In my plethora of experience tucked away between these ears, I have managed to cull out for you what I consider
“best of best” – in other words, I took most proven details about postcards that were significant to you starting a postcard campaign and really winning at it. So here goes most incisive higlights about postcards.1) I know that a postcard is better than something in an envelope.
For many reasons, 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 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 next time they get that same postcard in mail, they see it again as they throw it in 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 phoenix rising up from ashes.
2) I know that if you are not doing repeat mail with your postcards you are flushing your money down toilet.
Repeat mailings cannot be repeated enough. DO REPEAT MAILINGS! DO REPEAT MAILINGS! DO REPEAT MAILINGS! A one shot in dark postcard mailing is not going to change your business, your bottom line, your life or your anything.
The long and 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 best price is not best necessarily best postcard.
The cheapest is not necessarily 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 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 quality service you need or want.
4) I know that although most people, if surveyed, say they like full color on both sides, truth is black on white on back of postcard gets a better response. Why? Because full color on both sides is confusing. On 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 message on back. You want good eye trail.
