Postcards are a memorable, tangible, effective, and inexpensive form of direct mail marketing. Adding the human touch and offline to your marketing strategies is a smart way to grab the attention of more prospects and extend your customer base. There is no better way to market your business.
As you send direct mail printing materials, you need to follow a few tips. Read further to know the basic steps along with a few tips to make the postcard marketing campaign a success.
- Determines the Marketing Goals
Before you plan the direct mail marketing printing, you have to plan your marketing objectives. You need to consider what you want to achieve with your campaign. A few times, the aims are general and at times, they are very specific. In either case, you have to be clear about your aims prior to sending the advertising mail.
The usual goals are-
- Spreading brand awareness
- Generating new leads
- Getting repeat business
- Enhancing brand reputation
Specific aims include-
- Converting 100 hot leads
- Making sales worth more than $5000
- Convincing 500 people to RSVP for a certain event
- Develop Your Direct Mail Postcards
The USPS provides postcard mailing services at an affordable rate. However, you should take care of the dimensions for availing those rates. They have to be rectangular and a minimum of 3.5 inches wide and 5 inches long. However, it has to be 0.007 inches thick.
You need to consider how much you have to spend to send postcards. The price depends on the weight and size of the direct mail postcards.
Make sure that you keep up with the instructions to send postcards. The option is cheaper and faster than others and is perhaps the most efficacious mail option to send advertising mailers.
Don’t attach magnets and stickers to your postcards. These things make direct mail postcards non-mail able and wasted. Take care to place the mail and return address on the same side of the mail as the postage.
- Create a Mailing List
There are different ways to go about your mailing list. No matter what you choose, keep in mind that your postcard printing and mailing list contribute about 40% to the success of the campaign. Put together a house list of all the prospects you mean to convert. Based on the objectives and the message you want to convey; you can include or remove the existing customers for the direct printing and mailing list.
In case you want to repeat business or looking to increase visibility, you can mail to your potential and existing customers. However, if you want to get fresh leads, use your mailing list. Often, companies want to target new people but do not have any data to prepare a mailing list. In such as case, you can rent or buy a mailing list from a third party. When it is rented, make sure you clear the usage terms along with the time up to which you will be able to the address included in the list. It is always better to buy the list instead of renting them.
Nevertheless, these lists aren’t always targeted or accurate. Thus, they may or may not be of any use to your marketing campaign.
- Address the Postcards
When you conduct a mass postcard mailing campaign, you have to make sure that you are addressing the postcards properly. For that, you have to follow the address format of USPS and be careful not to make any mistakes. In case you fail to follow the right format, the address reading machine will not be able to process the mailing items. It will ultimately impact your deliveries.
Also, you have to print the letters in the capital. Make sure you do not use any punctuation marks.
- Affix Postage
It is the most confusing part. When you learn how to send the postcards, affixing the right postcards can become challenging. This is because calculating postage isn’t always a piece of cake. It can be complicated and you might end up making mistakes. Thus, it is better to take your postcards to the office and allow the postal workers to simply do the job at hand.