Postcards have a personal feel to them. Remember the first thing you did when you arrived at your vacation destination? Scan the gift shop for the best postcards. The message on each was a variation of “Wish you were here!” Well, marketing postcards aren’t that different – you wish the prospect was there with you at your store, ready to buy your products!
Postcard mailing campaigns work in much the same way. You’re trying to get the prospect to meet you face-to-face, or on your Web site. Postcards are sent out to generate leads on sales, not to close sales.
To get prospects to your door, you need to follow a few simple tips. Here are some top tips of how to run a successful postcard marketing campaign:
Don’t overcomplicate things
Just because you have a ton of font and color options available in your postcard designing software, like Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress, doesn’t mean you need to showcase all of them on your postcards! It’s tempting to mix it up and use all your cool fonts in one postcard, but you can resist! And you should resist. If your postcard looks complicated, no one will want to read it. You should treat your postcard like a billboard – you only have a few seconds to make an impression. The easiest thing to read in a few seconds is something with a simple design and a simple font.
Use the postcard as a personal message from you to the consumer
As noted in the introduction, postcards have long been a personal form of communication. Use this to your advantage and create personal messages to a niche group of your target market. Send out postcards that say to visit your location on Tibbs Street to those who live within a five-mile radius of that location. Send a different postcard to people that live near another location. You can also personalize it by scanning a signature of the president or whoever the postcard is from and copying it onto the bottom of each postcard. Add whatever touches you can to make it look personal.
Use the postcard as a way to track its own effectiveness
If you include a coupon on your postcard, make sure that you require customers to bring the postcard back in to redeem the coupon. Make the entire postcard the coupon, not just a small cutout. Most people won’t take the time to cut it anyway, and that way they have to keep your entire postcard, and therefore entire message, with them as they make their way from their house to your store. Then you can collect the postcards and compare how many you receive back from the number you sent out to gauge its effectiveness.
Use the same slogan as you do on the rest of your marketing materials
Whether you’re doing some business card printing, postcard printing, or brochure printing, all your marketing pieces should have the same key slogan on it somewhere. This creates memorability by repetition. You should also hold all your marketing materials together with the same look and feel to each one to let people know they are working with a consistent company.
Got a Question? Ask.
Ask the community a question about this article:
Q&A Powered by:
Latest Printing Articles
Things to Plan Well in Advance for
By: Kate | 18/11/2008
I’ve just come off writing a series of articles talking about how planning ahead might cause you trouble if you aren’t willing to keep an open mind, so now I’m going to focus instead on why you should still plan ahead no matter what.
How You Frame Your Offer
By: Colleen Davis | 18/11/2008
This isn’t really about what exactly it is that you’re offering, but more about the way you present your offer. A lot of marketing is centered on a company’s ability to display their offers in a way that appeals to their customers.
How to Create Short But Powerful Ad Copies Through Custom Printing
By: Maureen Pelayo | 17/11/2008
There may be nothing wrong with what you are doing. But certainly you are lacking on some things. If you are utilizing the print medium for your ads, you can try custom printing for a change. This is to cut yourself out from everybody else, to give your image a boost and so that people can finally notice you.
Design Postcards – Designing Your Marketing Attitude
By: Maureen Pelayo | 17/11/2008
You must dwell enough time and thoughts in any advents with regards to this. This includes how to design postcards, how to make effective ad copies and other things that you have to decide on as you utilize different tools.
The Endless Possibilities With Digital Poster Printing
By: Maureen Pelayo | 17/11/2008
Do you own a small shop? Do not think that because your place is small, you cannot opt for bigger adverting means like digital poster printing. This can serve you in many ways than you may have originally planned.
Wholesale Printing – Leading Your Business to the Right Opportunities
By: Maureen Pelayo | 17/11/2008
Wholesale printing gives you an opportunity to take your chance in advertising to a larger crowd. This is mainly because this is affordable, so you will not think twice about taking the plunge.
The Larger Your Audience the More Unfocused Your Message
By: Kaitlyn Miller | 17/11/2008
As size increases so does diversity. Every state is going to have something unique about it. Every major city is going to have those specific traits unique only to them. Every section of that very city is going to have more and more variations
Place Your Product Into a Person’s Life
By: Kaitlyn Miller | 17/11/2008
When I look at a product I’m not immediately thinking to myself about how I might make use out of it. Typically I just see the product, see what it does, and that’s it. Yes, I’m sure that product could change my life
More from Kaye Z. Marks
Know When to Avoid Generic Advertising
By: Kaye Z. Marks | 18/11/2008 | Advertising
Generic advertising is any type of advertising that isn’t specific to an occasion. This is going to normally be advertising meant to just mention the company name and that the company exists. Maybe it says the company is good at something specific, but the message can work in any circumstance.
Updating Your Image
By: Kaye Z. Marks | 17/11/2008 | Graphic Design
Ever sat around with some friends and gone over what was popular back when you were younger? Depending on your age you might go over the tie-dye, laid back look of the sixties, the bellbottom, platform shoes look of the seventies, or maybe the techno, wildly colored hair and shoulder pads of the eighties.
Look to the Future
By: Kaye Z. Marks | 14/11/2008 | Printing
Marketing isn’t really about what’s going on in the moment. A truly effective form of marketing is going to be focused far more on the future than what is right in front of you at this moment. Your color printing should be done with the future in mind and how this is going to affect you in the long run.
Checking Out Special Offers
By: Kaye Z. Marks | 14/11/2008 | Printing
Consider this scenario: you have a list of products that you regularly sell, and each product has its specific packaging. The packaging tells people what your company name is, what the product is, and various details about the product—all the things you would expect to find on a package.
Know What to Do Between Marketing Campaigns
By: Kaye Z. Marks | 12/11/2008 | Printing
There are many companies who just look at marketing as one large campaign after another. For the biggest of the big corporations this is probably going to be accurate, because they can afford to never let up. Every major marketing push is going to flow smoothly with the next big, expensive marketing.
Research is Only as Good as How You Use it
By: Kaye Z. Marks | 10/11/2008 | Home Business
Any worthwhile company is going to know that they need to do a lot of research if they want to stay around for long. When it comes to the products you make, improving the products that you currently have, the commercial printing you focus on with your advertising, and the areas that you concentrate your marketing, you need to know what people think.
Selling Your Experience
By: Kaye Z. Marks | 07/11/2008 | Printing
Experience is just as much a commodity as any other item you might sell. Each time someone hires you out to perform a service for you what they’re really hiring is your expertise in your field.
Do not Let the Competition Scare You Away
By: Kaye Z. Marks | 06/11/2008 | Graphic Design
Even if you don’t know much of anything about video games I’m guessing you’ve probably at least heard in passing the name World of Warcaft. The level of success this game has managed to achieve is something that has drawn a lot of attention of the years.
Advertising 
