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Contents
Have you ever received an advertising credit in the mail from Google, or a postcard from a powerhouse eCommerce brand like Dollar Shave Club? If so you may have asked yourself… is direct mail still a thing? Does postcard marketing work?
The answer, of course, is yes. Not only is postcard marketing effective, it actually rivals many digital channels when it comes to response rate and even cost.
Here are the average response rates by channel according to the Response Rate Report published by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA):
Source: DMA
Postcard marketing is still highly-effective for engaging customers and driving sales. Plus, when combined with online browsing data, postcards are more powerful than ever, which is why so many big brands use them today.
"Direct mail is still a great way to reach your audience, grab their attention, and connect with them on a personal level."
So we know it’s effective, but how well does postcard marketing work? According to some recent studies, very well. Here’s why you need to include postcards in your marketing stack.
People Like Receiving Postcards — Even Younger Generations
According to a USPS survey, the majority of people like receiving direct mail from brands they’re interested in, with 56% of surveyed participants saying that receiving direct mail is “a real pleasure”. In addition to that, a second study found that in 2016 direct mail response rates doubled for adults under 21.
Postcards are Memorable and Sticky
A Canada post study found that brand recall is 70% higher for consumers who have seen a piece of direct mail versus a digital advertisement. This seems obvious when you consider that postcards stick around in your customers' home long after being sent with an average lifespan of 17 days, versus 3 seconds or less for other channels.
Postcards Keep Your Competitors in the Dark
Unlike digital channels your competitors never have to know you’re sending postcards. This means there’s no way for them to spy on your campaigns and steal your strategy.
So does postcard marketing work? The Bottom line is that postcard marketing works very well and apps like Touchcard make it easier than ever to implement, track and automate. In this guide you will learn exactly how to send profitable postcard marketing campaigns that will delight your customers and generate more profit for your business.
Leverage Your Efforts
With postcard marketing your success depends almost entirely on three factors. Your mailing list, your offer, and your presentation.
While other marketing channels use invisible algorithms and factors you can’t see or influence, postcard marketing gives you almost complete control over what has the most impact on your success.
There is some debate on how much weight each factor holds, but it’s usually broken down something like this:
We’ll go into much more detail on each of these elements in later chapters, but for now, remember that if you focus your efforts where you have the most leverage, your postcard marketing campaign will be successful.
Get to the Point... Quickly
Postcard marketing is one of the most engaging channels available today—when it’s done right. That said, people scan their mail very quickly to see what’s worth a closer look and what’s not.
This means your recipients need to know what you’re offering and why it’s relevant to them in 3 seconds or less. Get straight to the point with a great offer to ensure your postcard gets the attention it deserves.
While postcards offer more real estate than a search ad, they’re still limited. Don’t clutter your design with distracting and irrelevant information. Include only what’s needed to get attention and the response you’re looking for.
Sample the Goods
Unlike digital marketing channels, once your mailer hits the streets it’s too late to edit your copy or adjust alignment on your graphics.
If you’re having a third party print and fulfil for you get a few physical samples to see exactly what your postcard looks like before pulling the trigger.
Triple check everything including the physical stuff like print and paper quality that can’t be judged on a computer screen. Think twice if a company refuses to provide free proofs.
Measure Your Success
As marketers today we’re spoiled. Pay per click platforms track everything automatically and even metrics you don’t need are readily available.
While most automated postcard marketing platforms do offer some analytics, don’t expect what you’re used to in Facebook. You may want to add your own layer of tracking so you can easily measure important metrics, which we’ll explain how to do later.
Optimize for Maximum Success
The most successful marketing campaigns are those that have been ruthlessly optimized for maximum ROI. This goes for all direct marketing, including postcard marketing.
Treat your first few mailings as a way to gather some baseline data and use the mailings that follow to test small tweaks that boost response. Your goal with each mailing is to beat the one that came before it.
Rely on Relevance
With postcard marketing, relevance is critical if you want to stand out in a sea of junk and ensure your postcard gets the attention it deserves.
The most effective mailings put highly relevant offers in front of the right people at what seems like the perfect time. To achieve this level of relevance you must pay close attention to audience selection and your offer. When you do this, your postcards become welcomed by your recipients.
Pay Attention to Timing
If possible, avoid competing for attention with other mail by having your postcard delivered on less busy days of the week. Generally speaking, shoot for Tuesdays and Thursdays while avoiding Mondays.
You’ll also want to consider other timing factors like when your recipients are most likely to be receptive to your postcard marketing, which you’ll learn about later in the guide.
Successful postcard marketing design should stand out in your recipient’s mailbox, guide their attention, and engage them long enough for you to present a compelling offer.
In this chapter you’ll learn:
- How to be the most interesting thing in your recipients mailbox
- How to ensure your postcard marketing design engages your audience
- How to use design best practices to subtly direct your readers attention
How to be the Most Interesting Thing In Your Recipient's Mailbox
Headlines:
Sam Thomas Davies from Quicksprout.com wrote a great article that offers a lot of value on how to write relevant and compelling headlines.
"A great headline convinces more people to read your copy while a poor one sends potential customers searching for somewhere else to spend their money."
Effective headlines are able to interrupt whatever your reader is doing and get them to pay attention. Your headlines job is to get your recipients attention and sell them on reading the rest of the copy on your postcard design. Great headlines do this in two ways.
- They are highly relevant to the reader
- They communicate a clear benefit
How to write relevant headlines:
So what might this look like on your postcard design?
Say you’re mailing to sneaker-heads. These are people who buy, collect, and trade sneakers as a hobby.
Using words that are relevant to this market (kicks, lows, mids, highs etc…) will get their attention and pique their interest.
You might consider heading over to Quora and Reddit to browse relevant threads for ideas about which words and phrases will resonate most with your audience.
You can make your headline even more relevant by using the most relevant word in any language, your recipient's name. If possible, use your recipient’s name in the headline to really get your postcard design noticed.
Adding benefits to your headline:
People tend to pay attention when they have something to gain, so including a clear benefit that’s valuable to your reader will make your postcard marketing design even harder to ignore.
Adding a benefit is as simple as injecting a piece of your offer into the headline. If you’re offering a discount, simply include that in the headline.
Here are some simple headlines that use relevance and benefits to get attention:
“Jessica, come back and save 25%”
“Welcome to the family Michelle, here’s 50% off on us!”
“Hey Mark, here’s an exclusive look at our new collection”
Building on our sneaker example your final headline might look like this:
“ Hey Jay, we know you’re a sneaker-head and we got you!
Save 25% on our new collection”
Headlines like the one above call your reader out by name and use relevant language to get their attention. There’s also a clear benefit that pulls the recipient in further giving them a reason to keep reading.
