How Sending Postcards Can Help Your Business Make Money

Are you the kind of person who loves acronyms? If so, try this one on for size: ROI. Business owners love ROI (return on investment) because, done correctly, it translates into profit. Let’s talk about that. Let us talk about it specifically as it relates to postcard marketing.

 

Postcard marketing doesn’t mean traveling to Florida and visiting cheesy roadside gift shops to find dirt cheap postcards showing lots of blue skies and palm trees. Although, for the record, those kinds of postcards really do draw people to the Sunshine State.

 

What we are really talking about is using a postcard to send whatever message you want people to know. Compare all the most common marketing channels companies like yours use right now and direct mail marketing offers a pretty competitive ROI.

 

Just As Good as Social

 

Now that we have you thinking about cheesy postcards from Florida, here’s something else to consider – postcard marketing is extremely competitive with social. We’ll stop for a moment and wait for you to regain your composure.

 

Yes, we have heard it all before. Social media is the golden goose that continues to lay eggs. But guess what? Some of those eggs aren’t pure gold. They aren’t gold at all. They are fool’s gold at best. But we digress.

 

The point is that social ROI is about 30%. Guess how direct mail marketing performs? Its average ROI is 29%. If numbers thrill you as much as cheesy Florida postcards, you know that one percentage point isn’t a whole lot. The fact is that sending postcards is just as effective as posting to Facebook, tweeting, or TikToking (is that even a word?).

Email Is Just Obscene

 

Unfortunately, integrity and a ton of data flying around the internet forces us to admit that email’s ROI is obscene. It comes in at an astounding 124%. However, that’s only because you can send millions of emails without barely spending a dime. A better way to measure success between the two platforms is response rate.

 

Email’s response rate is measured by click-throughs. You see something in an email that looks interesting, so you click the link. That is a response. Are you absolutely going to buy something? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, you are contributing to an average response rate of between 2%-3%.

 

What about postcard marketing? Its return rate is just under 3% when you send postcards to people on a prospect list. Send those same postcards to consumer homes and the response rate jumps to over 5%. Now you’re talking.

 

It’s a Ratio Kind of Thing

 

This post started out talking about ROI. So why throw in response rate? It’s a ratio kind of thing. Response rate isn’t just another statistic we need to fill up space on a spreadsheet. Response rate tells you if your message is getting across.

 

Combining ROI with response rate really tells you if the effort you are putting forth is worth it. Think about it. You may be getting over 100% ROI on email. But if you need to send out millions of messages to get the responses you want, you risk being flagged as a spammer. That’s not good. Spam belongs in a tin can on a grocery store shelf. It doesn’t belong in your customers’ inboxes.

 

The ROI on direct mail marketing is about 29%. But with the response rate as high as 5%, you are getting your message out with a lot less effort. That means something. The fact is that sending postcards can make you money. Some smart folks in Florida have known that for a long time.