Printing and mailing postcards is one of the least expensive but most effective ways of advertising. There are a number of important methods to make sure you get the most out of your postcard printing campaign. Three areas where many companies make mistakes are in budgeting, sampling, and persistence.
Additionally, many companies do not work with professional printing firms who can handle direct mail postcard campaigns on their behalf. When a printing firm can produce the postcards and also mail them, you’ll find that this relationship can create a number of efficiencies for you. Some printing firms can supply a mailing list for you, but other web sites such as Info USA (www.infousa.com) can provide you with quality mailing lists that can reach targeted customers.
Budgeting
One of the easiest ways to wreak havoc on profitable advertising campaigns is by failing to set a budget or failing to stick to the budget. Once you have your budget, you can decide whether or not to spend more money on features of your postcards, or to cut back on printing features so that you can actually produce more postcards. In either case, you are making a decision based on a pre-determined budget.
Sampling
Once you have found the ideal balance between printing quality and quantity, send your postcards out to a small sample of customers. Watch carefully and record any responses that you get. This will help you make sure that your design is effective. If nobody responds, or the response is much lower than expected, you can adjust before spending your entire budget on a faulty design.
Persistence
Postcard printing campaigns should be sent at a regular basis. This is especially true when sales are low. Persistence is the key. While it may be easy to try to cut costs, one of the best things you can do is to continue to advertise. Using inexpensive direct mailing tools, like postcards, can help your company maintain an advertising presence with your customers.
Filed under: PrintPlace Reviews | Tags: customer, design, postcard printing, postcards, reviews, testimonials
“We received our postcard order this morning sooner than expected and everything looks excellent! We can’t wait to use your services again!
Thank you.”
Brant Hutchcraft, Art and Photography Dept.
Dexter Music Center/Dexter Barbeque
Filed under: Printing Help | Tags: direct mailing, postcard mailing, postcard marketing, postcard printing, postcards
Postcards are an extremely efficient marketing tool. Why? primarily because of the fact that they can be applied to any business. No business should leave out the postcard marketing approach. It doesn’t really matter what business you have or even what you want to market. Even in this age and time, some of the biggest companies still prefer to market with postcards than anything else as they have a record of creating more responses than personalized letters or flyers. Quick and easy to produce, postcards are a must for every marketing campaign’s success. In the following section, we will be learning why and how postcards can be beneficial for your business specifically. Some of the major reasons as to why you should be using postcards are listed below:-
1. Cost Friendly: When using something like a postcard as a marketing tool, there is fair amount of chance that you will prefer to get them printed in bulk. This is the point where you can tap in your savings. Most printing companies charge a very small amount especially if you order in large quantities. It takes no more than 2 days for them to get printed, so you can start sending them out according to your convenience. Moreover they have a standard size. So the chances are that you will pay almost the same amount as your competitor.
2. Quick and Smart: One of the best features of postcards is that they can be designed in a really short time. There are various templates available that can help you save time. Be wise and choose one that suits your business the best. Also they have a standard size, so you can design them in one day, send it to your printer and hand them out to your customers very easily after a couple of days. There is not a single marketing tool that can get to work in such a short span of time. This proves they are a smart way of promoting your business. Some companies will even send them out on your behalf.
3. Widely read: This misconception should be cleared from your mind A.S.A.P. People do actually read them because of their simplicity in design and a time efficient way of promotion. It is easy for people to pick and read them whereas letters are much tougher to get through. They CAN NOT be ignored. In fact, even if they do plan to throw it out, they will have read your company’s name or seen your logo by the end of the process. Hence, its work is done. Remember, you are not to sell a product, its enough that they know your name through it. But in most of the cases, people pay enough attention to them, so they know what you were trying to convey.
4. Bank on the popularity: One of the coolest reasons why they are handy is because postcards are generally sent by one’s kith and in. So the receiver may not throw it out instantly thinking it’s a pile of crap. This is something that other marketing tools cannot bank on. Also keep in mind their design. Try and give it a more “card” like look. It will benefit in one way or the other, forcing people to have a look at them.
5. Instant results: Unlike other forms of marketing, postcards are effective and show results very quickly. Just be consistent and keep them printing so you can send out as many as you can. They are cheap yet effective and are undoubtedly an excellent way to boost your company sales. Moreover, as we discussed earlier, it does not take a very long time to reach your customer’s mailboxes from the printing machine.
These are just some of the ways postcards can be beneficial. All great brands including Mc Donalds, still stick to this form of marketing because of its efficiency. There are a lot of other innovative things you can do to make them work. Remember, you cannot completely be involved with this and expect to become a great brand overnight. It needs to be coupled with other tools of marketing like brochures for a greater and deeper impact.