Images:
Your postcard marketing design should also use images that are relevant and bold enough to get your recipient to do a double take.
Continuing with the sneaker example, including an image of a very rare or highly coveted pair of sneakers on a high contrast postcard marketing design is likely to get that double take.
Here’s an example:
Personalized Postcard Marketing Design
Hyper-personalization
As mentioned above, using your recipient’s name is a surefire way to get noticed.
You can take this even further by including other relevant information in the copy of your postcard design.
If you have access to data like recent orders, birthdays, addresses, age and gender you can inject this information into your copy to help sell and make your postcard marketing design more relevant and personal.
Create a personal feel with real handwriting
Think handwritten notes and greeting cards. They typically come from people, not businesses, which means they’re more likely to be read.
Even if your recipient knows you’re a company, adding a personal touch will still make your postcard marketing design stand out in a sea of impersonal business solicitations.
Having your postcard addressed from a specific person with real handwriting adds a personal touch that’s hard to ignore.
Take half an hour to create a font library from your own handwriting to create a handwritten look that gets noticed and connects with your recipients on a personal level.
Add a human element with crooked stamps
This isn’t always possible with automated postcard marketing services, but if you’re manually sending in small batches, don’t underestimate the power of a real stamp placed just so.
These days real stamps stand out and communicate a small batch mailing that came from a real person who took the time to send a postcard and place the stamp themselves.
Grabbers
A grabber is simply something you incorporate into your postcard marketing design to grab attention and encourage engagement. A good grabber will make it near impossible for your postcard to be ignored.
A famous example is the “dollar bill grabber”. This included a real dollar bill attached to a piece of direct mail to grab attention.
This was usually accompanied by a short sentence explaining that the dollar bill would reveal its relevance later in the copy, piquing curiosity and pulling the reader in further.
The dollar bill grabber is a great example, but it’s important to remember that the most effective grabbers are attention grabbing and relevant.
Irrelevant grabbers may get attention, but they will hurt response when your recipient realizes you’re using a gimmick that has no relevance to the mailing.
Here’s an example of a relevant grabber used on Green Belgium’s postcard marketing design to raise awareness for world water day.
Image credit: Adage.com
The recipient was told to hold the postcard underwater to reveal a hidden message. Not only is the use of water relevant to world water day, the call to reveal a hidden message adds an element of curiosity that’s hard to resist.
Postcard Marketing Design that Influences
In addition to getting attention with your postcard marketing design, we’re also going to cover some design best practices that will help influence your readers and guide their attention so that reading your postcard is engaging and even enjoyable.
Postcard marketing design and layout
Your reader already has a preference for layout, so don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Use their preferences to guide them through your content in the way you want.
- Everything about your postcard marketing design should be purposeful and relevant. Talk in your recipients language, and use colours, fonts, and layouts they will respond to.
- Use objects, colour, pictures, shapes and positioning to guide your readers attention.
- The human eye typically moves from:
- Dark to light areas
- Large objects to small
- Bright areas to dull areas
- The eye will focus on things that are out of place: Colour, Size, Shape, and Position
- Make each side of a two-sided postcard look different so the reader never feels like they have already seen the content.
- In general, a clean design that’s high-contrast and symmetrical with a smooth layout that guides attention to an irresistible offer will be effective.
Text and copy
- Keep your readers engaged with short, easy to read paragraphs (1-2 sentences) that focus on the prospect and what they have to gain by responding to you.
- Let your copy take center stage by toning down bold imagery around important content. Visuals have their place, but great copy sells more than strong visuals.
- Reinforce your message by repeating it more than once. Your headline, body copy, call to action and the PS are all great places to do this.
Postcard marketing imagery
- Use bold images to get attention and guide your readers eyes in the direction you want them to go.
- Every image has a direction and your readers eyes will usually move in that direction. Choose and place images so they move your readers attention to the next piece of content.
- Show people what it’s like to use your product with in-use product pictures. When possible, use images that invoke your reader in the picture. For example, life size hands holding your product.
Contrast symmetry and white space
- Symmetry is a pillar of good design. When things line up nicely, they look good. Keep your margins, spacing and font alignment consistent. Stick to one, maximum two fonts.
- Use font colors that contrast with your background colors and are easy to read.
- Don’t be afraid of leaving some white space on your design. Include content that will sell, but remember your goal is to get a response, not fill every inch of your postcard.
While these design tips have generally been proven effective it’s important to remember that the highest converting postcard marketing designs are a product of rigorous testing.
Don’t be afraid to test different fonts, grabbers, images, and even change the entire appeal of your design to see what produces the highest conversion rates.
When planning a postcard marketing campaign the offer you put in front of your customers plays a critical role in the response. In fact, other than the list you’re targeting, the offer is the most important factor in your success.
Needless to say, it’s critical that you understand how to craft a compelling offer that moves your prospect to the desired response.
In this chapter, you will learn about:
- The three core elements of successful offers,
- Specific offers you can use in your postcard marketing campaigns
- When, and with which customers to use these offers
The 3 Core Elements of Compelling Postcard Marketing Offers
Different offers will appeal to different customer segments and some offers will be more suited to certain markets over others.
Be that as it may, there are 3 core elements that should always be included in your postcard marketing offers regardless of who’s receiving them.
You offer should:
- Be Appealing and Relevant
- Create a Sense of Urgency
- Have a Clear Call to Action
Here’s real life example of a postcard that uses a “Free Sample” offer to turn leads into customers. It checks 2 of the 3 boxes for compelling offers.
Postcard image credit: swiped
For the most part Graze does well with this offer. Although, there’s zero reference to urgency here. Graze might be able to improve their postcard marketing response with an expiration date or by limiting quantity.
We’ll critique a few more examples later in the chapter, but first lets go over how you can make your postcard marketing successful with the 3 core elements of a compelling offer.
1. Relevance and attractiveness
By definition a compelling offer must appeal to customers and be relevant to where they are in the customer journey.
For example, If you’re targeting high-value customers with your postcard marketing, you know these people are engaged and they probably enjoy hearing about your new products.
With this in mind you might craft an offer that entices these customers with an early look at your latest collection paired with a small discount or low-value premium.
Since these are already engaged customers, hearing about your latest products is relevant and probably even exciting to them.
Based on their buying history you can also assume they find your products appealing. A small discount or inexpensive premium may be all that’s needed to double-down on that appeal and move them to a purchase.
