Postcard marketing remains one of the most effective ways to deliver your message, promote a product, and stay in touch with consumers. Americans check their mail almost daily and find it full of different postcards for marketing. Some they immediately ignore, others grasp their attention and have a high response among the readers.

Would you like to send marketing post cards that bring the maximum profit and make consumers convert? This article covers ten ways to increase postcards profits by delivering appealing and cost-effective marketing post cards.

What is Postcard Marketing?

Those unfamiliar with postcard marketing basics should know that postcard marketing is an effective marketing tool due to the scale of its usage. Anyone from small business owners to a presidential candidate's office can use it. In many cases, marketing post cards are a better option than digital marketing, especially TV. Offline messages attract more attention than social media and have a higher trust rate than TV ads. 

There are many ways to achieve a high postcard marketing result, from choosing the typography and CRM optimization to targeting a specific audience. As a result, you have a high-customizable marketing tool that is also budget-efficient. Most importantly, it delivers excellent response rates, allowing you to reach the people who would ignore your communications otherwise.

Direct Mail and Postcards for Marketing in Numbers

The United States Postal Service researches different social groups to examine how modern society treats postcard mailing and direct mail. The results may surprise you. 86% of respondents find time to check their mail and look through its contents. 87% would prefer to receive mail instead of a telemarketing call. 78% state they particularly value the privacy of mail.

Other researchers and statistical data on direct mail efficiency show that offline mail remains highly relevant. Postcards have an average response rate of 5.7%, and the direct mail response rate among people aged 18-21 is 12.4%.

That is a good result that can be compared to digital marketing, which has a much higher competition. Besides, people consider direct mail far more personal than online interactions and, therefore, are more likely to respond.

How Does Postcard Marketing Work?

So, we've talked about postcards for marketing purposes, but how do they work? Here are the steps you need to take to arrange postcard printing and delivery:

• Gathering information on your audience
• Choosing the time and place of your campaign
• Creating a delivery plan and narrowing down the list of recipients
• Choosing a typography service
• Creating postcard design
• Contacting USPS and making an order
• Initiating the campaign
• Gathering response rate statistics

As you can see, there is nothing complicated about sending marketing post cards. Yet if you want to make them truly effective, you must invest a lot of effort in design and planning. Here are some ways to make your postcards for marketing stand out without wasting the budget.

10 Tips on How to Maximize Postcard Profits

1. Set up your goals

Your marketing plan has to be accurate and up-to-date. Make sure you know how much you want to spend and stay informed about the dates, discounts, and possible risks. This way, you will be able to optimize your expenses once you start to exceed the budget.

Ensure your postcard design has a clear goal. Do you want a recipient to visit your website? Scan a QR code? Or, maybe, you aim to inform the audience about your brand or a political candidate? Depending on the goals, your marketing campaign can have radically different final results, so you have to decide on everything at the beginning.

2. Mind your target audience

Think about your audience. Who are these people? Do you want to address business owners, regular customers, or political voters? Some audiences are easier to reach; some are more likely to buy a service or product; some want information more than benefits. Demographics are very significant, especially if you want to sell a product. You can use different statistics and social research. There is plenty of it on the web.

3. Add a catchy headline

In the modern world, the text may not be the most critical element of your postcards for marketing. You may calculate the impact of every word, but your reader will ignore the content because of the boring headline. So be sure to add a catchy and vibrant headline. It has to be easy to read and grab the reader's attention. Try adding clickbait statements, loud names, tops, numbers, research results, or anything else that can encourage people to check the postcard.

4. List benefits

Okay, you've made an "eye-grabbing" headline; what's next? List the benefits of your marketing subject and explain why it is better than competitors. Write about price/credibility/delivery speed, but use facts. Using statistics or research from a trustworthy source is a good idea. Consumers would rather believe in the statement that "94% of customers use [ProductName] daily as [Resource] states" than in something like "Our customers really like using our product."

5. Include an engaging call to action

An engaging CTA is as essential as a catchy headline. A CTA is typically a command or an action phrase like "sign up," "try for free," "buy today," etc. On postcards, you usually need to restate the offer and affirm the quality of your deal. If your CTA sounds convincing enough, the reader remains hooked. Use this attention to nudge them to convert.

6. Allocate the right budget

The pricing of mailers is significant for cost optimization and maximizing postcard profits. There are different ways to send direct mail and various services with different prices. For example, USPS offers:

• Every Door Direct Mail

A service that allows you to mail to entire routes instead of individual addresses

• Marketing Mail

The most popular way to send bulk mail and a balanced option created for commercial usage

• First Class Mail

A mailing option similar to Marketing Mail, except for certain weight limitations and a much higher price;

Depending on the chosen option, the pricing may vary from $0.1 to $1. Select the mailing approach that works best for you, considering the delivery speed, coverage, and mail tracking capabilities.

7. Implement targeting to increase postcard profits

Targeting allows you to reach only the people who are likely to respond. It reduces the mail volume and increases its efficiency to cut mailing expenses. How to adopt direct mail targeting?

Modern tools enable you to gather the information from social media and then use it to form the mailing list with the highest user engagement. Web browser extensions and Facebook marketing trackers already have all the necessary information. You can also retrieve data from your CRM or connect it with a direct mail automation tool like Inkit Send for advanced mail personalization.

8. Choose the postcard design wisely

Choosing an appropriate design is as important as the text you are trying to message with your postcards for marketing. Use these tips to launch postcard marketing campaigns with the highest ROI:

• Make sure the colors are bright and vibrant
• Choose paper that is pleasant to touch
• Make some space for images
• Don't overfill your postcard with text
• Add branding elements

Note that the chosen design will affect your postcard printing options. Contact typographies, compare the prices, and choose what works best for your postcards for marketing purposes. Creating a survey among the users and target groups would be a good idea to ensure the final sample kit suits the audience. It is cheap, and you can do it with the help of social media.

9. Include promo code to measure response

Some may think that postcards for marketing purposes are inferior to online channels because there are no digital elements. It may have been true in the past, but now you can use modern response trackers to increase postcard profits. How? Insert a discount promo code or a QR code. The specialized tools will record responses when people scan the code while interacting with the postcard. This data is crucial to gather statistics and improve postcard marketing campaigns to reach the highest ROI.

10. Automate postcard printing and delivery

Finally, implement modern technologies to be ahead of the competition. Direct mail automation tools can easily optimize many processes. Instead of hiring managers that have to track the mailing, count every scenario, and make dozens of operations in your CRM, you can integrate a tool like Inkit Send to automate mail creation, printing, and delivery.

Inkit For Postcard Marketing Automation

Inkit Send allows you to build and deliver customer communications at any scale. It integrates with your CRM through an API to automate direct mail printing, delivery, and tracking. Since everything happens automatically, you can save on paying managers or third-party providers. Besides, such mail is highly personalized and targeted, which makes it more cost-effective.

Start a free trial now to launch your first mailing campaign and enjoy high postcard profits.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, maximizing your postcard profits requires attention to detail, a detailed plan, qualified copywriting, accurate marketing, and modern automation tools. Once combined, it can give you an expected result.

Facebook: Postcards generate high profits if you use them right. Check our tips on postcard design, content, and delivery to achieve the best return on investment

LinkedIn: #Marketing #DirectMail requires a lot of knowledge to achieve the best results. Learn how to deliver marketing #Postcards to make them profitable with our tips

Twitter: Cut #MarketingCost by making postcards more effective with #MailAutomation and other tips

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