Postcard marketing is not the most common type of marketing used by brands, but it can be quite effective if done right. Marketing postcards is quite easy, especially on a local level. Here is how postcard designs affect your business and some postcard marketing examples to start.
10 Strategies for Designing Postcards
#1 First Impressions Matter With Postcards
A postcard is often the first impression your potential customer gets about your brand. If the design and content of the postcard are well done, this impression can be very positive, increasing the chances that the person will want to engage with your business and purchase from you.
Moreover, postcards are often a part of direct-mail marketing campaigns.Brand awareness is 70% higher for direct mail than for digital marketing, which means they can dramatically influence your brand. If you want to beIn addition, postcards are often part of direct mail marketing campaigns. Brand awareness is 70% higher for direct mail than for digital marketing, which means they can dramatically influence your brand. If you want to be In addition, postcards are often part of direct mail marketing campaigns. Brand awareness is 70% higher for direct mail than for digital marketing, which means they can dramatically influence your brand. If you want to be present in the minds of your customers, postcard marketing is one of the best solutions to use.
#2 Creating A Unique Image
Because postcards can shape first impressions, they can also help you create a unique image for your brand. Would you like your company to look fun and exciting? Do you want it to be serious and professional? Do you want it to be retro and authentic? Any of these is possible with the right postcard designs.
For example, companies in the accounting sector often opt for sleeker, simple designs created digitally. On the other hand, children-related organizations like art clubs might use hand-drawn pictures from the kids themselves to showcase the talent of their students. Both of these approaches create a certain image for the business attracting the right customers.
#3 Delivering Powerful Messages
But postcards are not just about design – they are also about content. Even a small phrase or sentence can help you deliver powerful messages and to brand association. In fact, even the process of postcard marketing itself can send a message to your audience because 57% of people say postcard marketing makes them feel valued.
This is why phrasing is such an important part of any postcard design. If you are not sure what to put on your postcards, you can always hire a professional writer from a writing service review site like Best Writers Online who will come up with an actionable slogan for your cards and the text to accompany it.
#4 Engaging with Potential Clients
Postcard marketing – like any type of marketing – is a way of engaging with potential clients. You let your target audience know about your existence and encourage them to get in touch with you by visiting your company’s website, making a phone call, sending an email, or following your business social media accounts.
Direct-mail marketing also boasts a household response rate even more than other types of marketing (5.1% for direct-mail, 0.6% for email and paid search, 0.4% for social media, and 0.2% for online display advertising). This means that you can expect more potential clients to become your customers thanks to postcard marketing.
#5 Postcards Help You to Be an Open Book
One of the pain points for many businesses and consumers alike is being open. Brands don’t want to reveal too much about maintaining a certain public image while customers want to know more about how the products and services delivery works.Once a company discloses something horrible (e.g., inhumane working conditions), these brands instantly suffer criticism and serious consequences.
This is why it is so important to be an open book. Postcards can help you deliver small snippets of information about your brand that will inform your audience about the well-meaning nature of your brand. For example, various international and national symbols for certificates your business has acquired can be added to the postcards.
#6 Postcards Get to The Point
One of the biggest issues for companies of all sizes is the inability to get to the point. There are so many examples of ineffective marketing campaigns that used big words to talk about nothing. Instead of telling the target audience what the business is about, they never got to being clear about their purpose or intentions.
Because postcards provide you with a limited amount of space, you won’t be able to write a lot about your business so you’ll have to get to the point straight away..
#7 Instant Impact on The Audience
Perhaps the best thing about postcard marketing is that it has an instant impact on your audience. Over 60% of people are influenced to visit a website after receiving direct mail. Moreover, these people are mostly first-time shoppers! This means that attracting new customers also becomes easier for you. Besides to that, 74% of all US households either read or scan physical advertising mail. Compared to email newsletters, which often remain unopened, this numbers increase the chances that they will see your postcard.
#8 Your Budget Doesn’t Suffer
Probably the biggest reason why brands aren’t very keen on using direct-mail marketing is that they believe it to be more expensive than digital marketing. After all, online marketing has overtaken traditional marketing, not for no reason. However, it is a common misconception that postcard marketing is expensive compared to other marketing types.
The cost-per-acquisition averages of various types and channels of marketing are a good indicator of how costly your campaigns will be. For direct mail, this number is $19. Mobile and social media is $16-18, paid search – $21-30, Internet display – $41-50, email – $11-15. This makes direct-mail marketing fairly cost-effective.
#9 Content-Design Balance for Postcards
As mentioned earlier, there are two aspects of any postcard: its design and its content. This balance between content and design helps you create a visual representation of your brand image while also accompanying it with text that amplifies the effect of the image.
In essence, this content-design balance should prevail in any marketing campaign you launch. Whether it is your website and social media accounts or your printed product catalog, they should always maintain this balance. But it’s not always easy to do because you need to have a lot of space to fill in all those channels. Postcards, nevertheless, are much smaller which means it is easier to balance out your design.
#10 Postcard Marketing Effectiveness
All the statistics mentioned in this article only prove how effective the correct use of postcard marketing can be. You need to have a balanced design and an organized campaign that can be managed even on a limited budget.
Direct-mail campaigns work best for postcard marketing, so they are probably what you should focus on. However, postcards can also be given out at events, displayed in the company office, and so on.
Postcard Design Examples
Last but not least, here are some postcard design examples to give you inspiration for your own postcards:
- TOMOMI – a Japanese fashion design store. The colors were chosen wisely with simplicity being the main feature of the postcards.
- Fresh Air Foundation – a non-profit organization that sends New York kids to summer camp. Dynamic photos of kids performing various actions showcase the activities that they can do in the summer camp.
- Woodward Creative Group – a marketing and advertising agency. The design has a specific retro look which doesn’t prevent it from attracting attention quickly and getting to the point with its offer.
- Kramer Public – an accounting group. The postcard objective is to notify the recipient about a change in the company while also inviting them to pay a visit.
Final Thoughts
To sum up, postcard marketing can be a very efficient tool used for various purposes (i.e. news and updates, notices, promotion, holiday gifts). Use the tips in this article to create your own unique postcards and start using them for marketing your brand!
Aaron Swain is a writing specialist. He is working to make better himself in his blogging career. He is constantly trying to find new ways for personal and professional growth and believes that it’s always important to broaden limits. That’s why Aaron expands and improves his skills throughout the writing process to help and inspire people.