We suggest using the RFM model to better understand your customers and segment them based on their buying history. Doing this will let you better target customers with offers that are relevant to them.
| OFFER | WHEN TO USE |
| Shallow Discount | Engaged customers likely to buy regardless of offer |
| Low Value Premium | Engaged customers likely to buy regardless of offer |
| Mid Range Discount | Brand new customers |
| Deep Discount or Deep Discount + Premium | Inactive / at-risk customers |
| Buy One, Get One Free | New leads |
| Free Trial | New leads |
| Sliding Scale | When people are in buying mode. Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing Day. |
2. Urgency
Urgency is how you get your prospects to act now rather than later, or never.
Customers may have every intention of taking advantage of your offer, but if you let them wait long enough it will inevitably fall by the wayside.
By injecting a sense of urgency into your postcard marketing offers you ensure that customers take action before they forget or lose interest.
There are many ways you can add an element of urgency to your offer:
- A simple expiration date
- A scarcity warning (e.g., “Only 100 available!”)
- Delivery time warnings (Order before Nov 15th to receive by Christmas)
Typically we suggest using expiration dates because they are a simple and effective way to add urgency to your offer.
Postcard marketing automation services such as Touchcard will do this for you by automatically adding a dynamic expiration date to your postcard to increase urgency like in the example below.
To maximize results, you can also use urgency-focused language like “don’t miss out” and “before it’s too late”.
3. A clear call-to-action (CTA)
Once you’ve presented your offer you need to tell your prospects exactly how to claim it with a strong call to action (CTA), otherwise your conversions will suffer.
When it comes to writing effective CTA’s, there are 3 things to keep in mind:
- They are benefit driven
- They use urgency
- The offer explicit instruction
Imagine that your prospect sees your CTA and absolutely nothing else. Would they A) Understand you’re offering them something valuable, and B) Have all the information they need to take advantage of your offer?
If you can answer yes to that question you’re well on your way to writing effective CTA’s
Here’s an example of a very average CTA.
“Enter code 389HYW at checkout.”
The prospect can probably find the information they need by reading over the postcard and in many cases an average CTA like this will still get a response.
However, with the average human attention span clocking in at about 8 seconds, we shouldn’t rely on having our prospect search for the information they need to respond.
For maximum response, consider something more like this:
“Visit www.domain.com and use code 389HYW at checkout to save 30% today.”
The above example checks all the boxes. It offers explicit instruction with a clear benefit and it uses urgency based language to encourage the prospect to act now.
When placed prominently on your postcard design a CTA like this effectively communicates everything your prospect needs to convert all in one shot.
Bonus element: risk reversal
To make your offer even more appealing you can also add an element of risk reversal to your postcard marketing. Risk reversal just means showing your customers that you’re willing to take on the risk associated with the purchase.
One way to do this is by offering a satisfaction guarantee along with your offer.
Guarantees
If you currently offer a refund policy, then you’re already assuming the same risk you would with a guarantee, but very little of the benefit.
In this case, why not call it a guarantee instead of a refund policy and use it in your postcard marketing to help increase conversions?
Either create a guarantee or position your refund policy as a guarantee and use it in your offers to put your customers at ease. Let them know that if they’re not satisfied you’ll refund their money.
Chances are your refund rate will stay the same and you’ll see a nice bump in conversions.
Your guarantee should put your customers at ease, but it should also be fair.
Give your customers enough time to evaluate your product, but also put a limit on how long your guarantee is valid for.
30, 60 and 90 day windows are common, but in most cases one month is more than enough time for customers to decide they are satisfied with your product.
If you sell physical products you should also require that your customer return the product to receive their money back.
Free trials
If you sell consumable, disposable or subscription products another excellent way to reverse risk is with a free trial, which is an offer with risk reversal built right in.
Free trials are extremely effective at reversing risk because the prospect is not required to put any money on the table up front. You allow them to try your product for free, and if they like it they can choose to purchase.
Conversion is king
For free trials to be effective you must think hard about trial to customer conversion. Maximizing conversions requires an effective follow up process that converts trial customers into actual paying customers.
You should also be selective about who receives free trial offers. You want to be sure that trial customers are actually interested in your product and not just grabbing a freebie without intent to buy.
If you run a subscription business another option is to ask for a credit card up front and let the customer know that billing will start after the free trial ends. Be extra clear about how billing works and how long the trial lasts.
Not all products are great candidates for risk reversal, but if you sell something that is, try using it with your postcard marketing offers to improve response.
5 Example of Successful Offers in Postcard Marketing Campaigns
Now that you understand the 3 core elements of a compelling offer, let’s take a look at some real-world and fictional postcard marketing examples to see how they stack up.
1. Stand alone discount
Image credit: Kristen McCabe via g2
On this postcard, Pet Supplies Plus sends customers a 20% discount that can be used on all purchases.
2. Sliding scale
In this postcard marketing example, Specs offers two different discounts to maximize sales during busy times like Black Friday and Boxing Day. Let’s see how it fares on the scoreboard:
3. Discount + premium
In this example Magic Matcha offers a 40% discount plus a premium to inactive customers. Let’s see how it scores:
4. Premium with order
In this postcard marketing campaign Flitetbike targets loyal customers with its latest product line. Let’s see how their offer fares:
5. Buy one, get one free
Image credit: Swiped
Munchery gives new leads an opportunity to try their product with the “buy one, get one free” offer in this postcard marketing campaign. Here’s how the food delivery service scores:
Your mailing list, offer, and design are all crucial pieces of a successful postcard marketing campaign.
This is especially true when it comes to your list and targeting which is responsible for as much as 50% of your postcard marketing success.
In this chapter you’ll learn:
- The basics of the most effective segmentation model available (RFM)
- How to use RFM to ensure successful postcard marketing campaigns
- What to look for when buying or renting responsive mailing lists
The most important factors in successful postcard marketing
When you pair an attractive product with a relevant offer and you put it in front of a carefully selected audience, you drastically increase your chances of having a successful postcard marketing campaign.
Your first step is to decide whether you’re going to send postcards to your existing customers, or to a purchased or rented mailing list of cold prospects.
Successful Postcard Marketing to Your Existing Customers
Existing customers who are familiar with your brand are the most likely to respond, this means they should be your first targeting choice if you’re looking for maximum Return on ad spend (ROAS).
Don’t have physical mailing addresses?
If you have an email list without mailing addresses, here’s an idea:
Host a giveaway to incentivize your list.
In this article on Shopify’s blog, ecommerce writer Alexandra Sheehan credits giveaways for capturing customer data and recommends them for boosting customer engagement and conversions.
Create an email campaign that directs contacts to a simple giveaway landing page. Ask them to fill in the required fields (name, mailing address, etc…) for a chance to win something awesome.
Next, you’ll need to decide what a successful postcard marketing campaign looks like for you and which of your existing customers you’re going to mail to in order to achieve that.
One very effective tool for identifying which customers to target is the RFM model.
RFM is a powerful tool that helps you rank and identify customers based on their past interactions with your business.
