Five Ways to Improve Your Postcards

Postcards can be a very cost-effective way to generate website traffic, announce upcoming events, provide advance notice, encourage customers to take action and make special offers and promotions, if you do it right.

Make a Big First Impression. People like getting postcards from friends and relatives. They don't like getting advertising mail. Consider making your postcard look more like a message from a friend (and less like advertising) at first glance. This sets the stage for a warm, friendly reception.

You have only a few seconds to get the reader's attention and to persuade them to take the action you want. So keep your message brief and make sure the reader can clearly understand with just a quick glance what action they should take. Less wordy, more bulleted lists!

Finally, you may want to consider using one of our interesting special effects, such as dimensional imaging, to capture the recipient's attention.

Remember that your postcards will often be delivered in a pile of other mail items, so using attractive images and sizes that will stand out in the pile will help your message get noticed and read. As a bonus, think about making the face of your postcard something that might even be worthy of a coveted spot on the refrigerator!

Making the postcard entertaining or informative creates good will, puts you in a positive light and may keep your message around a little longer.

Get Right to the Point. Postcards get delivered in a format that's ready to read. Take advantage of this by making the biggest benefit you offer the first thing the reader sees. This will encourage them to want to read the rest of your postcard. Keep it simple. Be direct.

For example, state your biggest benefit as a headline at the top of your postcard, make it the first item on a bulleted list of benefits or highlight it in bold type if it's in the body of your postcard.

Choose the Right Purpose. Marketing postcards are most effective when they are used to generate website or retail traffic, create excitement or provide information. They are less effective for closing sales because they don't provide space for a detailed message.

Design your message to "sell" the reader on seeking more information instead of trying to close sales.

For example, rather than making it too wordy, promote the most important benefit of your product, service or event. Persuade the reader to take the next step in your sales process, whether it's visiting a retail location, making a call, scanning a QR code or entering a personalized URL (PURL) to go to your web site.

Stimulate Fast Action. Unless the postcard is being used as a teaser, just telling your reader how to get more information is not enough. Give them a reason to respond now or many will put your postcard aside to do later. They then get involved with other things and never act.

Make the action time sensitive with a strong offer. Motivate them to act now, otherwise they may put it down and never get around to it, even if they intended to.

For example, offer them a discounted price, a special bonus or some other benefit if they reply to your postcard by a deadline. Postcards are not new or high-tech. But that's not a reason to ignore them. They are relatively easy to create and distribute. They can generate a lot of interest and improve the response to your existing marketing programs for a very low-cost.

Test Your Offers.

In the age of digital printing, it's easy to test a second offer to see which pulls best. A simple example: Offer 1 is Save $10.00, Offer 2 is Save 20%. While they might have the same value in terms of discount, one may pull better than the other. This gives you valuable insight as you design future mailings and offers.

Ready, set, mail!