I spend a fair amount of time on the phone with our clients every day.
I enjoy helping people grow their businesses, and then hearing their success stories when they come back for their next campaign.
These discussions usually go along the lines of, “Hey, I just closed a deal, and I made $$$$$!”
Then I say, “Wow, that’s fantastic! Congratulations! Want to do it again?”
Then we talk about their responses, what went well, what didn’t, and what we should think about changing to make the next campaign even more effective than the one that just made them thousands of dollars.
Something that’s been bubbling up in these conversations recently is the effectiveness of postcards. Postcards can work, if done the right way. We frequently see postcards working as part of the recipe, but generally not as the whole recipe. When sending out postcards it can be tempting to put a few paragraphs of information, giving lots of detail about how you can help the individual. Here’s an example of a postcard someone mentioned this morning:
Let’s set the scene. You get your mail and set it on your kitchen table. Among the grocery store flyer, credit card application and bank statement, you see a small postcard. That postcard has four paragraphs of text on it. In fact, there is so much text on the postcard that it’s printed in a size 9 font. Are you going to take the time to read that? Maybe? Or maybe not?
Now think about your target demographic on your mailing list. Are you marketing to people who have owned a property a long time? People who are likely to be retirement age? For now let’s disregard the possibility that the person may not be interested in reading that much text. Is the individual even physically capable of reading that small text? If they won’t (or can’t) read it, what will that do to your response rate?
Then we have a simple postcard like this:
It’s concise. The font is large enough for a person to read without having to turn on a light or put their glasses on. It can be printed on a bright color cardstock to help it stand out, and since it’s a simple postcard it doesn’t take long for the person to read it. That makes it more likely to generate calls for you.
See more examples of effective and simple postcards here.
