Successful Postcard Marketing Ideas to Help You Get Started
Companies are always thinking of new marketing strategies to increase their exposure and push up sales. And what better than the traditional and most effective direct mail marketing channel?
Though digital marketing may seem prevalent in the marketing industry, direct mail is still more dominant. Renowned companies like Google prefer sending direct mail as a crucial part of their marketing programs.
However, if you are not convinced yet and want to get your hands on some more facts, find the statistics below to clear your doubts:
- 92% of all the door drops sent to Australian households are read.
- 40% of customers bought something in the last three months after receiving a direct mail item.
Out of all the direct mail marketing items, postcards are the most effective and cost-saving ones available around. They help you talk about your product or service in brief and grab the attention of your target audience.
Postcard marketing is a form of direct mail marketing that helps you get a high ROI at very reasonable costs. Printing and mailing postcards also takes comparatively less time than letters and other items.
Therefore, postcard direct mail marketing is effective, cost-saving, and result-bearing, making it one of the best direct mailing strategies.
Keep reading below to know the postcard marketing secrets and make the most of your campaigns.
Why Does Postcard Marketing Work So Well?
Postcards are very small and compact, which is why people wonder how they could make an impact. Here’s how:
- Postcards make people feel special. In a study, 57% of respondents said that postcard direct marketing makes them feel valued. Thus, postcards are great for interacting with people and delivering your marketing messages.
- They are attention-grabbing. Well-designed postcards with attractive headlines are sure to turn heads.
- Postcards have high read rates. Since they don’t need envelopes, recipients can read the message in one flip. So, you don’t have to worry about your mail being thrown away without being read.
- In this digital world, postcards offer a nostalgic effect and emotional value. They also set aside your company from the competition.
- Direct marketing postcards are long-lasting. Recipients are likely to save your postcards for later use if you add a special offer or coupon.
Use Cases of Postcard Marketing Campaigns
There are many postcard campaign examples that you can use for your brand. Some of the best use cases or examples are:
Convince Customers to Complete Checkouts
A lot of people add things to their shopping carts only to abandon and forget them. Such abandoned carts can affect your conversion ratios negatively.
But, you can turn things around and motivate these customers to complete their checkouts.
The best way to do that is to send them postcards with a discount offer. You may send a code that helps customers get a 5% discount on checkout. Such small incentives can help you reduce cart abandonment rates tremendously.
Cross-Sell New Products to Customers
It is always a great idea to cross-sell to your already existing customers. They are already aware of your brand and its offerings. So, there are more chances that they might look into buying other products or services from you.
Postcard marketing can help you inform your customers about such new offerings quickly.
Grows the Leads in Your Pipeline
You can use one-time postcard marketing campaigns to attract new customers or grow your leads list. Once you get enough responses, you can follow up with the respondents and keep your sales cycle running for a few months.
Conduct Recurring Campaigns
Recurring campaigns can help you stay fresh in the minds of your target audience.
Thus, you can conduct recurring postcard marketing campaigns spread throughout the year. But, take care to not spam your prospects’ mailboxes with continuous mailing. Try starting with two to four mailing campaigns per year.
Re-Establish Connections With Old Customers
Send “we miss you” postcards to customers who haven’t bought in a while. It is crucial to keep reminding them of your brand every once in a while.
Postcard marketing is an excellent strategy to win back old customers.
Introduce Referral Programs
Referral programs are one of the most effective ways to grow your connections. You can motivate your customers to refer your brand to their friends and family in exchange for something.
For example, one of the best real estate marketing postcard ideas is to ask your clients to bring in other clients. Add a small bonus to your postcards to motivate your clients to do so.
Tips to Conduct the Most Effective Postcard Marketing Campaigns
You can get productive results from both B2C and B2B direct marketing campaigns. Find below a list of postcard marketing tips to help you do it right:
Craft Strong and Upfront Headlines
Craft headlines that summarize your message in one line. They should intrigue the reader and convince them to read the rest of the copy.
Try to keep your headline as upfront as possible to make it easy for the readers to understand your intent.
You can also use actionable headlines that reinstate your call to action, like:
Feed a child today by donating $10.
Order any two dishes and get the third one free.
