The Power of Postcards

By Crystal Pope

Postcard marketing made its debut 139 years ago, when a postcard advertisement appeared in Great Britain. Since then, the industry of postcard marketing quickly grew and evolved into an influential and successful marketing tool.

Today, the power of postcards is irrefutable. In a 2007 survey conducted by Vertis Communications, 46% of adults reported responding to direct mail.

A 2010 study by ICOM showed that 18-34 year olds preferred to learn about marketing offers via mail and newspapers, as opposed to online sources.

Despite the growth of social media and online technologies, postcard marketing continues to remain a preferred method in which to receive advertising messages.

So, consumers do like postcards. For this and other reasons, they can be a very powerful tool.

Besides being popular with consumers, postcards offer the following benefits to YOU.

They are:

Affordable

Postcards are a highly effective, low cost way to advertise. Standard size postcards cost approximately 36% less than a regular sized letter.

High Impact

Postcards are not enclosed in an envelope or buried inside the pages of a large publication. They are stand-alone ads and make it, nearly, impossible to ignore.

It is difficult to discard a postcard without, at least, noticing the message. This is why, personalization and relevancy are extremely important, to keep and hold interest.

Efficient

Postcards are one of the easiest forms of marketing to track and measure. If you send 500 postcards and 20 people respond, you have a 4% response rate.

To track it in more detail, consider adding a PURL (personalized URL) which allows you to track and capture leads through an online dashboard. Promo codes are another great idea! Send multiple campaigns and assign a different promo code to each, to test which campaign gets the highest response rate.

Not only do postcards allow you to track response rates and ROI. But, they also give you an opportunity to cleanse your mailing list. When sending postcards via first-class mail, any postcards that are undeliverable due to bad addresses will be returned to you, allowing you to update your list.

To learn more about the power of postcards and how to successfully integrate them into your marketing, contact our Inside Account Management Team at 1-800-287-5710 or okiam@prospectsplus.com