Postcards from the Edge

“Marketing is not an event, but a process…

It has a beginning, a middle, but never an end, for it is a process. You improve it, perfect it, change it, even pause it. But you never stop it completely.”

–  Jay Conrad Levinson

Picture yourself in a grocery store, eager to get in and out in twenty minutes or less. Now imagine yourself with a cart full of bread, milk and eggs, rushing toward the checkout aisles. But wait, they’re all full; all except one.

Is it a mirage, a trick, a hoax? Nope; it’s for real. Its light is on, a cashier stands patiently behind her register beckoning you over with a smile and a wave, and yet everyone remains in some other, crowded line. What do you do? Take up the last spot in one of the other nine full-to-bursting lines or saunter over and march right up to the empty line?

That’s what I thought you’d say. Well, in the world of modern marketing, there is a secret checkout aisle just waiting to beckon you over with a smile and a wave. It’s no hoax, no mirage, and it works like nothing else you’ve ever tried before.

It may not have a lot of bells or whistles or fancy new gadgets to recommend it, you may not see it on the cover of some glossy ad agency magazine, but like that empty grocery store aisle it’s out there, ready and waiting for you to rediscover the leverage, opportunity and possibility that exists by turning left when everybody else is going right. It’s called postcard marketing and before you call it old-fashioned and dated, give it a second look. Truthfully, there are some new bells and whistles, but we’ll get to those in Chapter 19.

Let’s go back to our grocery store analogy. That empty aisle that looked so inviting is the road less traveled, the path everyone’s forgotten about, or maybe even gone down already and didn’t find success so they doubled-back to follow the herd into one of the other aisles.

Those other aisles? They are all those “other” marketing tactics that everybody else is busy beating into the ground. I’m not saying they don’t work — some of them work quite well, given the right company, needs and circumstances. But wouldn’t you rather be a stand-out, using a direct-marketing tool often overlooked by your competitors, than send out, email, SPAM or blitz prospects with the same blind items everybody else is using?

Yup, I thought perhaps you’d say that, too. I feel that my first duty in this manual is to convince you beyond any doubt that postcards, as your direct mail marketing tool, are the absolute BEST path to follow. In this brief introduction, I’m going to spend the next few pages trying to do just that. Along the way, I’ll give you my own experiences succeeding with postcards and I’ll share with you the case studies of others winning with them, too.

There are doubters who will say, “Why should I believe you? If I believe what you say and market with postcards, you stand to profit from my expenditure — you may just be writing all of this for that!”

Let’s face facts. It is true that I own a postcard marketing company — the biggest and fastest growing one in the USA. It is true that I hope to win your business by sharing my expertise on this subject. However, just because I have a vested interest in your marketing with postcards does not mean that it doesn’t work. And, just because I may stand to profit if you jump on the postcard marketing bandwagon it does not mean that I’m not offering the best service and product for the money at my company, PostcardMania. Heck, you could take all my advice and go elsewhere if you want! That’s right; postcards work whether my company produces them for you or somebody else does!

You can choose to believe me or not. I am writing this manual after being in the postcard business for more than 24 years. I started with an idea and I used ONLY postcards for the first few years to promote my business. At the time of this writing, we are a staff of over 330 employees strong and we did over 83 million dollars in earnings last year. Over and over again, friends and colleagues asked me how I did it.

Now is my chance to tell them, to tell you and to tell anybody else who’ll listen just exactly how I did it. In this manual, I am speaking from experience and not only my own experience — but that of countless others. (Well, not countless. We have over 100,000 extremely satisfied customers with more coming on board every day.)

Along the way, I’ve spent time and energy culling the successful actions of several different industries — all using this particular direct mail technique — the postcard. I have learned how to get results, plain and simple. I have already taught all of this to my staff. Here I will share that with you.

I know that I can teach you EXACTLY how to succeed with postcard marketing. I know it completely and utterly. I also know that, if done correctly, when you find your particular “formula” for your own business — and if you stick to it — you will, without a doubt, have terrific success.

What is terrific success?

Well, that all depends on what you want to achieve. Some of our clients want merely to spread the word of a new gym opening in the neighborhood; others want to send an announcement to the entire Southwest. For them, five gym members — or 500 new clients — might spell T-E-R-R-I-F-I-C.

What about you?

In this book, I will share with you specific postcard designs that have produced proven results for a variety of very different, but profitable, industries. From dentists to day spas, from attorneys to art galleries, from real estate agents to restaurants, we’ve custom designed campaigns to meet every client’s specific needs. If you don’t find your industry in this book or online, don’t fret; I will go out of my way to find you a sample if you email me directly: joy.gendusa@postcardmania.com. But even better than that, I’ll show you how to figure out what headline — and what image — will create the kind of results you’re looking for.

Once you’ve got your headline and image, though, don’t stop there; there is so much more to successful marketing with postcards than the headline and the image. Please read the manual in its entirety. You will not regret it. At the very least, it will validate what you already know. On the other end of the spectrum, you will come away with an easily executable plan that will help you increase your bottom line by just as much — or as little — as you want to.

I suggest you keep a pen and pad in hand while reading this. I’m sure you’ll be coming up with all kinds of bright ideas for your own company — or the company you work for. If you don’t have a pad handy when a brilliant idea strikes, feel free to write in the liberal margins provided or go to town with different colored markers or highlighter pens to pinpoint your favorite quote, tip or factoid. Yes, unlike your junior high history teacher, I encourage you to write in this book!

