Top Considerations for Marketing with Postcards

In our information-overloaded society, making your communications direct and to the point is a critical part of getting your message heard. Postcards provide a classic vehicle for doing just that. Marketing with postcards has been practiced with a lot of success for decades.

Printing services that do postcards are also likely candidates for greeting card printing, giving you an easy shot at building your brand by coordinating the design of your marketing products with cards that you use just to keep in touch with your customers, once you have obtained their business.

Combine Printer Services

Sending birthday cards to customers’ works similarly to mailing postcards in that both are likely to be read. Whereas many sealed envelopes that appear to contain promotional material will get tossed directly from the mailbox into the trash can, greeting cards will at least get opened and looked at. Postcards arrive without an envelope, so by the time the recipient has figured out what it is, they have it in their hand and have already read part of it so may as well look it over.

Since you are already dealing with a printing company when you order your postcards, you might consider finding out whether they also do label printing. Labels can typically be printed in your own office, even if you only have an inkjet printer, but if you are doing a mailing of postcards, why not use a label that blends in with the card itself, rather than one that is obviously “homemade.”

Benefits of Professional Printing

Another thing to consider in making your own labels is that inkjet ink is water-based and will run badly if it gets wet. The post office does a good job of delivering mail in all weather conditions, and generally is able to keep it dry, but mailboxes may leak and customers often pick up their mail in the rain, and if getting a little wet turns your postcard into an inky mess, it will surely get thrown out.

The quality of the printing on your postcards is another consideration that is important in finding the right online printing company. You want your piece to be appropriate for your line of work so that it will give your customers the right feel for your product or services, but even if you market a “bargain brand” you don’t want to look cheap. Designs that look like they came from a CD you picked up at the dollar store just will not be worth the price of the card, and worse yet, can put off potential customers so that they no longer consider you to be someone with whom they would like to do business.

Most online printing services will send free samples of their work so that you can see exactly what kind of quality you can expect if you place an order. Trusting your marketing products to a company that you have never actually visited can be unnerving, and online printing companies know that, so they have made free samples a standard part of their own marketing programs.