Here’s an incredibly simple system a smart local printing company uses month after month after month to get new customers into its shop to place an order.

Like all successful postcard marketing campaigns, it started with strategic thinking: What category of people could serve as a reliable source of new customers? The owner’s answer: new business incorporations within a 10-mile radius of his print shop.

A list company provides him once a month with a data file of prospects that meet that description.

Note that not all new incorporations are brand-new businesses, but because of the incorporation, they now have a new business designation, “Inc.,” to add after their name. So whether or not they’re a new business, they’re a perfect prospect for printing services since they have a new business name they want to get out into the world.

Next, what offer would entice them into the shop? The owner’s answer: a bundled offering of printed stationery, envelopes and business cards at 40% off.

Using the online interface at PostcardBuilder.com or another online print-and-mail company, he designs a postcard containing that offer. To get the discount, the recipient needs to bring the postcard into the shop with them.

Once a month, his assistant uploads the new list of newly incorporated businesses to the print-and-mail company, presses a few buttons, and that’s it. Two business days later, that month’s postcards go out in the mail, and a few days later, owners of the nearby newly incorporated businesses begin showing up at his shop to use the discount.

After it’s all set up, the process takes less than 20 minutes a month to manage.

Results are predictable.

To adjust the results, the print shop owner can change the geographical radius, reduce or raise the number of postcards he sends – or schedule his mailings once a week or every other week instead of monthly.

I’ve seen this model work for financial professionals, restaurants, hair salons, and many other types of businesses that tend to build a clientele of “regulars.” All regulars, of course, start as new customers, and one of the easiest way to find new customers is this kind of a postcard campaign.

To follow in the printer’s footsteps, think first about who and where your best source of new customers might be. A financial planner I recently worked with decided to target people in their 20’s and 30’s in a certain neighborhood who did not yet own a home. His aim was to snag upwardly mobile individuals and couples before they were working with any other financial professional. A restaurant might decide to target businesses with more than 25 employees within five miles of their location, knowing that if people were pleased with their meal, word would quickly spread to coworkers.

Next, be careful to craft a compelling offer. It must be bold enough to be fiercely tempting, yet not quite bold enough to lose money for the postcard sender. The hair salon’s offer might be “Bring a friend and you each get 50% off your haircut.”

Finally, polish up what advertising professionals call the “creative” – the wording and design – so it’s appealing and mistake-free. The last thing you want is people passing around your postcard because you left out the “l” in “public”!

Author Bio: Veteran postcard marketer/consultant Marcia Yudkin is creator of The Mighty Postcard Marketing Course, which teaches the strategic, logistical, design and copywriting secrets of successful postcard marketing. Download her free 1-hour audio on marketing with postcards: http://www.yudkin.com/postcards.htm .

Category: Marketing
Keywords: postcard,postcards,direct mail,marketing,mailing,mailings,customer loyalty,repeat business,examples