Add a Compelling Call to Action
What do you need your audience to do after receiving the postcard? Do they need to book an appointment? Visit a landing page? Walk into their nearest store?
Before sending out your real estate marketing postcards, make sure you have a clear CTA. Also, take care that you are ready to handle the customer responses.
Here are some examples you can refer to:
Call us now and book your seats.
Download our app today and sign up to get free fitness tips.
Visit the link below to access our products and services online.
Scan the QR code to see our today’s specials.
Use Relevant Images
If you go through some samples of marketing postcards, you will notice that they all have big, bright images.
These images help make the postcards eye-catching and describe the purpose of the mailing.
For example, real estate marketing postcards templates often have images of happy people inside a house. Or dental marketing postcards have pictures of a dentist helping a patient fix his smile.
This way, you can include relevant images as well and make your message pop. Make sure to use high-resolution pictures with bright colours.
Incentivise Your Postcard Recipients
Keep yourself in the place of your prospects and think about a compelling offer that can make you take action.
What do your prospects want? How can you solve their problems?
Once you get an answer, go ahead and introduce an exciting offer—for example:
Buy 1 Get 2 Free
Visit our website to unlock 100 free points
Get yourself a 20% discount on our latest Gold Spa
Such small incentives can boost your response rates tremendously.
Don’t Forget to Mention Your Contact Details
Your postcards for business marketing should not only have your brand name and logo but also your contact information.
The best marketing postcards have the company’s phone number and email address at the bottom. If possible, also add your office address as it makes your company look more credible.
Pay Attention to Benefits More Than Features
Some marketing postcard examples may portray a lot of features. But, people don’t like reading a long list of technical features on a postcard. Instead, they would like to know the benefits the product or service has to offer.
For example, people buy a watch to see the time, not because it has a mainspring.
Hence, focus on talking about benefits. You can list them in bullet points to make them easy to read.
Avoid Giving Away Too Much Information
Marketing postcard sizes can range from small to oversized, but your messages should always be short.
Try adding short sentences and paragraphs. Include some concise points, and ask the recipients to visit your website or offline store to get more information.
If you overwhelm the readers with a lot of details, they might not complete the CTA.
Track Campaign Performance
Do postcards work for marketing? We have already discussed above that postcards are one of the best forms of direct mail marketing. But why not try it yourself and see the results?
For doing that, you should have a sound tracking mechanism in place. Below are some trackable features that you can incorporate into your campaigns:
- Dedicated phone numbers
- QR codes
- Personalised URLs
- Coupon codes, etc.
You can use these features to record all engagement and draft your postcard marketing statistics. These can help you plan better campaigns in the future.
Update Your Mailing Lists
In the year 2019-20, about 368,700 Australians moved interstate. Thus, mailing addresses change rapidly, making it crucial to update your lists from time to time.
To conduct a successful postcard marketing campaign, make sure that you use only valid postal addresses. This way, your postcards will reach the correct recipients, and you won’t have to deal with returned mail.
Online postcard marketing companies like PostGrid can help you clean your mailing lists and conduct fruitful campaigns.
Personalise Every Postcard
Generic postcards may be helpful to some extent, but a modern marketing strategy demands personalisation. Your recipients are likely to pay more attention to personalised postcards as compared to generic ones.
It can be as simple as adding someone’s first name to your marketing postcard design. Personalisation makes your postcards personal and relatable—helping you convince your audience to respond to them.
Include Customer Testimonials
Before buying something, would you like to hear about it from the brand itself or its customers? Naturally, we are more likely to trust customer reviews and real-life examples. The same goes for direct mail campaigns.
Including customer testimonials in your postcard copy can help you increase its credibility. You may also include links to video reviews so that the recipients can visit your page online and get more information.
Combine Postcard Marketing With Digital Marketing Channels
Today, it is not enough to stick with only one marketing channel. Therefore, most brands combine their online and offline marketing channels to get the most out of their campaigns.
You can also combine your real estate postcard marketing campaigns with social media, email marketing, and other online campaigns. This way, you can connect with more people at the same time and push up engagement levels.
But, make sure that your marketing messages, offers, and designs are consistent on all channels.
Leave Adequate White Space
Always leave adequate spaces in between words and designs on your postcards. Don’t overcrowd your best marketing postcard designs with tons of elements. Instead, make them well-spread and easy to understand.
