Postcards are a direct mail piece that you can consider using for the promotional campaign of your business. They provide great response rates and provide opportunities to explore creativity. Postcards are budget-friendly as they give you the ability to measure the results easily.
Postcard printing is cheaper than a catalog, enabling you to target your audience more precisely and have a better ROI than other direct mail marketing tools. But before you plan your postcard marketing campaign, you can follow these tips.
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1. Plan Ahead
Having a good strategy before designing the postcard will enable you to stay focused on the outcome you want. Would you like to generate leads or want to promote a service or product? Knowing the message of the postcard will help in targeting the customers you would like to reach out to. In case you are promoting a product or service, is it going to be invoiced or purchased online? How can you track the campaign’s effectiveness? These are just a few questions you need to answer before you proceed with the custom postcard printing.
2. Decide on Your Audience
When you have decided upon what you want to achieve with the postcards, focus on targeting the right customers. Postcards are affordable. But postage and mailing lists are not. Mailing multiple postcards to people who are never going to use your service or product is only a waste of money and time.
Identify individuals who share similarities with your existing clients. If you’re entering uncharted territory, conduct research on users of comparable products or services and focus your efforts on them. Once your target audience is defined, commence the design process to captivate their attention.
3. Select the Right Postcard Size
The postcard size plays a big role in the design. If the postcard is too small, it might get lost in the plethora of mail. But if you make them too large, you might have to pay more for mailing postcards.
To be eligible for first-class rates with the postal service, your postcard must adhere to specific dimensions. It should be at least 3.5″ in height, 5″ in length, and .007″ thick, while not exceeding 4.25″ in height, 6″ in length, and .016″ in thickness, as outlined on the USPS website. Postcards larger than the recommended size may incur higher postage costs.
Based on the subject of your postcard, you might require one of the larger ones to hold the information you have to provide.
4. Customize the Postcards
Customize the postcard if the campaign requires it. In case you are sending out a mail to a larger group, then customization might not be possible. In case you can’t or don’t want to personalize your postcard printing and mailing campaign, you can consider changing the photos to local attractions within the recipients’ zip codes. It will help catch their attention and get them to check out the postcard more closely. It is important to ensure that the personalization looks natural. Adding their name within the design draws their attention better than simply having the name of the customers on the card.
5. Add a Clear Call to Action
A precise and simple call to action can help the recipients know how to react to the mail. Also, it helps in tracking how effective the campaign is. In case you want to generate leads with postcards, add a CTA like ‘Act Today’ or ‘Sign Up Now’ with a convenient-to-use URL, which leads to a contact form, which will work. Promoting a new service or product with a call to action, which offers a discount with a coupon code can give you better results than simply displaying the products or services. Try to state the steps clearly on the postcards to get to where you want them to go. However, make sure that you keep things simple. Keep in mind that you just have a few seconds to attract their attention before they throw away the postcard in the dustbin.
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