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6 Things I
Know About Postcards That You Don’t!
By Joy Gendusa
In my plethora of
experience tucked away between these ears, I have managed to cull out
for you what I consider the “best of the best” – in other words, I took
the most proven details about postcards that were significant to you
starting a postcard campaign and really winning at it. So here goes the
most incisive highlights about postcards.
1) I know that a postcard is better than something in an envelope.
For many reasons, the main one being, in an envelope you can’t make your
potential customer see your message.
People are fast. We see and read very quickly – actually much more
quickly than we even realize.. Think about yourself – how fast do you go
through your mail and process out what you want to keep and what you
don’t want to keep? Pretty darn fast. It takes fractions of seconds to
go through and process in your mind “bill, bill, advertisement, bill,
advertisement, letter…” And it also takes fractions of seconds to decide
whether you are even going to bother giving more attention to the pieces
that you designated as advertisements.
With a postcard, even if they throw it away, they already saw your
message regardless of whether they think they did or not. They saw it
enough to throw it away, didn’t they?
And the next time they get that same postcard in the mail, they see it
again as they throw it in the trash.
Let’s face it - junk mail gets thrown away. And postcards are junk mail
to a lot of people.
Although they may be junk mail, postcards get read no matter what – even
if thrown away without reading them, they get seen. It’s like the
phoenix rising up from the ashes.
2) I know that if you are not doing repeat mail with your postcards you
are flushing your money down the toilet.
Repeat mailings cannot be repeated enough. DO REPEAT MAILINGS! DO REPEAT
MAILINGS! DO REPEAT MAILINGS! A one shot in the dark postcard mailing is
not going to change your business, your bottom line, your life or your
anything.
The long and the short of it is, if you are not up to confronting that
you need to do a campaign then don’t bother being in business. Sorry if
I sound a bit harsh!
3) I know that the best price is not best necessarily the best postcard.
The cheapest is not necessarily the best. The old adage “you get what
you pay for” applies here. Get whatever potential postcard company you
interview to send you samples. Make sure the postcard is a very good,
quality, stiff card that catches your attention. Get them to give you
customer references. Call those references and find out what they think
of that company’s service, product, etc.
There is a lot of behind-the-scenes work that goes into getting your
postcard done right. If they screw up printing, if they don’t get your
mailing out on deadline, etc. – doing it dirt cheap might not mean
getting the quality service you need or want.
4) I know that although most people, if surveyed, say they like full
color on both sides, the truth is black on white on the back of the
postcard gets a better response. Why? Because full color on both sides
is confusing. On the other hand, if you have a very aesthetic,
pleasing-to-the-eye front - with a great headline - you just want to
turn that postcard over and simply get the message on the back. You want
good eye trail.
Eye trail is where your eye goes when you look at the postcard. You can
have good eye trail with full color on both sides – but it has to be
done correctly. Usually when you give people a choice to do full color
on both sides they go overboard and the creative juices start flying,
not flowing, flying with, “WOW!!! full color on both sides?!!” And they
make it too busy. You don’t want it to be dispersing – you want it to go
like a trail. Have a start, a middle and an end.
Example:
Did YOU Notice this Postcard?
Your Customers Will Notice Yours Too!
5000 Full Color
Super-glossy
postcards
for only
$389
Look at it from the customer viewpoint – really look at it from their
viewpoint and you can see what I mean by eye trail.
5) I know that you should promote only one thing at a time on your
postcard.
Even if you sell lots of different products, you only promote one of
them. It is fine to mention them on the back of the postcard bullet
pointed. But your main focus on the front of your postcard needs to be
one product, service, item, what have you – just one thing.
Say you have a flooring store and a furniture showroom in the back. Your
postcard should only talk about flooring. It is not that people who are
looking for flooring are not also looking for furniture – it’s just too
much information on the front of postcard.
The purpose of a postcard is to get your prospect interested with one
thing. You can put on the back as just a mention: “We also have a giant
showroom full of furniture.”
But on the front – one item! ONE ITEM!
If a company sells hot tubs, above-ground pools and jungle gyms they
need to pick the one that gives them the most income and make their
postcard about that.
6) And I know that a person could grow a company with no other marketing
media.
With postcards alone, one could take a company from zero to over a
million bucks in revenue or more. How do I know? Because I did it.
We mailed postcards every single week, and the more postcards we mailed
out, the more we grew. Yes, it is good to diversify and as we grew and
became more successful and had more money to try other media, we did.
Some we kept and some we nixed. Postcards are a staple that works no
matter what.
These six points of postcard marketing data are proven techniques of
making your postcards WOW your prospective clients while at the same
time being faithful to the time-honored methods that have proven to get
more bang for your buck. These tips are what will put your postcard in a
class all by itself.
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