Also, leaving enough white space helps you drive more attention to your CTA and offers.
Get Creative
How to design a postcard for marketing? Well, first draft your copy and then create an artwork that complements it. Take care to add something to your design that your audience has never seen before.
One of the most eye-catching postcard ideas is to put your thinking caps on and get a little more creative. You may use calligraphy to make your words stand out or use various shapes and colours. The point is to spice up your artwork and make it impressive for your recipients.
PostGrid’s postcard API has several marketing postcard templates that you can use. They can help you create your own artwork in only a few minutes. Apart from postcard design, they also help you automate the entire postcard marketing campaign. Thus, you can save time, effort, and money, and still conduct successful postcard mailings.
Factors to Consider While Conducting Postcard Marketing Campaigns
Before conducting a campaign, you need to decide on a lot of factors like:
Campaign Objectives and Target Audience
The first step is identifying the objectives of your postcard marketing campaign. What do you want to achieve from this campaign? Some possible campaign goals include:
- Introducing new products and services
- Generating highly targeted and fresh leads
- Spreading brand awareness
- Re-engaging existing customers
- Increasing sales with discounts and other offers, etc.
It is best to have more specific goals, like convincing 50 customers to buy again or generating an ROI of $5,000.
To achieve such goals, you also need to choose your target audience wisely. Consider your current buyer persona. Below are some geo-demographics you can use to compile new mailing lists:
- Age
- Gender
- Marital status
- Annual income
- Location
- Number of children (if any)
- Job title (in case of B2B marketing)
- Buying habits
- Interests and preferences, etc.
Postcard marketing services like PostGrid can help you segment your mailing lists according to the above factors.
Postcard Marketing Campaign Costs
It is advisable to set a budget and estimate an ROI before the campaign. Please note that your postcard marketing costs depend on several factors like:
- Design
- Copywriting
- Marketing postcard sizes
- Choice of mailing list
- Printing
- Mailing
If you handle your postcard design and copywriting yourself, you can avoid spending on them. Similarly, using house mailing lists instead of renting them can help you save a lot.
Furthermore, postcard sizes can affect your budget significantly. Small-sized postcards are very cost-effective. Yet, some companies use expensive oversized postcards to make a better impression on their audience. So, you can control your campaign costs as per your needs.
Marketing Postcard Printing and Mailing
As said above, printing and mailing postcards have a significant impact on your budget. Let’s see how.
The type of printing options you select can define your campaign success. For example, suppose you print low-quality postcards on lightweight paper stock. The postal services would not allow you to mail such postcards without an envelope. In this case, you would spend more on printing envelopes. At the same time, your audience may not like these lightweight postcards and toss them out instantly.
Therefore, choose your paper stock, postcard size, and printing quality carefully. Consider the points below:
- Print your postcards on heavy and thick paper stocks.
- Opt for a glossy coating to make your postcards eye-catching.
- Consider printing oversized postcards if your budget can accommodate the expense.
- Select a vendor that offers variable data printing at no extra costs.
- If you want to print a large number of postcards, select a printer that offers bulk discounts.
Moving on to the mailing part, take care that your postcards reach their destination on time. Australia Post offers several mailing classes for you to select from, depending on your campaign timeframe.
PostGrid’s print and mail API can help you send your postcards via an ideal mailing option. This way, you don’t need to stress over the postage costs, mailing speed, etc., as PostGrid can handle it all on your behalf.
The Final Word
PostGrid can help you streamline your postcard marketing activities and get the most out of your campaigns. Some of the things our postcard API offers are:
- Pre-built postcard marketing templates
- Building targeted mailing lists
- Printing and mailing postcards
- 2-business day SLA
- Easy-to-use dashboard
- Flexible user settings
- Campaign insights and reports, etc.
Postcard marketing is a very flexible and affordable way to get new leads. If done right, you can achieve all your marketing objectives easily.
Furthermore, PostGrid makes it easier for you by assisting you in all the tasks. To unlock all our features and start with your postcard marketing activities, click here.
The post Ideas and Examples of Postcard Marketing Campaign appeared first on PostGrid.
source https://www.postgrid.com.au/postcard-marketing-guide/
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