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kickoffletter.pdf
(52.29 KiB) Downloaded 218 times
David Reinstein
Head Writer and Editor for Scobol Solo, Masonics, and IESA; TD for Scobol Solo and Reinstein Varsity; IHSSBCA Board Member; IHSSBCA Chair (2004-2014); PACE President (2016-2018)
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Re: Physical mail examples

Post by Northern Central Railway »

Attached is the invite letter I used for the Mountain Lakes Invitational last year. Matt Weiner and Stephen Fontenot were helpful resources in terms of writing an effective invite letter. Everyone's mileage may vary, but to me it seemed like the effectiveness manifested itself in that teams who had either never played NAQT or not played NAQT in a long time but still played some kind of local format (in NJ, almost every county has their own league using varyingly bad formats) that would have otherwise not known the tournament existed in the first place came to the tournament as a result of the snail mail invite.
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General Invite.docx
(16.79 KiB) Downloaded 201 times
Andrew Ibendahl
Nashville (IL) '04
DePauw '08
Former Coach, Mountain Lakes (NJ)
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