Seven Tips To Make Postcard Marketing Work For You

So you’ve figured out that direct mail postcards can make an excellent addition to your marketing mix. You’ve learned postcard marketing is affordable, versatile, proven and easy to measure. But you also need to consider that to maximize effectiveness, direct mail postcard campaigns need to be optimized. So to help you ensure you get the most bang from your postcard marketing spend, here’s seven tips that will help you make your campaign work for you.

1. Think small – You can’t put a PowerPoint on a postcard. At its biggest the front and back panels of a postcard are only 5 x 5 inches. So don’t try to make yours a full sales presentation. Just select one or two benefits you think your prospects will find most compelling. But do add a “call-to-action” – where they can go for more information such as a website and where you can make the sale. (Insert graphic postcard example)
2. Think big – Because they’re small, you can mail postcards for as little as one-third the cost of First Class mail. So you can afford to think of a bigger distribution than you would for flyers and other types of direct mail. With the speed of modern-day postcard marketing and printing technologies at your disposal, you can send out thousands of postcards overnight.
3. Smarten up your mailing list – Postcard marketing firms can groom your mailing list, helping you better target prospects that are most likely to become new customers. Or, if you don’t have one, they can create a list for you, based on the gender, age, income, location and other demographics of your most-likely-to-buy prospects. Even better, at least one postcard marketing firm, AmazingMail.com, can take your mailing list of prospects and clone it. Digging into consumer and business databases, the firm can produce a much bigger “look alike” list of your best customers. (Link to AM home, and AmazingProspects page)
4. Reinforce with other media – A postcard’s call-to-action can direct your prospect to a personalized web landing page, or PURL as it’s known. That’s where you can capture (with the prospect’s permission, of course) the prospect’s email and cell phone number. Next step, refine your call-to-action e.g. “make an appointment to see us”. Then send out unobtrusive but helpful reminders of that appointment by email or text messaging that shows up on the cell phone. (Insert graphic Purl example)
5. Keep your mailing lists healthy – First make sure your customer and prospect lists are up to date. Check internally with all who use the list to make sure postal and email addresses in particular are accurate. As you add new prospects, keep refining the lists and your rates of return will rise. Unrefined lists may generate a return rate of only 1% or 2% but a list which is truly targeted on your best prospects, with repeat mailings, can go as high as 20%.
6. Measure your ROI – Once the campaign is over and the new customers are in the door, pull out your receipts and write down what the postcard marketing campaign cost you, all in, e.g $1,995. Then total up the number of your new customers, e.g. 52. Next make a hard-nosed estimate of what that customer means to you in terms of annual sales, e.g . $325. Multiply your new customers by that estimate e.g 52 x $325 = $16,900 – which, in this example, gives you a return on investment for you campaign of a whopping 847%! Not an imaginary or uncommon result, but the actual ROI of a very happy AmazingMail customer.
7. Think again – Resist the temptation in these penny-pinching times to shift your campaigns entirely to digital media. As the British say about spending their money unwisely, such a move would be penny wise and pound (£) foolish. Studies undertaken by the likes of the Winterberry Group since the onset of the recession show that: “Though some marketers shifted mail spending to digital media as a lower-cost alternative to their traditional campaigns, most have found that online channels demonstrate greater value as a complement to direct mail applications, reinforcing the value of integrated programs.” (Link to Winterberry Group site)

(Stephen Barrón is Director of Business Development for AmazingMail.com, Inc., and has more than 20 years of direct marketing experience. AmazingMail’s automated, multi-channel direct marketing platform, AmazingCampaigns, delivers text-to-print, text-to-mobile, digital direct mail, email and personalized Web page (PURLs) campaigns.)