Questions To Ask Before Direct Mail Postcard Marketing

Questions to ask when postcard printing:

Questions to ask when postcard printing:

Postcard printing is an easy and economical way to market your business to your clients and prospects. With a postcard, you are able to market to a specific audience at the "right" time. You can mail your postcards marketing to customers who may have a birthday, or have a sales anniversary, which is not possible with other types of advertising. For example, a car dealership may target current customers that are due for an oil change. By narrowing down the people that you want to target you can make stretch your marketing budget dramatically.

Another nice thing about postcards is that the cost of printing full color has been reduced dramatically through advances in technology. Remember when flat screen TVs were out of the price range of most people, and now they are in every household? Advances in technology reduced the costs of postcard printing the same way it did televisions in the last 5 years.

Before you start looking for a printer to print your postcards, there are few things that are important to take into consideration.

What size and thickness of postcard?

First, what size postcard would you like to use? The common sizes are 4x6, 5x7, 8.5.x5.5 and 6x9. The benefit of a 4x6 is you get a special rate form the post office called a "card" rate, and that gives you "first class" service at approximately the same price as "standard."

Most postcard printers use a cover stock of at least 100# cover. 100# cover is the usually 10pt, or 1/100th of an inch. Premium postcard printers will usually use a 12pt or 14pt paper for extra durability.

Online or Local Printer?

You may find online printers will usually be at least half the price of a local printer and the reason is because they have invested heavily in automation systems that take your digital files right to press with as little of human intervention as possible. This automation makes online printers usually a better bet than a local printer. Be careful, as there are downsides to online printers""for example, you have no ability to inspect the product before it"s shipped to you. Also, you lose the attention to detail that a local commercial printer may have. A lot of online shops have automated pre-flighting (getting files to print) so if you made a mistake, they may not catch it.

Don"t steal/borrow photos:

When designing your postcard make sure that you don"t use images off of websites unless they are from a royalty free site like istockphoto. There are two reasons for this. First, your graphics will be blurry and low resolution. Although they look ok on your screen, you"ll be in for a big surprise once you receive your prints because they will look awful. Secondly, images of the internet are usually owned by someone and you may be breaking copyright law by using them without permission. It"s best to use royalty free photography and there are plenty of sights to find good stock photos if you are unable to provide your own pictures.

Hire a professional designer:

It"s very important to realize that if you don"t have a professional designer on staff, that you should hire one for your graphics. You may have the right programs to design but if you don"t know how to use them properly you may be damaging your brand by printing something that doesn"t look the best. Just because I have a microscope doesn"t make me a scientist, and it may be best to concentrate on your marketing message and leave the layout to a graphic designer. In my experience a professional design combined with a strong marketing message will have significantly better response than just a strong message.

by: Stan Coyle

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