Printed postcards are one of the most powerful forms of direct marketing. Their versatility means that both big and small businesses can include them in their marketing strategy. Despite the emergence of new high-tech channels for reaching customers, here are a few ways sending postcards generates more online sales.
Personal Touch
Postcards allow you, the business owner, to add a customized message to your target clients. The customer feels that the business cares about them, especially when delivered during certain holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, or get-well-soon packages.
Postcards are meant to evoke emotions in the clients. These emotions increase brand loyalty, and your products remain top-of-mind among your target clientele. The customers are likely to stick with the brand for a long time.
Cost-Effectiveness of Postcards
A postcard does not cost a lot to print. They cost even less to post. This allows your business to get a lot done with the marketing budget. When done in bulk, your business can send over 1000 cards for less than 10 cents for each.
What is even better? Tracking the effectiveness of postcards as a marketing channel is not too complicated. You can monitor the number of new inquiries, new business leads, and sales versus the number of cards sent or the amount used on the campaign.
Versatility of Postcards
Few channels can be purposed to get as many things done as postcards. Businesses can use them to inform clients about a new product, offers, and promotions, or send a personalized message to a client.
They can also be made using unique designs, colors, layouts, and sizes to fit the message you want to get across. These customizing options increase the likelihood that recipients of the cards will go online and check out your business. In fact, you can always include a call-to-action when sending postcards.
High Readership
Postcards are not subject to spam filters that inhibit the effectiveness of email newsletters. Email newsletters are often seen as a nuisance to a lot of customers. However, with these, the client does not need to open them. They can already see who it’s from, the messaging is not wordy, and the designs are often done in warm colors.
The readership of print is as high as 90%. Such high readership signals that inquiries and conversions are generally higher than other channels as well.
Easily Integrated with Other Channels
It’s easy to combine print postcards with other marketing channels. For instance, when working with influencers, you can send them packages to unbox together with a print postcard. They will normally post an unboxing video together with the message on the postcard.
You can also send new business prospects cards before making a call to them. These cards can also be sent as a follow-up after a business meeting. It shows thoughtfulness and care, which are important when attempting to convert leads into an actual business.
Conclusion
While postcards are an already proven way to grow online sales, you need a written strategy to succeed with them. It would be best to consider using a postcard printer to save yourself the logistical challenges of sending hundreds or thousands of cards. They will also help you come up with an appropriate design for your campaigns.
You need to set realistic and measurable goals for your postcard campaign. They should make clients respond through inquiries and purchases. Postcards alone are not enough to build a brand. It would help if you branded yourself using other channels. Finally, talk to people who have done postcard marketing before and listen to what their experiences were like.