RFM stands for Recency, Frequency, and Monetary value.
- Recency: How recently has the customer purchased from you?
- Frequency: How often does the customer buy from you?
- Monetary: How much has the customer spent?
Using the RFM model will help you answer questions like:
- Who are my best customers?
- Which customers have the potential to become more profitable?
- What customers are at risk of churning?
- Which customers have already churned and are unlikely to respond?
Simplified RFM
If you run on a platform like Shopify that lets you filter customers, you already have everything you need to get started with some basic RFM segmentation.
Platforms like this usually allow you to export customer lists according to last order date (Recency), number of orders (Frequency), and amount spent (Monetary Value).
For a successful postcard marketing campaign, try targeting by recency and send to all customers that have placed an order in the last 120 days or less.
RFM basics
Scoring:
When you apply RFM to your business, every customer is given a numerical value for each RFM factor — Recency, Frequency and Monetary Value.
A formula is then used to calculate a single RFM score for each customer, usually on a scale of 1-5 or 1-10.
Oftentimes R, F and M will be weighted individually so that their effect on the final score is based on how relevant each factor is to the business.
For example, if you run an ecommerce store that sells baby clothing to new parents your customers probably have a pretty finite life-cycle.
Given that, a successful postcard marketing strategy may place more value on recency as there’s a good chance it’s highly relevant for determining how likely customers are to buy from you again.
Segmentation:
Once you’ve assigned scores to your customers you can segment them based on the results. For example, you might have a segment for VIP customers and a segment of at risk customers that require different attention.
When you segment your customers in this way, you’re able to understand how valuable each customer is to your business and what kind of offers they are likely to respond to.
As a general rule, the higher the RFM score the more valuable the customer is to your business and the more successful your postcard marketing is likely to be.
Here’s a simplified version of that using a 1 -3 scoring system
In this example, Customer C is very likely to be receptive. Since they’re already engaged with your business, you might offer them an exclusive look at a new collection with a modest offer like 10% off.
Customers who rank well on the RFM scale have a high affinity to your products and are very likely to respond, making them a great targeting option for a successful postcard marketing strategy.
On the other hand, let’s say you’re looking to win back folks who were great customers early on but have not purchased from you in a while. RFM works well for identifying these customers too.
In this case, you might focus on customers who rank well on frequency and monetary spend, but low on recency, like customer D and customer F below:
RFM and beyond:
The more you understand about RFM, the more insight you will gain about how to target your customers and the more you can bet on a successful postcard marketing campaign.
To learn more about how to score and segment your customers with the RFM model watch this short Youtube video from Umacs Media.
Successful Postcard Marketing to Cold Mailing Lists
If your focus is bringing new customers into your business, postcard marketing is still a great way to do that. In this case you’ll likely be mailing a list of cold prospects.
Mailing to a list of cold prospects may have a lower response rate as these people probably don’t know who you are, yet. However, you can still execute a very successful postcard marketing campaign when you follow the best practices below.
Find a high-quality list
Partnerships
One cost effective way to find a quality mailing list is to consider exchanging your list with a non-competitive business that shares your customer base. For example, if you sell selfie-sticks maybe you could try to get a smartphone case retailer to agree to a list swap.
Not only is this approach affordable, but you get the added benefit of trust and familiarity if your partner agrees to endorse your product.
If you decide to take this approach, be sure you’re partnering with a reputable business that has a good relationship with their customers.
Use a list broker
If you decide that buying or renting a list is the way to go, you’ll want to work with a first-class list broker. A reputable list broker will help you find a high-quality list and negotiate the best rates with list owners.
Consider the following things when buying or renting a list.
Freshness
How often is the data updated?
Do they update the mailing addresses for those who have moved? Do they frequently add new names to the list?
A high-quality list should be updated at least once per month.
Source
Was the list compiled, or obtained based on response?
Compiled lists are obtained without the permission of the contacts. They are compiled from sources such as directories and public records.
While these lists are valuable, they may have lower response rates than lists compiled based on response.
Lists compiled based on response are made up of people who have taken an action that indicates their interest in a specific product or service.
Perhaps they have previously purchased a specific type or nutritional supplement or signed up for a supplement oriented mailing list.
If you run a supplement company this may be a good list to consider because the people on it have shown clear interest in a related product.
Segmentation
How the list is segmented just refers to how it’s organized. Popular segments might include the following.
- Demographics (e.g. age, occupation)
- Geographics (e.g. country, state)
- Psychographics (e.g. hobbies)
- Firmographics (e.g. Industry, sales, not for profit)
You may decide to target a very specific audience that includes a combination of segments. If this is the case it’s important to know if that’s possible. When reviewing a list be sure to ask how it’s segmented.
Buying vs. renting
When you buy a list you can use it repeatedly but you will be required to update it on your own. When you rent, you only get to use it once.
Deciding to rent or buy typically depends on your budget, your long term goals and your test results.
If you’re just starting out with postcard marketing as a lead generation channel or you plan to send infrequently, buying may not be worth it at first.
Try starting with a test. If your test does well and you’re planning to make postcards a big part of your marketing strategy, see if you can purchase the list.
When buying a list try to find a broker that offers list updates as part of the purchase agreement. This will cost more upfront but it will save you a lot of time and effort.
Start with a test
You’ll want to test the list before you commit to sending a high volume of postcards. Start by sending small batches of postcards to a few different lists to see which ones produce the best results.
Start by running tests of 500 names for local mailings or 5,000 for national ones.
Clone your existing customers
Anytime you’re mailing a list of fresh leads, the leads you’re targeting should look as much like your existing high-value customers as possible.
Think Facebook lookalike audiences but for postcard marketing.
If you’re partnering with another company ask some questions and do some research to understand how similar your customers are before jumping in.
If you’re going through a broker and you have a list of your own high-value customers, share it with them. They should be able to run it through software to find prospects similar to your existing customers that are likely to buy from you.
Quality over quantity
A successful postcard marketing campaign is almost always the result of targeting a small group of hyper-interested prospects over a large group with less well-defined interests.
For example, if you sell memorabilia (e.g. coins, celebrity autographs), you might put more emphasis on psychographic targeting (based on hobbies) over geographic targeting (based on location). Your list will be smaller, but much more targeted.
Don’t be afraid to narrow it down as much as you can so that you’re only targeting the most relevant prospects. This will save you money and likely lead to a more successful postcard marketing strategy.
In this chapter, you will learn what a successful postcard campaign looks like.
We’ll go over 4 examples of successful postcard campaigns that you can use in your business to help you:
- Reward your loyal customers
- Turn first-time buyers into repeat customers
- Convert cold leads into customers
- Convince ‘at-risk’ customers to buy from you again
1. Loyalty Postcard Campaign
Campaign overview:
Show loyal customers your appreciation for them and let them know about your latest products to drive more sales. A loyalty postcard campaign will typically have the highest response rates.
