10 Ways To Use A Postcard To Boost Your Business

Interested in using direct mail but don’t have an idea where to start? Here are a few ideas that’ll help you get those creative juices going.

Grand Opening/Open Houses:
Grand Opening postcards or open house postcards are a great way to drive traffic to your local business. If your customers happen to be any resident in your local area—Saturation direct mail campaigns are a great way to deliver your marketing message to everyone in your neighborhood. The best part about Saturation mail direct mail programs is that it is the lowest price postage that you can get from the post office at 13.9 cents. That’s 70% less than the cost of a stamp!

Announcement:
Do you have a new product or service to unveil? A printed postcard is a great way to release the news!  The benefit of mailing postcards compared to letters is that the message is read by the recipient even if they end up throwing the mail piece away. Letters have to be opened to be read.  One of the best things that we’ve seen direct mail marketers do is to follow an announcement postcard with an email to their customer on the same day. Combining both direct mail mediums provides an explosive increase in response, guaranteed!

Birthday:
Restaurants see huge success with birthday greeting postcards. The postcard should include a birthday greeting, and of course a discount coupon only to be used on the recipient’s birthday. Rarely do people visit a restaurant for their birthday by themselves. This one coupon is sure to bring an extremely high redemtion rate.

Anniversary:

Send your customer a postcard celebrating their anniversary of the first order with your company. It may sound silly, but if the customer has been with you for several years, they will be impressed to the attention that your company gives. If they haven’t ordered with you in a while, the postcard campaign should be a free or aggressively low priced offer to come back! If they’ve used your services before, there is a great chance they’ll need you again in the future.

Mini- Newsletter:
Don’t have the budget to send out a full newsletter? A large 6x11 postcard can fit as much information as a 2-page newsletter if done designed correctly. Mailing a 6x11 postcard will cost less than a traditional newsletter for a variety of reasons. First, postage will cost less than mailing an 8.5”x11” and secondly, you won’t have to fold and stitch like you would a newsletter.

Bring a friend:
If you are a hair salons, fitness center, health club, tanning bed the “bring a friend for free” promotion is an amazing tool to generate a lot of interest. You’ll find the best results using this postcard on your internal mailing list.  This type of promotion is sure to incite your customer to refer your business.

Catalog requests:
Instead of sending out expensive catalogs to a large list, send a postcard with a tear-off stub, and your customer can return the stub for a catalog. Don’t forget to put your web address on the postcard with a special form to go online and request the catalog. This little trick will save you thousands of dollars in wasted catalog printing and mailing expenses. 

Survey:
Customers like to know that their opinion matters to the people they do business with. Mailing out postcards to get feedback shows that you want to meet their needs. They can either go to your website or use a postcard with a tear-off stub that they can fill out the survey and send it back to you. You’ll find the best results when your customer can fill out the survey online.  Driving your offline customers to your online website is a great way to get higher quality traffic to your website.

Thank You Note:
As the old saying goes—“a little thank you can go a long way.” I don’t know about you, but I do business with companies that are appreciative of my purchase.  Sending a hand written thank you card to a customer for their order is a great way to show appreciation for the order. Additionally, it’s also a good time to ask for a referral or feedback regarding the customer’s experience.

Website, Facebook and Blog Promotion:
From my experience, driving “offline” interest to your website is a great way to get people to view your website. If your company does business online—using postcards may be a great way to get more business.  You can drive people to your website just by putting your website on your postcards.   To take it a step further, you can try personalized URLs which is the process of making a unique website URL and content for each mail recipient. It’s easier than it sounds, and SonicPrint.com can help you every step of the way.

At SonicPrint.com we can help you put these ideas on to paper. Whether you need printing, getting discounted postage, or you need a full service direct mail package SonicPrint.com can help you every step of the way.

About the author:

Stan Coyle has been in the printing and direct mail industry for 20 years. He’s currently VP of Sales and Marketing at SonicPrint.com, a family owned and operated full color printing and direct mail Company located in Tampa, Florida. Servicing any size business in a variety of industries, the company provides offset and digital printing services of postcards, flyers, business cards, brochures, posters as well as full bindery and direct mail services.