Postcards Get You Noticed

When we got old enough to go to school, one of the first lessons we learned was NOT to draw attention to ourselves. We were taught a variety of ways to ensure we didn’t stand out in a crowd. Don’t slouch. Stand up straight. Use your inside voice. Smile for the camera. Wear what’s in style.

Well, it’s time to unlearn what we’ve been taught about standing out. In postcard marketing, it’s all about standing out. It’s all about getting what your kindergarten teacher preached against when you were six: ATTENTION!

I said earlier, my first order of business was to convince you why you should use postcards. Simply put, they’re a great way to get attention. In this chapter, I’ll show you how postcards get attention better than a standard direct mail piece. It may sound obvious, but there is more to it than meets the eye.

First, it is vital to understand that most people are bombarded with promotional jabber. They watch TV, they drive and see billboards, they get spammed — and they get those annoying pop-up messages or ads before videos when surfing the web.

You can probably think of a ton of other ways advertising reaches you, but you get my point. The bottom line is, anyone trying to market something in today’s climate of “promotional overload” is at a distinct disadvantage. So, how do postcards break through and grab a prospect’s attention?

First, they ditch the envelopes!

Truthfully, the most common question I am asked is, “How do I get my prospect’s attention?”

This is a major problem because, no matter what you do to them, most envelopes look basically the same. Print them in color, make a window, stamp them URGENT — your customers have seen all these tricks before. They get thrown away before they’re even opened.

Recipients can tell from the outside that it is a sales pitch, so they just toss it. This causes you to lose sales (and waste marketing dollars) due to assumptions made before your message is even read. If you had gotten the chance to show the prospect what you were offering, they might have gone for it.

The easiest way to get around this is by using postcards.

Second, people are relaxed and ready for your message when they get your postcard and not only does the full-color aspect of postcards attract more attention than any envelope in a given day’s stack of mail, it also allows you to deliver your message while recipients are deciding what to read and what to toss.

Let me paint a picture of this for you...

All day long you’re checking and answering emails and deleting the ones that are a distraction because you’re working. Those distracting emails are usually promoting something to you, right? But when you get your mail from your mailbox it’s because you are ready for it. When you go through your pile of mail it’s on YOUR terms — you have decided to look and either toss the mail or keep it for later.

While they’re scanning the postcard to decide its fate, they’re actually receiving your marketing message. This way, even if they do get rid of it (and most people will), they have already gotten the message. That lays the groundwork for future postcards (or online follow up ads — we’ll get to that in Chapter 20).

Still not convinced? Let’s use this example: you are sitting on the subway and the guy next to you leans over and says, “I have something I would like to sell you. It’s here under my trench coat. You interested?”

As any sane person would, you move as far away from him as you can get.

Now, as you sit far removed from the untrustworthy freak in the trench coat, you are approached by a smiling little Girl Scout who holds out a box of cookies and says, “Would you like to buy a box of cookies? Everyone loves the Thin-Mints!”

As most sane people do, you pull out your wallet and plunk down $5 for a box of the delicious-yet-hardly-nutritious treats.

See the difference? The “untrustworthy freak,” as I have affectionately named him, could have actually had a box of Thin-Mints under there — but you weren’t about to find out.

Don’t hide your message behind a trench coat. Or should I say, stop stuffing your promo into envelopes!