I have some over-sized postcards that I'm going to use to market my services. My marketing message is on the front, and I've left the back blank to personalize the message.

Has anyone used personalized postcards to market your services? If so, what were your results?

Thanks, Tim. That's encouraging.

I'm launching two or three marketing campaigns within the next two weeks. It will be interesting to see which approach works best--the lumpy mailer or the post cards.

Deb -

Make sure that your contact info is at least a half inch up on both sides. The post office puts a sticker on the postcard to process them and if they are at the bottom it will block that info. Also I used labels and a normal stamp when I sent mine out. I am not sure how yours are going out but figured I'd tell you from my 10k plus postcards I sent out.

I liked them over letters because they don't have to be opened, just read.

Tim

I did a postcard mailing once and had little success with it. Probably I didn't mail enough of them.

People say that conversion rates for postcard mailing are very low, hence you gotta mail a BIG number of them to see results.

If you ask me, I personally prefer sending a direct mail letter instead of postcards.

I've done a lot of mailings and in the end, it wasn't the media that made the biggest impact on getting prospects. It was the frequency of the mailings. If you mail something seven times to someone they'll read your message at least one of those times.

I love USPS postcards because;
1. You can schedule an entire campaign all at once and never think about that list again.

2. You can send as little as one postcard.

3. It's as cheap as you can get it.

That's for lead generation. Once you have them they go on a completely different list.

There's dozens of strategies for postcards. GL

I wrote a book called, "How to Market With Postcards".

(It's not longer on the market... you might get Alex Mandosian's version as he picked my brain to help write his book about postcards.)

I owned a lettershop, and all we did was mail postcards for the "gurus." That's how I knew Yanik and the "inner circle."

We got to see a lot of postcard campaigns... what worked and what didn't work.

With that said, the postcards that worked the best were the ones with a few bullet points and a website address. That's it. Simple. Some even sent out cards with just an web address. The response was amazing (especially if the website address had a good name like instantsalesletters.com)

And while I understand lumpy mail does well, I can mail 3 to 7 more postcards to the same person for the same cost as lumpy mail... and with a ton less hassle.

My best client sent out postcards to new brides. He got the list from magazines (women at the time spent almost $50 on various wedding magazines and my client rented these lists)... the postcards were awful (nice looking but horrible marketing)... just examples of wedding shots and dorky wedding lines as headlines (hardly any benefits)... but we sent out (if I remember correctly) more than a dozen postcards to the same person every week or so. This worked so well that my client sold the business to a syndicate of Herman's Sporting Goods (remember them) for millions of dollars -- all because of this postcard lead generation system I set up for the owner.

It worked so well that when I told my client I was getting out of the lettershop business, he BEGGED me to stay in 'til the deal completed -- the postcard marketing was that important.

Onward.

This site is one of my best-kept secrets for postcard printing and mailing:
http://www.amazingmail.com

And these guys are great (at least they were back in the day) if you're mailing more than 1,000 postcards at a time:
http://postcardpower.com

Oh, and here's the best part of postcard marketing -- they're super easy to split test... try it... I did a 16-split test for a client... the winning postcard got more than triple the response compared to the worst-performing postcard. The only difference we tested was the subheadline.

Let me repeat that. If my client didn't take my suggestion and split test, he might have lost out on triple the conversions.

Great information. I've given karma to everyone!

I've never had to market myself because I've always had work, but I'm taking my business in a different direction, so I've got to put marketing first. This month has been busy for me, despite the fact that previous Decembers have been slow.

Keep the suggestions rolling in. I'm going to implement what I can and see what works the best. The lumpy package and a few postcards are going out tomorrow. The family is coming in for the holiday tomorrow, so I'll have to wait until next week to finish my marketing.

Marcus, thanks for the links. I'll definitely check them out.

By the way, Eileen, I'm glad you've found us!