Are you considering a postcard campaign, but think it’s a waste of money? A bit of strategy up front can actually net you a huge return. Here are a few tips from Joy Gendusa, the founder/CEO of PostcardMania, who alerted us to the success of a Colorado painting company that invested $2,809 on a postcard campaign and brought home $67,000 in revenue.

ROI Matters

ROI (return on investment) — and not response rate — is the most telling measure when it comes to a postcard campaign. Because you only need a couple jobs to break even, you can get a huge ROI; the client in question brought in 2,285% on its campaign, “It sounds insane but it is actually pretty common in the industry,” said Gendusa. If your first campaign is successful, then you can tweak your message to make the next one even better.

Repetition

The Colorado contractor mailed out 1,000 postcards to the same households five times, a much more effective strategy than targeting 5,000 households once. “You absolutely have to mail more than once before you can expect any type of response,” said Gendusa. This client’s next mailing will be bigger but utilize the same strategy. “He's upped each mailing quantity to 1,500 postcards, so he’s scaling up his marketing as he scales up operations and revenue,” said Gendusa.

Third Times A Charm

“My blanket recommendation is to mail to the same list a minimum of three times in order to see a good return,” she said. “Some people get lucky and get a good return after only mailing once, but I would never recommend that. There are so many advertisements and marketing messages out there competing for our attention that you have to repeat your message in order to break through that ad fog and impinge your message upon a recipient.”

Find A Target

This company mailed specifically to people it thought would be most in need of their services – homes built before 2010 in zip codes likely to have storm damage.

Residual Business

Even if they don’t call now, they might call later – even years later. “People hold on to postcards and physical mail much longer than digital messages,” said Gendusa. It might wind up on the fridge or in that random pile of “stuff to look at” where they see it every day until it’s time to paint. It even works for PostcardMania. “My company has mailed to certain businesses for 10 and even 20 years, and they finally pick up the phone after the 45th postcard and become a client, and the return on investment is still positive for us and still continues to increase year after year.”