Own Your Own Business? 3 Great Reasons You Need Postcards

Postcards can make a significant difference to your own business. Postcard marketing involves sending out unique cards to potential customers, with the aim of drawing them into a store or a website, where they can exchange cards for discounts, or simply learn more about the business.
 
There are many benefits to investing in a postcard marketing campaign, from its cost effectiveness, through to the potential it provides for customisation and manufacturing. Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, using postcards for your business means that you can target specialist demographics and build brand loyalty that can be reinforced by using postcards as part of broader marketing campaigns.

1 – Cost Effective Marketing
Postcards represent a highly cost effective form of marketing. As opposed to sending out letters, cards are cheaper because they don’t necessarily require envelopes, and can be produced in large batches to be sent out to a mailing list. Businesses can also choose to focus on building up different amounts of cards, while keeping costs down.
 
At the same time, the actual value of cards once they’ve been sent out to customers is significant. A well designed postcard is less likely than an envelope to be thrown away, and should at least make some sort of impact on a customer. In this way, postcards represent a direct form of marketing that can easily produced and distributed in the space of a few days.
 
2 – Customisation and Manufacturing
Another key advantage of using postcards as part of your business’s marketing plan is that you can easily budget for and customise orders. Quantities can be ordered in standard and oversized formats from manufacturers, and can be adjusted depending on paper quality and the kind of designs they use. You may choose to design a postcard that is text heavy, or you may focus on using distinctive graphics and photos of a business to make an impact.
 
Cards can be customised to the needs of different business, and can be tailored to include different links and essential information. A well designed card should act as a rapidly manufactured advert for your brand that should push a customer towards a website, a phone number, or a physical shop. Cards should consequently include enough information without overloading potential customers.
 
3 – Niche Value
Postcard campaigns also have the advantage of being able to target very specific demographics, with the overall aim of developing a strong brand relationship with customers. Postcard distribution can be based on a mailing list of past customers, and can be tailored to that audience through special offers, and discounted offers.
 
By sending out test batches to particular customers, you can also measure how successful the campaign has been by including discounts that can be redeemed by bringing a postcard into a business, or using its redemption code online. Compared to mass mailing, the success of a postcard campaign to a specific set of customers can be measured through a series of small marketing runs, with the low cost meaning that risk is reduced on a broader mail out.
 
Sebastian is currently working on an exciting brand exposure exercise for Vistaprint. They offer a wide variety of business cards and stationary for every business.