What it looks like:
- Targeting: Customers who rank high on all RFM values (Recency, Frequency, and Monetary spend).
- Sequence: 1 postcard that promotes a new product.
- Offer: 10% off + low-value premium when they purchase a new product you’re offering. For example, a travel mug and 10% off on your brand new Reishi mushroom coffee.
- Expiration date: 2 weeks after postcard arrives.
Best practices:
Fall back on recency and frequency for targeting
That is, if you don’t have enough customers who rank high on all RFM values. In this case, target customers who rank high on order recency and frequency. Customers who rank high on these values are also very likely to respond.
Use modest offers
A loyalty postcard campaign targets responsive, high-value customers, so you can usually get away with modest offers. Low-value premiums, small discounts and free shipping used alone or in combination towards new products are often winners.
New and exciting sells to this crowd
These are your most engaged customers so they are very interested in hearing about your new products. For maximum engagement build your loyalty offers around new and exciting products. If you’re a fashion brand launching your new Summer line, your VIP customers should be the first to hear about it.
2. Welcome and Thank You Postcard Campaign
Campaign overview:
The thank you postcard campaign is a great way to welcome new customers and get that important second order that converts one-time buyers into repeat customers.
What it looks like:
- Targeting: Customers who spent at least $X on their first order.
- Sequence: 1 postcard that arrives two weeks after the order is fulfilled.
- Offer: 15 – 20% off second purchase.
- Expiration date: 1 – 2 weeks after the postcard arrives.
Best practices:
Target based on monetary spend
Target new customers based on how much they spent on their first order. Test different thresholds to see what produces the highest return on ad spend (ROAS). Did $50 perform better than $100? Go with $50 then!
Have your thank you postcard arrive about two weeks after the product is fulfilled. This gives customers ample time to decide they’re happy with your product while still being excited about their recent purchase.
Combine simple headlines with a heavily branded design
Simple headlines like “Thank you” and “Welcome” on heavily branded designs work well for this type of postcard campaign. Consider personalizing your headlines and adding benefits to get noticed and improve response. For example, “Welcome to the gang, Jane! Save 20% on your next order.”
Your thank you postcard campaign should generate sales while also reminding customers about your business and the good feelings they got with their order. To achieve this, use a prominently placed logo and consistent branding.
For a great example of a well executed thank you postcard campaign that generated 38X ROAS, check out this Touchcard case study.
3. Lead Generation Postcard Campaign
Campaign overview:
A Lead generation postcard campaign will allow you to convert a highly targeted direct mailing list into warm leads and customers. Your end goal is to create customers, but depending on your business you may start by generating leads.
What it looks like:
- Targeting: Highly targeted mailing list of cold leads (borrowed, rented or purchased).
- Sequence: 3 postcards sent 1 week apart.
- Offer: Free sample product or heavily discounted product.
- Expiration date: 1 month from the day the first postcard is received.
Best practices:
The money is in the list
As with any postcard campaign, your list and targeting is the most important factor in your success. Make sure your list is highly targeted for best results.
Lead magnets / offers MUST be especially irresistible
Targeting cold lists is more difficult than selling to existing customers regardless of whether you’re generating a lead or going straight for a sale. In either case, your lead magnet / offer must be especially irresistible.
If it makes sense for you to go for the sale up front consider these examples of compelling offers:
- Heavily discounted product
- Heavily discounted product + very desirable premium
- Free product, just pay shipping
- Product for a penny, or dollar
If you’re going straight for a sale remember your goal is to create a customer and not necessarily extract maximum profit on the first order.
Your profit will often come on future purchases and once the initial sale is made those future purchases will get easier to make.
If you sell a higher priced product with a lower purchase frequency then generating a warm lead might be a better route to take. Start by getting your prospect to indicate interest by requesting a lead magnet that doesn’t require any money upfront.
Sample products and free trials work great here because they allow your customers to test the goods. If you’re targeting is on point and your product is stellar, you’ll have no problem converting those leads into customers.
Here’s a great example of a postcard that uses a free sample lead magnet.
Lead generation postcard from graze, a subscription food service based in the UK.
Source: swiped
For more creative lead magnet ideas, watch this short video by Kurt Elster from Ethercycle.
Increase your conversions with follow up
Once your prospect requests your lead magnet or places their first order you need to start building a relationship with them immediately.
To do this, consider following up with an email drip campaign or more postcards. Your goal is to build a relationship so that you can get those leads to purchase, or get new customers to continue buying.
If they bounced from your landing page without taking any action at all, there’s still hope. Follow up with retargeting ads on Facebook or Google for a second, third, or fourth chance at winning them over.
Follow up can get expensive so the amount you do should be determined by the potential lifetime value of your customer.
Sell with curiosity and benefits
People need information before buying especially from a business they’re unfamiliar with. Your postcard will have limited real estate so you want to get prospects to your landing page as quickly as possible.
You can do this by using curiosity and benefit driven offers. Once your prospect reaches your landing page, seal the deal by reiterating your offer with benefits that sell, risk reversal, a deadline, social proof, along with answers to common objections.
Test both approaches
Whether your postcard campaign starts by generating leads or asking for a sale will depend on many factors including your market and the economics in your business. If you’re not immediately sure which approach is best for you, start by generating leads and consider testing both approaches.
4. Win-Back Postcard Campaign
Campaign overview:
Reactivate old customers who have not purchased from you in a while using a win-back postcard campaign.
What it looks like:
- Targeting: Customers who have not placed an order in X number of days. (exact number of days should be based on your average reorder time).
- Sequence: 3 postcards that arrive 30 days apart.
- Offer: Escalating discount from 20 – 40%.
- Expiration date: 2 weeks after each postcard arrives.
- Additional notes: In this type of campaign you will use 3 separate offers. 1 offer for each postcard.
Best practices:
Have realistic expectations
Win-back campaigns can produce top-notch results when done right. However, since we’re targeting inactive customers be prepared for a lower response than you’d expect from other segments.
Go big with offers
Your inactive customers are likely nearing the end of their lifecycle. Your goal is to reactivate them so offer heavy discounts and / or premiums to persuade them to buy from you again.
You still have a very good chance of winning these customers back so to make your offer even more appealing build it around one of your most popular products.
Pay attention to average re-order time
On average, how frequently do you customers order from you? If your customers order from you every 60 days or so be sure to implement your winback campaign after 60 days of inactivity, not before.
This approach ensures you’re not offering heavy discounts to customers who would have otherwise bought from you without incentive.
