Create Better Marketing Postcards
This article originally appeared on Print Soup, the blog of PrintingForLess.com, CreativePro.com’s parent company.
Working for a print company, I get to see a ton of different postcards come through our presses. And from a direct marketer’s perspective, many of these make me cringe. There are some critical postcard marketing elements that need to be included to optimize your results and get a better return on your printing and postage investment.
Our service reps frequently ask for feedback on their customers’ creative to see if I might be able to provide suggestions to improve performance. Most of my feedback centers on three core elements that should be incorporated in most any postcard. They are:
1. Offer
2. Call to Action
3. Response/contact information
I recently collected a random sample of 50 different postcards from our production floor. I went through them to see how many cards had the different elements listed above. I was shocked to find out that 74% did not have an Offer. Additionally, 64% did not have a Call to Action. These are incredible numbers — I was amazed to see that the majority of customers are missing such critical elements to their success.
With the next postcard you create, give a sample to an unbiased friend and have them look at it for five seconds (and only five seconds), then put it down and ask them these two questions:
1. What is the product or service being offered?
2. What is the recipient supposed to do after receiving this postcard?
Postcards are like billboards on the freeway: You have a very short window of time to communicate your message. Keep your postcards simple and uncluttered. Use the headline to effectively answer the two questions above. Be sure to include a compelling offer — and call it out graphically so it grabs attention. And tell your customers or prospects exactly what to do (call us, go online, come to our open house, etc.). And don’t hide your contact information!
If you incorporate some of these ideas in your next postcard marketing campaign, I’m confident you’ll see better results and achieve a better ROI on your marketing dollars.
This article was last modified on January 6, 2023
This article was first published on October 22, 2009
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