Customize Postcards for Different Customers

Many businesses have discovered that the use of direct-mail postcards to advertise their services is a reliable way to encourage repeat customers and attract new business. When beginning any direct-mail marketing campaign, it is important to first consider exactly what audience you are trying to reach. Every specific audience, or customer segment, is different, and therefore requires a customized message that will appeal directly to them. Here are a few tips for customizing postcard mailers for different customer segments:

Understanding customer segments

A customer segment is a group of individuals who have common demographics, goals, necessities and desires. There are many attributes used to define a customer segment, including location, gender, age, income, occupation, language and religion. A well-defined customer segment will give your company a reliable list of individuals who are likely to possess similar needs. This gives businesses a competitive edge in marketing a very specific, customized message.

Know your customer

Knowing your customer segment is the best way to create a highly targeted direct-mail postcard campaign. Your postcard should strive to appeal to your segment's motivations. What does your segment value? What are they trying to achieve? Most importantly, what problems do they have, and how can you solve them? Determine what it is that your customer segment wants, and then customize the message on your direct-mail postcard to cater to that desire. If you cannot find a problem to solve for a particular segment, create a problem they don't know that they have and offer a solution to it.

Look to the past

The goal of market research is to better understand the needs of a particular customer segment. What products and services have they purchased in the past, and more importantly, what will they buy in the future? One of the best ways to connect with your prospects is to wholly understand what they're trying to achieve.

Marketing to different segments

One of the great things about direct-mail postcard marketing is that you can market the same promotion to different customer segments. Make sure you've researched and defined your segments and that they are different enough to justify the creation of separate postcards. An insurance company, for instance, might be offering a 10 percent discount promotion. If one of their defined customer segments is middle-aged individuals, then their direct-mail postcards will likely focus on long-term care insurance, home owner's insurance and other services that this segment is likely to need. Another defined customer segment could be college-aged students, who are more likely to purchase auto insurance or renter's insurance. In this manner, the same 10 percent off promotion is successfully marketed to two different customer segments.

Design changes

When you have two or more different customer segments, your direct-mail postcards should have distinctly different copy and images carefully chosen to connect with each segment. Different images and colors will appeal to different segments, and targeted copy is always based on a well-defined audience. If your budget doesn't provide room for several different designs, you can try using a neutral design and changing your headline and copy; however, this could result in a lower response rate than if you mailed completely different postcards to each segment. Life moves at a very fast pace in today's market. For any advertisement to be effective it must look great, explain the benefits the product or service has to offer to the customer, and it must have a specific appeal to the individual prospect. Customizing postcard mailers for different customer segments is much more effective than simply blanketing a broad spectrum with the same campaign, and it can dramatically increase response rates and sales conversions.