Use escalating discounts
Allocate your marketing resources effectively by saving better offers for customers who are the least likely to buy again. In other words, the longer the period of inactivity the better the offer should be.
The third and final postcard should make it clear that it’s the last offer in the sequence and there will not be a fourth postcard with a better offer.
Tracking your postcard marketing campaign is very important to your success because it lets you know what’s working, what’s not, and most importantly, where you can do better.
In this chapter you will learn how to:
- Create a basic postcard marketing plan from scratch,
- Identify a goal, target response, and the core metrics that best fit your campaign, and
- Track these responses so you can easily measure the campaign’s effectiveness
How to Create a Basic Plan for Your Postcard Marketing Campaign
There are three steps to developing a plan for every new postcard campaign. Let’s take a closer look:
1. Identify your goal
Every campaign starts with a goal. Ask yourself: “What do I want to achieve?”
Here are some examples:
“I want to increase the flow of qualified leads coming into my business”
“I want my most loyal customers to buy my new product.”
“I want my one-time customers to buy from me again.”
Once you know what you want to achieve, make it more real with a number.
Perhaps you’re a dental clinic that wants to generate 100 new phone leads with a lead generation postcard marketing campaign.
Maybe you’re an ecommerce apparel brand looking to generate $70,000 in sales from your new collection.
Or, perhaps you run an online swimwear store that wants to increase their new buyer to repeat customers conversions from 30% to 75%.
Identifying your goal is simply a matter of asking yourself “What must happen for your postcard marketing campaign to be a success?”
2. Identify target response
Next, define the goal as a target response. This will give you a specific response to aim for and track. It will also allow you to gauge the progress you’re making.
For the dental clinic that wants 100 new phone leads, their target response would be a phone call.
For the apparel ecommerce brand looking to generate $70,000 in sales, their target response would be an actual sale.
In the case of the swimwear store that wants to convert new buyers into repeat customers their target response would be a second purchase.
After identifying your target response, the next step is to estimate how many postcards you need to send to hit your goal. Work backwards and reverse engineer it.
If you want 100 responses, a quick estimation will tell you that you probably need to send around 1,400 postcards assuming a 7% conversion rate.
3. Decide on core metrics
Lastly, decide on the core metrics you’ll need to track the success of your postcard marketing campaign.
Here are some examples of common metrics and how to calculate them:
Response rate: The number of customers who respond to a postcard campaign.
How to calculate it: Responses / Postcards sent
Conversion rate: The percentage of customers who take action (e.g., buy a product, leave a review)
How to calculate it: Number of orders / Responses
Return on investment (ROI): The amount of return on a marketing investment.
How to calculate: (Revenue – Campaign cost) / Campaign cost
Cost-per-acquisition (CPA): The cost of acquiring a paying customer on a marketing campaign level.
How to calculate: Campaign cost / Number of orders
Customer lifetime value (CLV): The total amount of money a customer is predicted to spend in a business during their lifetime.
How to calculate it: Average value of a purchase X Number of times the customer will buy each year X Average length of the customer relationship (in years)
Let’s explore how these core metrics work using the example of the apparel ecommerce store we mentioned above.
To recap, the store has a goal of generating $70,000 in sales from their latest collection.
Assuming this is their first shot at postcard marketing, they may want to use their campaign to understand whether postcard marketing is a good fit for their business and see how it compares to other marketing channels.
Of course, the store will be tracking all sales generated by their campaign and given their goals they should also be tracking these core metrics.
Conversion rate – Shows the percentage of customers who successfully complete the campaigns target response and helps the store measure performance improvements.
ROI – Indicates how profitable postcard marketing is for the business—which is a useful way to see how postcard marketing compares to other channels and if it’s worth investing in for the future.
How to Track Response and Measure Effectiveness
Once you’ve decided on a target response for your postcard marketing campaign, you’ll need a way to measure and track it.
Depending on the core metrics you’ve chosen you may also need a way to track other customer actions. Here are a few common examples along with strategies for capturing the data.
Website traffic and clicks
First, ensure that you’ve added Google Analytics tracking code to your website, and any other tracking code you will need to track online responses.
There are two ways to track traffic and clicks using Google Analytics: Custom URLs and Parameters.
(a) Custom URLs
To start off, create a new page on your website. Ensure that the URL for this page is only shown on your postcards.
Stick to short and memorable URLs as long URLs are harder to remember and may contribute to lower response.
You can then include this custom URL on your postcards with a strong call to action.
To see the traffic generated by your postcards, sign in to Google Analytics. Go to Behavior > Behavior Flow > Site Content > All Pages.
(b) Parameters
Use this when you have multiple marketing channels (e.g., email, Facebook ads) driving traffic to a single page and you want to know which channel drives the best results.
To begin, enter your webpage URL on the Google Campaign URL Builder.
Fill in the fields marked with *. Once that’s done, scroll down to the bottom and copy the generated URL. Like this:
You can then shorten this long URL on Bitly and even consider turning it into a branded link to include on your postcards.
To track and measure results from your postcard marketing, sign in to Google Analytics. Go to Behavior > Behavior Flow > Site Content > All Pages.
Google analytics will provide and store this data, however, you may want to consider tracking all performance data in a spreadsheet so that everything is in one place and easier to review as a whole.
Need help setting up your Google analytics code?
Hey Carson offers a great service that lets you hire highly-skilled Shopify developers to help with all of your Shopify needs. Check out Heycarson.com for help setting up your Google Analytics code or any other Shopify related tasks you may need help with.
Email opt-in forms and submissions
Start by setting up a new landing page specifically for your postcard marketing campaign. Once again, make sure the URL for this page is not shown elsewhere except on your postcards and stick to short and punchy URLs.
Next, create a sign-up form in your email autoresponder (Mail Chimp, Klaviyo etc…).
Have people who fill out that form added to a designated list (e.g., “Postcard Campaign [Product]”) and segment them accordingly. Your email autoresponder should do most of this automatically.
Embed the HTML code for this form on your new landing page and Include the URL of this newly created landing page on your postcards, like this:
Once your campaign starts generating responses you can sign in to your email autoresponder account to see the number of subscribers who have responded to the call to action on your postcard and submitted the form.
3. Phone calls
Depending on the type of business you run you may want to track phone calls. There are 2 ways to do this depending on the level of tracking you’re looking for.
(a) Unique toll-free phone numbers
Get a unique toll free number and use it exclusively for your postcard marketing campaign. You can then manually track the number of calls that come through this line and record them on a spreadsheet.
(b) Call tracking software
There's no shortage of call tracking services out there that will take your call tracking to the next level. These services will allow you to set up multiple phone numbers making it easy to run high-quality A/B tests.
