Direct Mail PostCards

Here are five reasons to use direct mail postcards followed by five ways to increase their effectiveness.

Reason #2: How many businesses these days send a thank you card after a transaction? A hand-written postcard is a great way to say thanks and make a positive impression on a customer.

Reason #3: Direct mail postcards allow you to give selective offers to selective customers. This is difficult to do on a business website where everyone sees the promotion offer.

Reason #4: Direct Mail Postcards allow you to deliver your message without opening an envelope. So many times, the envelope can be a barrier between your prospect and your message.

Reason #5: If you have a store location, direct mail postcards can be a great way to offer a promotion and drive people to your store. This is especially the case for people that don't use the Internet much and for local people that have simply not come across your business website.

Strategy #1: Have a call to action. Even if your postcard is a simple “Thank You” postcard, have a call to action that you can measure. This can be as simple as a coupon code for 10% off their next purchase.

Strategy #2: Have a strong incentive for your call to action. You can have a very clear call to action but if you don't provide an incentive, your customers probably won't be compelled to act. Whether it's a free consultation, download on your website, or just a simple discount, find something compelling that makes people take action.

Strategy #3: Put together a solid mailing list. The response rate of your existing customers will always be greater than any rented list so a good foundation begins with selecting the best people from your existing mail list.

Depending on the purpose of your mailing, you may decide to mail your entire list or a portion of it. If you are looking to maximize your return and don't want to mail your entire list, select people based on Recency. Click here to read an article about the power of Recency.

Be careful about renting large quantities of names for your postcard mailing. Renting lists can be a viable way to bring in new people to your business, but you need to know how to obtain quality lists. If you're unsure, read this article on Direct Mail Lists.

Strategy #4: Focus on a single message. Direct mail postcards don't give you a lot of space so you need to focus your message to one specific point. Craft a headline that supports your main call to action and use images that help get across that headline. I know it might be painful to hear this, but you don't have to fill up every little piece of whitespace with text and images. Let your postcard breathe a little while still offering a strong call to action.

Strategy #5: Measure your response rate. It's critical that you are able to measure the response of all your postcard mailings. Your first step is to create an offer that can be tracked. Use a coupon code that customers must use or provide a unique website address the customer must visit in order to redeem the offer. Remember the Golden Rule: If you can't measure it, don't do it.

Once you have created an offer you can track, calculating the response rate and the rate of return is easy. The response rate is simply the number of responses to the offer divided by the number of postcards sent.

You'll find that the "experts" say a 1-2% response rate is typical but the actual response rate depends on your market, competition, message, offer, and about a dozen other factors. I've seen postcards deliver response rates in the double digits so don't listen to people that tell you 1-2% is acceptable. Having said that, a 1% response rate can be profitable if your product or service has a very high profit margin.

You should also calculate your return on investment or ROI. This is easily done by taking the profits you made from the mailing and subtracting out the total cost of the campaign. Take that resulting number and divide it by the total cost of the mailing. ROI is a percentage. If the number is positive, you made money. If it's negative, you lost money. If it's zero, you broke even. Here's a quick ROI calculation. Suppose your postcard mailing brought in $3,750 in profits and the total cost (postage and printing) was $3,000.

So, in this case, the resulting return on investment was 25%. Not bad at all!

By the way, there's one additional strategy that will help you increase your response rate and return on investment. It's the special bonus strategy!

So there you have it - many good reasons for incorporating direct mail postcards into your small business marketing program. Get a step ahead of all the people that think direct mail is dead. Direct mail is still a viable and important communication channel to get your message across to customers and prospects. Take advantage of direct mail postcards today!