Increasingly our clients are asking us to work more on their websites, online advertisements and even publicity messages for Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. They said “forget about the old media”. We usually tell them to hold their horses.
While the new media engaged and even mesmerized the world, the so-called old media aren’t redundant yet. We just organised a seminar for a client. Against their strong opposition, we somehow managed to convince them to invest just $500 on fax promotion. A drop in the ocean and yet they were so aghast with the idea. They kept saying that facsimile is so last century; an electronic dinosaur that no one cares. Well, their jaws dropped when we showed them the sales generated from the fax messages that went out.
So when this particular client held another workshop recently, they were much more receptive when we encouraged them to do direct mailing. Not e-direct mailing. The traditional method – where the postman dropped a beautifully designed and printed 250gsm postcard into your letterbox, where you can read it slowly over a steaming cup of cappuccino. In these days where spam is rampant, a large percentage of e-direct mailers goes down the chute without being read. This is true even when the recipient knows the sender or have requested for such information be emailed. A survey was conducted to check out this phenomena and the obvious answer surfaced – people simply don’t have time to go through all their emails! So only the ‘official’ ones take priority. An advertisement is definitely not at the top of people’s reading list. Even if we believe 100% that our message will enrich and benefit our customers’ life, they see it as just another advertisement or worse, junk mail.
Postcards are great in any marketing campaigns but particularly during the November-December festive period. Out on the streets, your customers are wooed by every form of media from billboards, lightbox posters, neon signs, newspapers, magazines, video walls, brochures, flyers and more. While they are watching TV or surfing the internet at home, banner ads, link ads, advertorial, product placement on MTV and movies etc also bombard them. How do you capture even 15 seconds of their precious time? Our recommendation is to catch them while they are not distracted. When is that? We found that window of opportunity may be a brief 1 minute or 30 minutes if you are lucky.
People pick up their mails on the way back home. Scenario 1 – They throw the mails on the couch and plonk themselves down too. For the next 1 minute, while kicking off their shoes, they sieve, read and ditch their mails. Scenario 2 – They throw the mails on their dining table and go about their stuff until dinner time. While they eat their pizza and sip their coffee, they slowly read their mails … including junk mails. If your postcard direct mail hits the hot button, that’s where you make your sales. So always list your 24-hour sales hotline number or website URL because you can bet that their smart phones would be on the table. Many women do ‘dinner shopping’ like this, one hand eats, one hand shops.
The best size to do a postcard direct mailer is A5 size or 5.5″ x 8.5″. With a picture that captures attention, a headline that highlights your unique selling proposing plus an irresistible offer, this size ensures that you can attract eyeballs when it is being handed out, being displayed on the stand or lying amongst many other mails in the letter box.
A postcard direct mailer can be done easily = Sales Strategy + Advertising Concept + Design Execution + Printing + Mailing List + Mail Out. It is not as expensive as people perceive it to be. Production cost has gone down significantly over the last few years. You can engage marketing consultants to do all that for you, or you can go online and get it done real quickly, like 3 working days. The results and services offered may be different but you will get yourself a full fledged direct mailer campaign. Most importantly, don’t ever think that postcard direct mailer is dead. Far from it. If fax campaign can still pull in results, you can bet a postcard direct mailer will too.