When customers call these tracking numbers this software will collect a host of useful data and even integrate with you Google analytics account
These platforms also have a built in call recording feature which will allow you to review conversations, get to know your customers and optimize your sales process.
Related resources:
Call Tracking: A Key Component in Campaign Marketing Analytics | Neil Patel
Call Tracking Analytics: The Ultimate Guide to Tracking Offline Calls With Online Data | Neil Patel
4. Sales
(a) In-store
Two ways: Print a unique code on your postcards for customers to use in-store only or have them show you the postcard when they visit in-person.
Have your staff track the sales in a tracking system like a spreadsheet.
(b) Online
The best way to track online sales is through an automated postcard marketing app like Touchcard.
Touchcard automatically generates unique discount codes that get printed on every postcard—this means that each customer gets their own unique discount that can only be used one time.
These discount codes are automatically tracked so you can see a running total of all sales generated by your postcard marketing in the dashboard.
If you’re not using a postcard marketing app there are a few other ways to track online sales.
E-commerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce allow you to manually create discount codes and assign usage limits. You can print these codes on your postcards and track redemptions in your eCommerce dashboard.
Payment processors like Stripe will also allow you to create discount codes with expiration dates that you can track from inside of your account.
Don’t want to use a discount code? Depending on your business you can still track manually using unique thank you pages that customers are directed to after checkout.
When customers land on these pages you’ll know it was the result of your postcard marketing efforts.
6. Video views
To begin, create a new landing page on your website. As always, use a short and memorable URL. Then upload your video to YouTube and make it unlisted.
An unlisted video won’t appear on YouTube. Only people who have access to the URL can view it. Since the unlisted video is only accessible to people with the link, this tells you that the number of views the video has are a direct result of your postcard marketing campaign.
Next, copy the HTML embed code of this unlisted video and paste it on your new landing page. Include the landing page’s URL on the postcard.
Sign in to YouTube Studio. On the menu’s left column, go to Analytics to track and measure the results.
YouTube Analytics is loaded with useful insights. On the dashboard, you’ll see additional layers of data like:
Reach: Views, unique views, impressions, impressions click-through rate. These metrics will give you useful insight on how engaged your postcard recipients are with your video.
Engagement time: Watch time, average view duration, top videos. These tell you the type of video content that your postcard recipients prefer.
Audience: Top countries, top subtitle languages, age, gender. These insights help when building a buyer persona.
You can also consider using a paid video hosting service like Vimeo. You won’t get the same audience insights but you’ll get plenty of other tracking capabilities along with a more clean looking video and no Youtube ads.
Related resources:
YouTube Analytics: A Simple Guide to Tracking the Right Metrics | Hootsuite
Optimization and testing. These are the two things you need to pay attention to if you want to have the most effective postcard marketing campaign possible.
In this chapter we’ll go over some strategies to help you improve your postcard marketing performance so that you’re getting maximum ROI from your campaigns.
You will learn how to:
- Increase ROI from your postcard campaign by optimizing your targeting,
- (Re)create and test new offers that will improve your conversion rates
- Get a better response by testing new creatives.
1. Optimize Targeting
Targeting a more responsive audience is likely to have the biggest impact on how effective your postcard marketing will be. So if you’re looking to improve performance start here.
Allocate your postcard marketing ad spend—you want to spend more money sending postcards to the high-value customers that are most likely to convert.
Here’s what you must do: Review your conversion data carefully to understand where the majority of your conversions and revenue is coming from.
When you do this you may discover that 80% of your postcard revenue comes from just 20% of the customers you’re sending to. By shifting your focus to the higher value 20% you’re very likely to improve your returns.
Let’s explore this in a real-world example.
When Fright Rags launched their thank you postcard campaign they targeted new customers who spent $25 or more on their first order.
These customers received their postcards along with a 20% discount towards their next purchase.
The campaign got off to a good start—it converted at 7.4% and earned $4.37 in revenue for each postcard sent.
After reviewing conversion data Fright Rags decided to shift their targeting to customers who had spent at least $100 on their first order instead of the initial $25. In other words they targeted a higher value customer segment by focusing on those who had spent more on their initial purchase.
It worked. Fright Rags:
- Saw revenue per postcard jump to $7.40
- Increased average reorder value from $59.08 to $80.47, and
- Enjoyed a 69% Increase in Return-on-Ad-Spend (ROAS)
You can read the full case study below.
This is an example of how targeting customers with a higher monetary value can lead to a much more effective postcard marketing campaign.
Or course, there are other segments you can look at to optimize your targeting including recency and frequency of purchase that are explained in chapter 5 on targeting and list selection.
1. Test a New Offer
Testing a new offer is the next best thing you can do to level up your postcard marketing campaign’s effectiveness.
First, ensure your offer includes these 3 core elements:
- It’s relevant and appealing to the customer segment you’re targeting
- It creates urgency with an expiration date
- It has a clear call-to-action (CTA)
Can you change the way your offer is presented to make it appear more valuable, or would one of the offers below be more appealing to your audience?
- Simple discount
- Sliding scale discount
- Discount + premium
- Premium with order
- Buy one, Get one free
- Free sample
Review Chapter 4 on The Anatomy of a Compelling Offer to learn which offers are most appealing to different customer segments.
The most effective postcard marketing campaigns are a result of testing, so even if your existing offer is performing well that doesn’t mean you can’t improve returns further by testing a new offer against your current one.
For example, a home decor ecommerce brand might test a 15% off discount against 15% discount + premium.
The second offer seems more appealing and could have a higher conversion rate. However, offer 1 may actually net more profit because skipping the premium keeps more margin in your pocket.
You may even find there’s zero difference in conversion rate. In this the first offer is going to be the more effective offer for your postcard marketing campaign.
Once you have a solid offer you can consider testing other aspects to improve response further. You might test different expiration windows (e.g., 1 week against 2 weeks), or percent versus dollar amount discounts (e.g., 20% off vs $20 off).
1. Test a New Creative
A responsive audience and a great offer can really move the performance needle for your postcard marketing campaign. However, we can’t play down the value of great creative that captures attention and gets people to act now.
There are many design elements you can play with to bump your response rate. Here are a few examples of things you can try testing.
Colors: Test different color combinations on your creative. Do you get a better response when you change background colors? Font colors?
Selling Devices: You might test an explicit list of benefits VS. social proof in the form of testimonials to see which converts better. Or, do both together get the best response.
Shapes: If your creative includes shapes in the design, try different shapes, different positions, or try removing them altogether. If you’re not using shapes, try including them as a way to guide your prospects’ attention.
Images: In-use product shots VS. Product close ups.
Layouts: Portrait VS. Landscape? Or, does changing the layout and position of images, copy, and CTA lead to more conversions?
