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Marketing Resource Center |
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6 Things I Know About Postcards That You Don't
In my plethora of experience tucked away between these ears, I have managed to cull out for you what I consider the "best of the best" - in other words, I took the most proven details about postcards that were significant to you starting a postcard campaign and really winning at it. So here goes the most incisive higlights about postcards. 1) I know that a postcard is better than something in an envelope. For many reasons, the main one being, in an envelope you can't make your potential customer see your message. People are fast. We see and read very quickly - actually much more quickly than we even realize.. Think about yourself - how fast do you go through your mail and process out what you want to keep and what you don't want to keep? Pretty darn fast. It takes fractions of seconds to go through and process in your mind "bill, bill, advertisement, bill, advertisement, letter?" And it also takes fractions of seconds to decide whether you are even going to bother giving more attention to the pieces that you designated as advertisements. With a postcard, even if they throw it away, they already saw your message regardless of whether they think they did or not. They saw it enough to throw it away, didn't they? And the next time they get that same postcard in the mail, they see it again as they throw it in the trash. Let's face it - junk mail gets thrown away. And postcards are junk mail to a lot of people. Although they may be junk mail, postcards get read no matter what - even if thrown away without reading them, they get seen. It's like the phoenix rising up from the ashes. 2) I know that if you are not doing repeat mail with your postcards you are flushing your money down the toilet. Repeat mailings cannot be repeated enough. DO REPEAT MAILINGS! DO REPEAT MAILINGS! DO REPEAT MAILINGS! A one shot in the dark postcard mailing is not going to change your business, your bottom line, your life or your anything. The long and the short of it is, if you are not up to confronting that you need to do a campaign then don't bother being in business. Sorry if I sound a bit harsh! 3) I know that the best price is not best necessarily the best postcard. The cheapest is not necessarily the best. The old adage "you get what you pay for" applies here. Get whatever potential postcard company you interview to send you samples. Make sure the postcard is a very good, quality, stiff card that catches your attention. Get them to give you customer references. Call those references and find out what they think of that company's service, product, etc. There is a lot of behind-the-scenes work that goes into getting your postcard done right. If they screw up printing, if they don't get your mailing out on deadline, etc. - doing it dirt cheap might not mean getting the quality service you need or want. 4) I know that although most people, if surveyed, say they like full color on both sides, the truth is black on white on the back of the postcard gets a better response. Why? Because full color on both sides is confusing. On the other hand, if you have a very aesthetic, pleasing-to-the-eye front - with a great headline - you just want to turn that postcard over and simply get the message on the back. You want good eye trail. Eye trail is where your eye goes when you look at the postcard. You can have good eye trail with full color on both sides - but it has to be done correctly. Usually when you give people a choice to do full color on both sides they go overboard and the creative juices start flying, not flowing, flying with, "WOW!!! full color on both sides?!!" And they make it too busy. You don't want it to be dispersing - you want it to go like a trail. Have a start, a middle and an end. Example: Did YOU Notice this Postcard? Your Customers Will Notice Yours Too! 5000 Full Color Super-glossy postcards for only $389 Look at it from the customer viewpoint - really look at it from their viewpoint and you can see what I mean by eye trail. 5) I know that you should promote only one thing at a time on your postcard. Even if you sell lots of different products, you only promote one of them. It is fine to mention them on the back of the postcard bullet pointed. But your main focus on the front of your postcard needs to be one product, service, item, what have you - just one thing. Say you have a flooring store and a furniture showroom in the back. Your postcard should only talk about flooring. It is not that people who are looking for flooring are not also looking for furniture - it's just too much information on the front of postcard. The purpose of a postcard is to get your prospect interested with one thing. You can put on the back as just a mention: "We also have a giant showroom full of furniture." But on the front - one item! ONE ITEM! If a company sells hot tubs, above-ground pools and jungle gyms they need to pick the one that gives them the most income and make their postcard about that. 6) And I know that a person could grow a company with no other marketing media. With postcards alone, one could take a company from zero to over a million bucks in revenue or more. How do I know? Because I did it. We mailed postcards every single week, and the more postcards we mailed out, the more we grew. Yes, it is good to diversify and as we grew and became more successful and had more money to try other media, we did. Some we kept and some we nixed. Postcards are a staple that works no matter what. These six points of postcard marketing data are proven techniques of making your postcards WOW your prospective clients while at the same time being faithful to the time-honored methods that have proven to get more bang for your buck. These tips are what will put your postcard in a class all by itself. Joy Gendusa founded PostcardMania in 1998; her only assets a computer and a phone. In 2004 the company did close to $9 million in sales and employs over 60 persons. She knows so much about postcards because that is the only marketing medium she used to grow her company in its first few years. She attributes her explosive growth to her ability to choose incredible staff and her innate marketing savvy. Now she's sharing her marketing secrets with others. For more free marketing advice, visit her website at http://www.postcardmania.com
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Comment by George C. Leef, Director of Research