5 Ways to Make Your Next Postcard Stand Out

Sending postcards to advertise your business in 2021 is an effective strategy to get more eyes on your product or service. This kind of advertising is known as direct mail marketing, and it has worked for centuries. The earliest recorded direct mail advertisement was back in 1000 B.C.! Today, the direct mail industry is worth 44.2 billion dollars and will continue to thrive, even during the digital age. This is why most businesses still use direct mail advertising today.

Do Canadians respond well to direct mail marketing?

Direct mail has remained one of the oldest and most tried-and-true marketing strategies out there. Unlike email, your direct mail can’t get lost in someone’s digital inbox. Some business owners make the mistake of assuming that flyers, brochures, and other mailing advertisements is a thing of the past.

According to Canada Post, “36% of people under the age of 30 look forward to checking their mailboxes every day” and, “95% of 18-to-29-year-olds have a positive response to receiving personal cards and letters in the mail.”

On top of that, direct mail has a significantly higher response rate over digital marketing; averaging about 4% over 0.12%, respectively. Canada Post’s studies have also shown that 70-80% of Canadians tend to notice direct mail, read it on the same day, and tend to open it if it looks interesting.

Why is direct mail so effective?

There are many reasons why direct mail is still so effective today.

The first reason is that it can be highly targeted to specific segments of your audience through demographics and location. If you can effectively send out your direct mail to your target audience while creating content they would be interested in seeing, then your direct mail marketing campaign will increase awareness, engagement and sales.

Direct mail marketing also doesn’t have some of the limitations that digital marketing has. There is practically no limit to who you can reach through direct mail. Other reasons direct mail marketing works are:

• High response rate (10-40 times more effective than digital marketing)
• Highly customizable content
• Cost-effectiveness; cost of direct mail campaigns is approximately $0.30 per piece for Neighbourhood Mail (formerly Unaddressed Admail) and $0.60 per piece for Personalized Mail (formerly Addressed Admail)
• The potential to have an eye-catching and multi-sensory advertisement.

So how can you get your business postcards to “pop” in the world of direct mail marketing?

Here are five ways to help your next postcard stand out:

1. Focus on the message

Don’t clutter your postcard with too much information. Postcards are meant to be punchy and eye-catching. They must send a single message to your customer. Are you promoting a sale? Giving out a coupon? Announcing a new service? Either way, decide on what the postcard will focus on. You can still send more postcards out in the future with other marketing messages.

2. Pick eye-catching fonts and colour schemes

Choose fonts that are easy to read and understand. The same goes for the colour scheme of your postcard. You want it to stand out but not give people a headache to look at. Choose one or two primary colours and an accent colour to make headlines pop.

Customers should be able to quickly scan your postcard and understand the message that it is trying to convey. If your business or brand already has established logos, colours, fonts or other features, use them on your postcard so your customers can easily associate it with your business.

3. Use photos where it makes sense

If you want to advertise a specific product, it might be helpful to include photos of it. Or, if you are offering a service, you could incorporate before and after pictures where relevant. Photos will help create interest for your potential customers and help them visualize your product or service in their life.

4. Make the experience interactive for your audience

Postcards have the potential to be highly engaging, so you should take advantage of that. For example, if you send out a coupon code, you could hide it behind a scratch-off sticker. Another way to engage your audience is by sending out a highly-targeted postcard on a customer’s birthday.

5. Create more interest using different shapes, sizes and materials

You can customize the size and shape of your postcard depending on your campaign. You can create shapes that have to do with your business or what you are promoting through die cutting. For example, if you are a pizza shop, you can send out a mailer in the shape of a pizza slice.

In addition to different shapes, you can also employ larger sizes to include more information in other sections if you need to. Larger direct mail postcard sizes will let you include more information or coupons without becoming too cluttered. They will also be impossible to miss.

Other options include foiling and embossing, as well as rounded corners or specialty finishes. These can give your postcard interesting textures and visuals that attract tonnes of additional attention.

One more thing to consider is the type of stock you use for your postcard. Higher-quality stock is heavy and feels more substantial when held, and will attract customers’ attention. Troi Mailing Services offers a variety of different and highly customizable printing options for your campaign.

If you follow these five tips on how to get your next promotional postcard to stand out, your next advertising will be a success in no time. Direct mailing is a tried and tested marketing tactic for attracting more business and new customers. The creative options are endless with various marketing possibilities, all while being easy to manage.

For more tips to kickstart your next postcard printing in Toronto, call Troi Mailing Services at 1-866-486-9350 or contact us here.