Postcard Marketing: Recession Rescue Case Study
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Marcia Yudkin
Apr 23, 2013, 1:00:04 AM4/23/13
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Marcia Yudkin
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Article Title: Postcard Marketing: Recession Rescue Case Study
Author: Marcia Yudkin
Word Count: 531
Article URL: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=620230&ca=Marketing
Format: 64cpl
Contact The Author: http://www.isnare.com/eta.php?aid=620230
Easy Publish Tool: http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=620230
*********************** ARTICLE START ***********************
Someone asked me if postcards are a good marketing tool for a recession. Yes, they are! Indeed, postcards pulled me out of the 1990-91 recession.
With a business partner, I had started a training company that presented seminars and worked with clients on writing skills. We rented an office at the prestigious Statler Office Building, adjacent to the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston. As the recession deepened, companies froze their training budgets, and all of our hot training leads evaporated.
However, we had two significant assets to exploit. First, our office rent included access to a classy conference room we could reserve and use as much as we wanted, and second, we had a list of 3,000 people who'd been in one or another of our adult education classes on writing in the previous two years.
We wrote up three classes we could give in the conference room, reserved the dates and mailed postcards to my list. People called to sign up! For the next few years, until the economy recovered, postcards reliably filled our classes.
Several lessons I learned about postcard marketing during those years remain true today.
1) Responses from a "warm" list of people who know you will always be greater than responses from strangers. Our classes were $99 each, and I'm not sure the postcards would have yielded such a nice profit had they been sent to "cold" prospects.
2) For seminars, you need sizable mailings to get enough participants to fill the room. The response rate would have been the same had we sent just 1,000 postcards, but that might not have generated enough people for each class. We rarely had to cancel a class for low enrollment. If you are promoting a one-on-one service, of course, this factor does not apply.
3) Consistency and repetition help. We mailed postcards every two months for a new round of classes, always using magenta card stock from the Kinko's copy center. From what people said when they signed up, it was clear they had come to recognize the hot pink postcards as coming from us. People paid more attention to the postcards as time went on, not less.
4) Color attracts, but images are optional. I used boldface strategically on the postcards to create a readable layout, but the cards contained no images � only words. If you look at galleries of sample postcards online, you'll see no pure-text samples, but for certain purposes they can work extremely well. We used just about every available space on the postcard to say as much as possible about our offerings.
One thing that's changed since postcards pulled us out of that recession is that you no longer have to mess with address labels and stamps or postal permits to send postcards.
Choose the right postcard vendor, and you can design your postcard online, order up the right list in a few minutes, if not using your own database, upload the list and place an order so the cards get sent out on whatever date you specify. The whole process of marketing with postcards is so much easier now!
About The Author: 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 .
Please use the HTML version of this article at:
http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=620230
*********************** ARTICLE END ***********************
- To distribute your articles go to http://www.isnare.com/distribution.php
- For more free-reprint articles go to http://www.isnare.com
Message delivered directly to members of the group:
publish-the...@googlegroups.com
*****************************************************************
Please consider this free-reprint article written by:
Marcia Yudkin
*****************************
IMPORTANT - Publication/Reprint Terms
- You have permission to publish this article electronically in free-only publications such as a website or an ezine as long as the bylines are included.
- You are not allowed to use this article for commercial purposes. The article should only be reprinted in a publicly accessible website and not in a members-only commercial site.
- You are not allowed to post/reprint this article in any sites/publications that contains or supports hate, violence, porn and warez or any indecent and illegal sites/publications.
- You are not allowed to use this article in UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email) or SPAM. This article MUST be distributed in an opt-in email list only.
- If you distribute this article in an ezine or newsletter, we ask that you send a copy of the newsletter or ezine that contains the article to http://www.isnare.com/eta.php?aid=620230
- If you post this article in a website/forum/blog, ALL links MUST be set to hyperlinks and we ask that you send a copy of the URL where the article is posted to http://www.isnare.com/eta.php?aid=620230
- We request that you ask permission from the author if you want to publish this article in print.
The role of iSnare.com is only to distribute this article as part of its Article Distribution feature ( http://www.isnare.com/distribution.php ). iSnare.com does NOT own this article, please respect the author's copyright and this publication/reprint terms. If you do not agree to any of these terms, please do not reprint or publish this article.
*****************************
Article Title: Postcard Marketing: Recession Rescue Case Study
Author: Marcia Yudkin
Word Count: 531
Article URL: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=620230&ca=Marketing
Format: 64cpl
Contact The Author: http://www.isnare.com/eta.php?aid=620230
Easy Publish Tool: http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=620230
*********************** ARTICLE START ***********************
Someone asked me if postcards are a good marketing tool for a recession. Yes, they are! Indeed, postcards pulled me out of the 1990-91 recession.
With a business partner, I had started a training company that presented seminars and worked with clients on writing skills. We rented an office at the prestigious Statler Office Building, adjacent to the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston. As the recession deepened, companies froze their training budgets, and all of our hot training leads evaporated.
However, we had two significant assets to exploit. First, our office rent included access to a classy conference room we could reserve and use as much as we wanted, and second, we had a list of 3,000 people who'd been in one or another of our adult education classes on writing in the previous two years.
We wrote up three classes we could give in the conference room, reserved the dates and mailed postcards to my list. People called to sign up! For the next few years, until the economy recovered, postcards reliably filled our classes.
Several lessons I learned about postcard marketing during those years remain true today.
1) Responses from a "warm" list of people who know you will always be greater than responses from strangers. Our classes were $99 each, and I'm not sure the postcards would have yielded such a nice profit had they been sent to "cold" prospects.
2) For seminars, you need sizable mailings to get enough participants to fill the room. The response rate would have been the same had we sent just 1,000 postcards, but that might not have generated enough people for each class. We rarely had to cancel a class for low enrollment. If you are promoting a one-on-one service, of course, this factor does not apply.
3) Consistency and repetition help. We mailed postcards every two months for a new round of classes, always using magenta card stock from the Kinko's copy center. From what people said when they signed up, it was clear they had come to recognize the hot pink postcards as coming from us. People paid more attention to the postcards as time went on, not less.
4) Color attracts, but images are optional. I used boldface strategically on the postcards to create a readable layout, but the cards contained no images � only words. If you look at galleries of sample postcards online, you'll see no pure-text samples, but for certain purposes they can work extremely well. We used just about every available space on the postcard to say as much as possible about our offerings.
One thing that's changed since postcards pulled us out of that recession is that you no longer have to mess with address labels and stamps or postal permits to send postcards.
Choose the right postcard vendor, and you can design your postcard online, order up the right list in a few minutes, if not using your own database, upload the list and place an order so the cards get sent out on whatever date you specify. The whole process of marketing with postcards is so much easier now!
About The Author: 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 .
Please use the HTML version of this article at:
http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=620230
*********************** ARTICLE END ***********************
- To distribute your articles go to http://www.isnare.com/distribution.php
- For more free-reprint articles go to http://www.isnare.com
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