Opportunity, ideas and potential brilliance are simply too important to limit to just the margins. Speaking of limits, there really are no limits to how far you can go and I’ll show you how direct mail marketing with postcards will get you there. (Wherever “there” is for you and your specific needs.)

My story in a nutshell: I started PostcardMania in June of 1998. I started it as a pilot program — a test. My business back then — before PostcardMania.com — was called Joy Rockwell Enterprises and I was a four-person agency specializing in the design and printing of business collateral (any printed matter for the business — brochures, info packs, pocket folders, etc.).

I was in business for four years up to that point. I was definitely struggling. My boys were only tykes then and I had to work around the clock to make a decent living. I desperately wanted to change my business so that I could spend more time with my kids, but still expand my company.

Even though I always recommended to my clients to engage in plenty of direct mail, I wasn’t following my own advice. I NEVER mailed out anything — except invoices! What a hypocrite I was!

At that time most of my business was from one very big client. And to make a long and horrible story short and sweet — they went down for unethical business practices and I could see the end coming for me. That is, if I didn’t do something to attract more clients — and quick!

They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and they’re right; this was the impetus I needed to heed my own advice and do a mailing of my own. As an industry “insider” I received mailings from all kinds of different printing companies because I was a “reseller” for them. One day I got a postcard from a postcard company. It was fantastic. I could get 5,000 postcards for $425!! Back then, this was UNHEARD OF. Needless to say, I called immediately.

I did eventually get my postcards. But, the process was aggravating, to say the least. The customer service was appalling. They weren’t friendly and didn’t seem to give a hoot if I was happy or not. And, frankly, the paper they used was thin and the ink smudged when it went through mail machines at the post office.

What’s that saying about God closing one door and opening a window? My thought at the time was: I could do this same thing WAY better, and charge less, and create a “higher end” product and be nice to the people that call me just by caring about their order and their results!

At this point, I could say, “The rest is history!” But I’ll be more honest than that. It was scary, rough-going and treacherous and many, many times I wanted to quit. Creating a business from nothing is more than a big task and not everyone is cut out for it. Plenty of times I feared I wasn’t either.

How was I going to get enough new business to feed my family, pay my staff and all the bills? Often I thought that I’d done everything I possibly could and it still felt like we’d take two steps forward and one step back — or three steps back. Oh, how frustrated I was. And I was still working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.

More time with my kids?

Yeah, right!

What SAVED MY BUSINESS??? (I wanted to write that last sentence like this: WHAT SAVED MY LIFE? — but it sounded too dramatic. Seriously, though, something very specific did save my business and thus my life.) It’s too simple, but it’s the truth. And the answer is: mailing out postcards every single week to promote what we sell — postcards. And let me repeat something: EVERY SINGLE WEEK, in 24 years, we’ve never missed a week — not even during the 2008 recession or the COVID-19 craziness.

The hardest part was figuring out how much mail I needed to send out in order to make enough income to be profitable. This was a very tricky formula when designed from scratch, with no road map in place, but rest assured there is a chapter in this manual (Chapter 21) devoted to that so that it will be easier for you than it was for me.

In that particular chapter, I cover figuring out the correct estimation of effort required to succeed with direct mail. (If only I had such a chapter when I was starting out!) Instead, I definitely learned by trial and error. I figured out a formula to get close to the right amount of effort. By effort I’m referring to “how much money should I spend?” and “how much mail should I send?” and “how often should I do a mailing?” I say “formula,” but there is no pat answer; it’s going to be different for different industries that all have different margins.

The beautiful part about what I do is that I get to deal with so many (over 350) different industries. I’ve learned what works for many of these and I plan to tell you stories of success from quite a few in this manual — in addition to sharing several case studies and images of the cards that are working!

When I realized that I had to mail out postcards each and every week, I started with 1,000 pieces per week and I hit a general business list based on geography. Not super smart, granted, but super easy. I bought a yellow pages CD (remember those?) and mailed to my local area.

Later we changed the mailings to go to specific industries.

As my efforts were rewarded with business, I increased to 2,500 pieces per week.

Twenty-four plus years later, we mail 180,000 pieces per week just to promote us!

Over this period of time, I not only spent a small fortune on my “trial and error” learning method — which you will now be able to avoid — I also spent thousands of hours researching, learning and compiling what really works and what doesn’t. None of this is theory. It’s truly based on my hard-won experiences — my own and those of my customers. So it doesn’t have to take you nearly 24 years to get your business to grow to where mine is. You can do it faster and smarter! I’ve seen lots of my clients do just that!

I hope you feel inspired. I hope you are still interested. I hope you keep reading and I hope you implement what you learn. Of course, what I hope for you is insignificant compared to what you must hope for yourself.

Remember: Nothing but your own experience will really convince you.

That’s just my opinion, but I’ve seen it time and time again with my customers. They cross their fingers and blindly trust us — hoping they’re not throwing their money away. Honestly, the folks that stick with it never stop coming back for more. Why? Because it works. And they’re winning with their marketing efforts — in a big way. In fact, one of our top clients made the Inc. 500 List — one year after we did — for being one of the fastest-growing, privately-held companies in the nation!

Now they know what I’ve known for years, and what you’ll soon find out: direct mail postcards work!

◆ Important Note:

Every so often you will see a passage with this ◆ next to it. This will indicate to you that this particular piece of advice is very important and made a HUGE impact on my business when I implemented it. Now, have fun! I’m genuinely excited for you to start this adventure and change your business forever.