And of course we can’t forget one of the most important pieces of your creative. The copy itself.
"Great products are important, strong visuals are essential, but words are ultimately what allow you to tell great stories, connect with your website visitors on an emotional, human level, and build a loyal customer base."
There are a few different approaches to testing your copy, we’ll start with the basics.
Words and phrasing
Generally speaking you want to use words and phrases that emulate the way your customer speaks. That said, try testing different words and phrases especially in sentences that communicate important things like benefits.
For example:
"Get 50% off your first month of freshly prepared organic meals."
"Get half off your first month of freshly prepared organic meals."
Both sentences are essentially the same but one may be more appealing than the other. Test both to find out which one.
You can take it step further by testing things like the overall tone and appeal of your copy too.
Tone
If you’re selling maternity wear to pregnant women, the tone you take would be very different than if you’re selling hunting gear to hunting enthusiasts, or high-performance computer parts to hardcore gamers.
The difference in tone across these 3 examples might be pretty extreme, but it’s a good illustration of how the way you speak to your customers impacts how they connect with your brand.
Try taking a slightly different tone with your audience. Talk to them a bit differently and see if it improves response.
Appeal
How does the copy on your postcards appeal to your recipients. For example, does your copy appeal to the idea of gaining something or losing something?
If you’re selling a workout program, what appeals more to your audience? Losing weight, gaining muscle, or both?
Consider taking different angles and testing copy that appeals to your consumers in different ways.
In all cases the most convincing copy uses your prospects language and should mirror the conversation that’s already going on in their head.
A word on testing
Whether you’re optimizing your targeting, testing a new offer or tweaking your creative it’s important to conduct single variable tests for best results.
In other words, only test one thing at a time so if there’s a change in performance you can pinpoint what caused it.
Let’s say you’re looking to increase response by testing variations of your creative. What would this look like?
First, duplicate the original version of your postcard.
Label the original postcard Version A and the duplicated can be Version B.
In Version B, change only one element and keep everything else identical.
For example, if you want to test imagery, swap only the images. Don’t change anything else for this test.
Only the photo is different for these two versions of the postcard.
Next, split your list. Version A will go to half of your audience and Version B will go to the other half. To get accurate test results make sure you’re sending the two variations to the exact same audience segment.
Always try to beat the control
Your control is simply the list, offer, creative etc… that you’re currently using. Your goal with testing new variations is always to outperform the control.
Let’s say your new image outperforms your old one. In this case the postcard with the new image is now your control and your goal is to beat it in future tests.
Bonus Strategies
Implementing the strategies we’ve discussed above are likely to have the most significant effect on your postcard marketing performance, so we suggest starting with those.
However, if you’re curious about how you can improve performance further here are 2 bonus strategies you can add to your postcard marketing arsenal.
Bonus 1: Add Additional Touchpoints
It’s often said that marketing is a process, not an event. Apply this principle to improve your postcard marketing by adding additional touchpoints from other marketing channels like Facebook and email.
You’ll get more eyeballs on your products, increase familiarity with your brand, raise the odds of converting more customers and ultimately have a more successful postcard marketing campaign.
Let’s say a men’s grooming ecommerce store decides to run a postcard marketing campaign to generate new leads.
They decide to go with a multi-step strategy and send 3 postcards over a period of 1 month. These postcards direct leads to the shop’s landing page for a special offer.
But here’s the thing: Some users may visit the landing page without taking any action.
To get them to complete said action, the ecommerce brand could add a Facebook retargeting pixel to their landing page and create some Facebook retargeting ads. Whenever these leads are on Facebook they’ll see ads that persuade them to come back and complete the action.
You can also have retargeting ads appear on blogs and other popular websites using advertising platforms like Google ads and Adroll.
There are many different channels you can incorporate into your campaign strategy to add more touchpoints and squeeze out a better response from you postcard marketing.
Let’s say you’re targeting new customers with a welcome and thank you campaign. You might wait until your customer has received the postcard and then follow up with 3 emails that arrive within the expiration window.
Receiving a postcard in the mail is a delightful surprise for your new customers. It’s also a tangible touchpoint that adds credibility and increases repeat orders. The follow-up emails will further engage customers and increase response without any additional ad spend.
You can also combine all 3 of these marketing channels in your overall strategy to increase brand awareness and improve conversions.
Additional resources:
- Facebook Ads: Facebook Ads for Beginners: A Step-By-Step Guide to Running Your First Campaign | Shopify
- Google Ads: The Ultimate Google Ads Guide | AdEspresso
- Email Marketing: Email Marketing: The Definitive Guide | Backlinko
Bonus 2 : Optimize Timing
Many businesses have times of the year when their products are most in demand.
Fitness related products may see a surge in demand during January after people make New Year’s resolutions to get into better shape.
If your business has a peak season, you likely know when that is and already double down on your marketing to capitalize on the increased demand.
What about timing in the short term though? Your business likely has windows of opportunity when your customers are most receptive to your postcard marketing.
If your products have emotional appeal like clothing or jewelry, there’s a chance your customers will be thinking about another purchase as quickly as a week after they receive their first order.
If you’re waiting 2 weeks before you reach out to these customers for another purchase try following up as soon as one week to see if it improves response.
If you run a supplement brand customers may be highly likely to place another order around the 20-25 day mark when their 30 day supply is running low.
These windows of opportunity will be different for every business. To understand them, review your recency data to see when your customers are most likely to buy again following a purchase.
You can now time your postcard marketing campaigns to capitalize on these small windows of opportunity and increase your postcard marketing response rate.
The bottom line: Understand when customers are most likely to buy from you. You can leverage this insight to target customers at the perfect time and create an even more successful postcard marketing campaign.
By now you should be well on your way to sending some high-converting postcard campaigns that generate revenue for your business.
However, If you need some design inspiration for a specific campaign you’d like to send here are 4 postcard templates in Photoshop format that you can download and use completely free.
Download the Photoshop templates below and simply replace the text and imagery with your own and you’re good to go.
Loyalty Postcard
Use this VIP loyalty postcard to thank your best customers and let them know you value their loyalty with a small discount.
Download: VIP Photoshop Postcard Template
Welcome and Thank You Postcard
Welcome your brand new customers, thank them for their first order and invite them back for a second purchase with this postcard.
Lead Generation Postcard
Send this postcard to a list of highly targeted leads to get an initial sale and convert them into new customers.
Win-Back Postcard
Use this design to reach out to customers you have not heard from in a while. Let them know you haven’t forgotten about them and would love to see them come back.
Download: Win-Back Photoshop Postcard Template
Next Steps...
To learn more about how you can send profitable postcard marketing campaigns drop us a line using the chat in the right hand corner, or check out our Shopify app.