Postcards: review the risks associated with mailing only postcards
Standard mail, postcards, and bulk mail marketing collateral are easily identified as being for marketing purposes. This increases the likelihood that they will be thrown in the trash. Due to this, MarketLikeAWholesaler does not recommend doing postcard marketing, even though we have the ability to do it. We can do postcards but want you to understand the risks involved first.
While post card marketing appears to have a lower unit cost, it is expensive. The national response rate to postcard campaigns is 0.5%. The national response rate for a first class, handwritten, yellow letter is 5%.
This is indeed a numbers game, so do the math: You have to send out 10 times as many postcards to get the same response numbers as a letter, which makes postcards much more expensive.
By the same token, bulk mail has many pitfalls that make it not very efficient.
· Delivery is totally unpredictable being a low USPS priority; takes from 15 to 30 days which makes tracking (in terms of testing and tweaking) nearly meaningless
· Makes scheduling your mail to hit in the sweet spot impossible
· Uses an obvious stamp and no postmark. Some services try to fake a postmark, but we think the results look ridiculous.
Do you know anyone that uses standard mail for any purpose other than marketing? No. Therefore, the drawbacks completely obliterate the point of and wipes out the advantage of using “handwritten” mail. Take a look at a piece of bulk “junk” mail. You may even see an attempt at handwritten font, but the barcode, lack of postmark, “AUTO***DIGIT***” across the top…? No. Don’t fall into the trap. Please don’t trip over pennies on your way to dollars.
