Postcard marketing is one of the most popular and most successful ways to build your business for a life of profit. Marketing with postcards has emerged as one of the best ways to bring targeted customers to your website. Effective postcard marketing campaigns must give measurable results, accountability and data that other companies can use in future marketing campaigns to be more successful.
Why Use Postcard Marketing?
- Direct mail holds the best household response rate of all other marketing channels.
- A large number of people say that postcard marketing makes them feel more valued and created an authentic relationship with the company sending them direct mail.
- More people are influenced to visit the website of the company after receiving their postcards. These are mostly first-time buyers.
Postcard marketing is a powerful strategy, but only if you do it right.
How To Plan A Postcard Marketing Campaign
You might find it tempting to go right ahead with your postcard design, but you will need to plan the entire campaign for success. Do things like determining the objectives of your direct mail campaign, identify your target audience, create an offer and then go ahead to decide what action you want the recipients of the direct mail campaign to take.
The Definitive Guide To Postcard Marketing
Here’s our definitive guide to postcard marketing:
Set goals
Setting goals for your marketing campaign will be beneficial in the long run. Ask yourself what exactly you want your postcard to achieve? Some general goals might be:
- Introduce people to a new product.
- Influence sales with a discount offer.
- Attract new customers.
- Make people who are already buying your service/product to buy from you again.
It’s a good idea to turn some of these goals into more specific goals that can be measured. This will lend insight into how much your postcard campaign has worked.
For example:
- Make 100 sales.
- Get responses from 50 leads.
- Generate a return on investment.
Once these have all been established, you will be able to make decisions that help you achieve the goals much easier.
Determine your audience
You’ll need to identify your audience. You might want to send postcards to a house list made up of existing customers, or you might create a new mailing list.
If you are sending postcards to a house list, all you will need is your customer’s contact details. However, if you are sending it to a new list to gather new customers, your list should be made up of people that will match your demographic data for your customers, such as:
- Age
- Gender
- Income/occupation
- Location
- If they have children
- Hobbies and interests
- Buying habits
- Marital status
You might find yourself wanting to segment your list. For example, you might make two small lists to see which performs best, then send the version to the largest list.
Create a captivating offer
You know what you want your postcard mailing to achieve and who are going to be receiving them. You will now need to discover how you will get those people to respond, meaning you will need to develop a captivating offer.
Ask questions that your customers may ask;
- What problems do they have?
- What are they wanting?
- Are you selling proposition unique?
- How can you solve problems?
Then determine what you can offer customers to motivate quick responses. Maybe your solution is enough, but you can increase the response rates with a limited time offer: a discount or a free item, possibly a buy one get one free deal. A deadline will help influence a quicker response. Your offer needs to be captivating so that customers will want to respond straight away. Think like your customers and ask yourself if your offer is good enough to motivate them to buy?
Shape what action customers should take
You will need to decide what customers should do when they respond to your postcards.
- Calling your companies’ phone number.
- Visiting your location.
- Paying a visit to your website.
- Liking your social media page.
Whatever action your customers take, you need to be ready for the response. If they are visiting your website, then you should have a landing page or a catalogue ready for them to look at. If they are coming to your store, staff will need to be ready to help them with your offer. Make sure the experience is cohesive.
Postcard writing
The copy of your postcard or the wording of your card will have to deliver a message that will influence recipients to take action.
Craft a strong headline – You headline is very important as a part of the text. It must command attention, create a desire, and inspire recipients to read the rest of the postcard they have received from you. An example would be “Increase sales by 10%” Or “Act fast to get 25% off your next order”.
Headlines like that will generate an interest in your message. The first creates excitement and promises a benefit. The second offers a discount on merchandise and also suggests a deadline.
Approaches you can take with your headline – You should be able to create excitement, solve a problem, promise a benefit, intrigue with a question and deliver a special offer. Think about your target demographic; what will they want? What worries might they have? What are the problems they face? Use the answers to create your own postcard headline.
List your benefits
Your headline will draw customers into reading the rest of your postcard copy. Now you need to list benefits to create desire or reinforce the message you present in your headline. You can reveal benefits as bullet points; this will make it easy to read and understand. Tell your customers how your product will solve any problems they have or improve their lives. Highlight your unique selling point to separate yourself from the competition.
Deliver your offer
You now need to make your pitch. Deliver a special offer that will influence them to take action almost immediately
Add a call to action – You need to feature a compelling call to action, this can; reiterate your main benefit and your unique selling proposition, tell them about your deadline, restate your offer and tell customers exactly what to do next to take advantage of your offer.
Postcard Marketing From The Direct Mail Company
The Direct Mail Company is a professional mailing house based in Wakefield, West Yorkshire.
Our mail fulfilment services are trusted by a variety of small and large clients in the UK and overseas.
Our mail fulfilment services include bespoke data processing; printing solutions; mail fulfilment and bulk postage rates. Many of our clients come to us to save money on their postage. By taking advantage of our bulk postage rates, you will save a significant amount of money on postage costs. Due to the high volumes of mail, we send each year; we will offer you the lowest possible postage rates for your bulk mail.
Due to the high volumes of mail, we send each year; we will offer you the lowest possible postage rates for your bulk mail. We do this by using DSA providers such as Whistl, Citipost and UKMail. These companies complete the sortation for Royal Mail which is how we achieve the lowest postage rates.
For more information on outsourcing your direct mail campaigns to The Direct Mail Company, please call us on 0808 156 0115 or email sales@thedirectmailcompany.co.uk with your enquiry.