Article Written By Mark
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: copywriting, postcard printing, postcards
When it comes to copywriting for marketing materials, you can find plenty of tips out there geared toward brochures and catalogs. You can also find general copywriting tips that work for just about any marketing material. There’s not much out there specifically geared toward postcard copywriting though, so here are some copywriting tips to help you make your postcard printing as effective as possible.
Start by thinking about the response
Many copywriters think about postcards as a blank slate. They wonder what the headline should say and what benefits should be pointed out. Many copywriters work in a top-down approach when it comes to postcards.
But, postcards can be more effective if you write from a down-top approach, if you will, by starting with what response you would like the postcard to generate.
Don’t expect too much from your postcard
Whatever response you expect from your postcard, make sure it’s one that’s rooted in reality. You shouldn’t expect your postcards to sell your product for you by giving consumers all the needed info and then also close the sale. You have time and space constraints that you must deal with when it comes to postcards. People don’t expect to sit down and read a postcard, so you need to keep your message short. If you clutter your postcard, no one is going to read one word of it.
Let’s say you are sending out postcards to let people know about a new digital camera you’re putting on the market. The digital camera can hold many more pictures and you can print directly from the camera, saving time and energy by not having to plug the camera into a computer to print pictures. You can also edit the photos in the camera among other great features. But how much of this information needs to go on my postcards? It depends on my reader and my desired response.
Work from the response backward
Back it up from your desired response to your marketing campaign as a whole. Let’s say your marketing campaign’s goal is for people to buy 1,000 cameras in the first quarter. To do this, you say you need to get people out to your store or whatever stores carry your camera and see it for themselves. You know that when people play with it, they’ll want to buy it.
Okay, so there’s your desired response of your postcards – to get people into the stores to play with the camera. That’s something your postcard has the ability to do and it isn’t overreaching.
Write your message
Now that you know your desired response is, you can write your message to focus on getting people to do your desired response. The camera has a bunch of great features, so you can focus on a few of the most desired features, like editing operations, and tout those on the postcard. You don’t have to let people know everything else about the camera. You can do that in a brochure or other type of marketing material at the store. Remember your postcard is just aimed to get people in the store to play with the camera.
Writing postcard copy from the response backward helps to focus your message and keeps it short because you have a narrow goal in mind to help you reach your overall marketing goal. Try it and I’m sure you’ll have an effective postcard that gets you results.
Filed under: Printing Help | Tags: bleeds, business cards, file preparation, flyers, guidelines, orientation, postcards, prepress, printing, templates
You know the drill -
you get your files set up just right; fonts embedded and/or converted to outlines – check;
color settings correct – check;
folding dummy shows front & back correctly aligned – check.
Then you upload it to your chosen online printer and send it to press . . . only to have it come back to you with the inside of the card upside down.
What did you do wrong?? You made your list & checked it twice, right? Sure – but did you check your layout against your printing company’s guidelines? Do they print work & turn or head to head? There’s a big difference.
That’s where this article comes in.
Most commercial and online printers use what is called a “gang run” method. This simply means that several items are laid out on a 28” x 40” press sheet and printed at the same time. This allows printers to save money, which is generally then passed along to the consumer. It’s the method your printer chooses for printing the second side of that press sheet that affects how you set up your artwork.
The most commonly used methods of “four over four” printing (full color on both sides) are referred to as “work and turn” and “head to head”. In the work & turn method, both sides of a double sided print order are laid out on one side of a press sheet. This would allow the printer to turn the sheets over, once they are dry, and run them through the press a second time, exactly the same way, on the opposite side of the sheet, “backing up the job” without changing plates. The same plates would print the back of the sheet, creating four copies (called “four-out” or “four-up”) prior to cutting and folding.
The head to head method uses two plates – one for the front images, one for the back images. The head of a page is defined by the top of the rendered proof and the bottom is called the foot. Once the front side is printed & dry, your printer can change plates, turn the stack of press sheets over, and print the opposite side of the sheet (the back of the job), then trim down the stack of paper to produce four finished pieces from each press sheet.
When working with an online printer, you are faced with the additional challenge of not seeing your finished product until the entire quantity is printed. For this reason, it is imperative that you check the printer’s policies regarding which method they use. If it isn’t listed somewhere on their website – call their customer service department and ask! Once you’ve determined the method of printing that will be used, you can confidently proceed with your artwork set-up.
If your printer is using the work & turn method, no special set-up is necessary. The alignment of your document will be up to the printer. However, if your printer is using a head to head method, these guidelines will assist you in ensuring a correct finished product.
For this example, we will be using a folded business card. These methods worth the same way for anything with a single fold – greeting cards, brochures, newsletters, flyers, etc. If your set-up is vertical (fold on the left, like a book), the set-up is fairly simple. Notice the orientation of the text in this format. This is very important!!
However, if you are folding your artwork at the top, the layout requires a bit more thought. First, be sure your artwork is set up like so:
