Three Tricks for Profitable Postcards

Postcard printing is one of the most efficient ways to market via direct mail. The benefits of postcard marketing can be enormous. Postcards are among the cheapest marketing tools you can print, and their light weight makes them among the cheapest marketing tools to mail. Postcards can command instant attention in the mailbox and can serve a variety of purposes: to deliver offers and coupons, to be mini-catalogs and newsletters, and to persuade public opinion. No matter what your postcard purpose is, you can launch more profitable campaigns by employing the following three tricks.

1. Start with a highly targeted mailing list

Your mailing list is one of the most critical components of your postcard marketing campaigns. A good mailing list is comprised of those individuals (or companies, if you're a B2B business) who fit your best customer demographics. You can edit your mailing list based on your specific campaign, because it is possible you have more than one target demographic; however, it's important to make sure each list you employ is fine-tuned in order to achieve the highest possible return on investment. You can generate your own mailing list based on your best customer demographics at PsPrint.

2. Benefits, offer and a call to action

Creating desire is an important part of marketing, and it’s especially important when you have to command attention instantly. Your window of opportunity, otherwise known as the average human attention span for marketing mail, is narrow; so create desire by making sure the benefits of buying are presented in a powerful way. Include a time-limited offer your customers won't want to miss, and you're halfway to making your sale. Finally, tell customers what to do next with a clear and specific call to action. Should they call a number, visit you on-location or browse to your website? Be very specific about what they should do and when they should do it – as well as what reward or incentive they'll receive for following through – to motivate response from your postcard marketing campaign.

3. Repeat, repeat, repeat

Repetition is one of the most important aspects of a well-rounded, long-term direct-mail marketing campaign. Unfortunately, many small businesses don't understand the value of repetition as it pertains to postcard marketing, so they go through list after list with no intentions of revisiting those they've already marketed to. However, customers will grow more comfortable with your business over time, so repetition can build trust. In addition, you can continue to test different offers, designs and copy against the same mailing list to discover which yields the best return on investment. Finally, repetition allows you to build brand recognition with those customers who aren't ready to buy now, but will be in the future. When they are ready to buy, they'll think of you first because they'll remember your brand name from your postcard marketing campaign.