Profitable Postcard Marketing: Finding the Right Frequency

If you haven’t tried postcard marketing yet, you are missing a golden opportunity.

Stats in 2019 show that direct mail advertisements have a better reputation among modern consumers: 73% of consumers claim to prefer direct mail over other channels for brand communications, and 40% of consumers claim they will try new services and products if they receive direct mail from the business that offers them.

According to recent research, direct mail has a response rate of 5.1%. That may not sound like much, but when you compare it to 0.2% from online ads, 0.4% from social media, 0.6% from paid search, and 0.6% from email campaigns, you see how significant that number is.

Why You Should Increase Your Mailing Frequency

You can bump the response rate even higher by increasing your mailing frequency.

After you’ve invested time and money to design a postcard or purchase a mailing list, it’s essential that you mail to the same prospects more than once. In fact, experienced direct mail strategists recommend mailing to the same customers every 2-3 weeks for the entire year.

There are a few reasons for this:

1. Timing is Everything.

You never know when someone will need your product or service.

Maybe today is the day someone has a back injury and has decided to permanently hand over their lawn care to a professional service – BINGO, that’s you!

2. Frequency Breeds Familiarity.

Postcards build up over time.

You can mail people every month for three years and have someone call and say, “I have all the postcards you sent me, but I just now found a reason to use you.” Conversely, someone might call and say they just received your postcard for the first time. Although this is not true, here you see that consistent mailings build a subconscious connection that pays off when a prospect is finally ready to pay attention.

If you have a list of 2000 people you want to send your postcard to, it isn’t enough to mail 200 and consider it a failure. At a minimum, you should mail 500-1000 of these people before determining the success of your efforts. Or try directing a different card to each group of 500 to see which one worked best. Later you can mail the highest-performing card to the other 1500 people on your list.

Mail more, sell more. Regular and frequent contact is the name of the game!