Here’s a postcard campaign that was profitable for me some years back.

To get more speaking engagements, I wanted to be represented by more speakers bureaus. However, bureaus were inundated with information kits and phone calls from wannabes.

Therefore, I decided to offer to help bureaus market themselves better. This would cut through the clutter, and I’d come to their attention as a marketing expert and a speaker on marketing, in a back-handed way.

I obtained a mailing list of directors of speakers bureaus and created a postcard containing one of my Marketing Minute newsletters. Besides the complete text of my 180-word Marketing Minute, the card invited them to subscribe to get tips on growing their business from my no-cost weekly email newsletter.

Six times in one year, I mailed a card like this to the speakers bureau directors. The card was the same each time except that it contained the text of a different Marketing Minute.

When I did this campaign, it was before the advent of online postcard marketing companies. I changed the master file in my computer, took a printout of the card contents to my local Kinko’s, they printed up the cards on card stock that they cut into quarters, I stuck on the bureau mailing labels and stamps, and finally dropped them at the post office.

Today, the process is much simpler. You can design a postcard template online, cut and paste new content into it for each new mailing, upload the data file for the postcard recipients just once, and have PostcardBuilder.com or another online postcard print-and-mail company print and send the cards for you. There’s no need to touch or mess with mailing labels, stamps or even the postcards. Just place the order and it’s done.

It’s also much easier today to find and manage the process of obtaining lists. You can go online to a site like InfoUSA.com and decide on the location, size, industry and other parameters of companies or the age, marital status, income, hobbies, location and more of individuals, then order the number of names you wish to send out. Many list brokers now sell you their data for repeated use instead of making you pay again each time you wish to contact the same list. You can order your list in a few minutes, then download it as a data file you then upload to your postcard service company. Simple!

And back to my results: One bureau owner hired me for copywriting from the first mailing and lined up a speaking engagement for me a year later. Three other bureau owners I mailed to added me to their roster, with two additional bookings coming out of that. Several other bureau owners joined my Marketing Minute list and purchased products or services from me years later, or referred others who did so.

Financially, the campaign brought me at least fifteen times as much in revenues as I spent, with results trickling in for more than seven years.

And I didn’t make a single cold call to a bureau owner, which for me was an unspeakably big plus!

Your payoff from postcards could certainly be as satisfying as mine.

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,lead generation,contact customers,examples