Postcards: Pint-sized Postage, Oversized Impact

by Marcia Yudkin 

I used to have a running joke with the guys at the Back Bay post office in Boston: I'm such a regular customer, can't I get a discount? Contrary to their stock answer, the Postal Service does offer one incredible bargain, on postcards.

"There's no other way to get as much bang for your marketing buck," says Joseph Gardner, owner of Joseph's Rooter, a drain and sewer cleaning business in Beverly Hills, California. Gardner subscribes to a monthly service that supplies him with addresses for new homeowners in his service area. 

"My solar-yellow cards can't help but attract attention in the mail, and unlike letters in envelopes, the recipient doesn't have to open anything to get the message," he says. Once the postcards find him a new customer, Gardner can keep the business relationship alive with more postcards.

Postcards appeal to the media, too, standing out in a sea of faxes and business envelopes. Sculptor Micki Voisard of St. Helena, California, got press coverage of her work when she sent editors photo postcards of one of her whimsical sculpted figures with the handwritten message, "Ask me how this sculpture helped heal me of cancer," followed by her name and phone number.

Similarly, Markus Allen, owner of Mailshop USA in Norristown, Pennsylvania, targets newspaper and magazine editors with postcards containing five or six bite-sized marketing or mailing tips. "By mailing postcards regularly, I've developed a relationship with media people. They look forward to my mail."

Allen also sends postcards in a series of six, one every other day for two weeks, whenever someone new calls his office for information. "If they don't respond to that, we know they're not worth more marketing money and effort," he says.

Postcards do a great job of informing prospects who may know you for one service and product of something else you do. I'd heard Denise Passaretti of Watertown, Massachusetts, introduce herself at business meetings as doing "boudoir photography," but when she sent me a card touting good prices on business photos, I called to arrange an appointment.

If you assume that postcards work only for relatively low-priced products and services, think again. Rob Cosgrove of Precision Data in Memphis, Tennessee, sent out just 250 newsletter-style postcards to engineers who might need robotics services. For less than $100, this modest piece of marketing produced two new contracts worth $240,000.

Postcards: a modest expense, a walloping return on investment.

Copyright 2000, 2009 Marcia Yudkin.  All rights reserved.