Use Direct Mail Postcards to Help Your Web Site Traffic
Postcards are a great way to promote your Web site. Postcards are easy to read and can be hard to ignore since there is no envelope masking their message. Here are some ways you can advertise your Web site through postcard marketing:
Offer a free report on your Web site
Whether you do your own research and write a report of interest to your target market or if you buy a report, make it only accessible through your Web site. Then get the word out by mailing postcards. To make your postcards more enticing, you could use stats or a small graphic from the report on the postcard. Make sure you have some kind of system in place on your Web site that makes the visitor submit their name and email address to download the report so you can build up your mailing list or customer base.
Seminar sign-up
Seminars are great tools for many industries, like real estate, investing, technology, etc. If you host or sponsor a seminar, you can create a registration form or sign-up “sheet” on your Web site and send out postcards to let people know where they can register. Announce the seminar, along with the vital info such as place, time, cost, etc. on your postcard. Be sure to also include a benefit-laden headline. What will people learn or receive at the seminar that they can’t get elsewhere? You might even want to add some kind of incentive for people to sign up through your Web site, like a free product (that has your logo and name on it!).
Offer a free digital trial
If you sell anything digital like e-books or software, you could offer a free trial period or a sample download through your Web site. You could mail out a postcard to let people know where they can get their free trial and give them some kind of access code or coupon code. Make sure to put a time limit on your offer to prompt people to try your product sooner rather than later, because people are more likely to forget later.
E-newsletter subscription
Create an e-newsletter that you send out at consistent intervals, like once a month or once a week. Whatever schedule you come up with, stick to it! Your e-newsletter should contain helpful and interesting info that your customers possibly wouldn’t get elsewhere. Include info about your company’s doings, but also about what’s going on in the industry that customers might not be aware of. Mail out postcards announcing your e-newsletter and create a landing page on your Web site with a short URL so it’s easy for people to type. “Yours.com/newsletter” is much easier to type and remember than “yours.com/newsletter/url12685/3652-signup-i-am-making-this-up/.”
Improving Printed Postcard Results
According to the large volume of marketing advice available, printed postcards should be one of the most successful advertisements available for most businesses. Are your results less than satisfactory even though you have followed design, printing, and mailing tips? If so, you may need to rethink the layout of your postcard. What works for one company may not work for yours. Successful marketing requires careful testing, so don’t despair if it takes time before you see the results everyone is bragging about. Below are some areas that might need to be reworked on your postcard to improve results.
Focus on the Back Side
Many mail carriers deliver the mail address-side-up. If the back of a postcard only contains the address information, clients may trashing your direct mail piece before the headline has a chance to catch their attention. Test placing your headline and offer on the back of the postcard and save the front for extra information.
Limit Information
Obviously, a postcard contains very limited real estate space. Avoid packing every little detail onto the postcard as this can result in a littered layout and, therefore, hidden message. Cut down the amount of words to include only the most important information. You merely need to cause clients to take the next step, not know every step of the offer.
Make a Unique Offer
If yours is the same as every other business offer, prospects will see no reason use your company above another. Without a tempting offer, an advertising campaign is useless. The offer is what compels readers to take action. So give clients what they want – the newest, biggest, and best product or service at an irresistible price.
Although printed postcards are one of the cheapest marketing tools, without high results they are not worth any cost, no matter how small. Therefore, test and test again until your direct mail postcards have become the optimum marketing tool that you have read so much about.
