Postcards

I don't receive postcards any more. I use to, you know the cheesy postcard, the photo of a local landmark shot at 2 in the afternoon, but nobody sends me those postcards anymore. My friends email me photos instead.

In the direct mail advertising business, the standard response rate is between 1% to 2%. This means that 98% to 99% of these letters end up in the recycling box. And if you are like me, the vast majority of them don't even get opened before being tossed in the recycling box. Instead of the closed envelope that needs to be opened, you can use a postcard. The person receiving the postcard does not need to open it. She MUST look either at the front or the back. It's not possible to discard it without actually reading it. This gives you a much higher response rate, as high as 7%, but more realistically 3 to 5%.

A postcard has 2 sides, the front where you can place your advertising. The front of the postcard is usually in color. The back of the postcard, usually in black & white, is divided in 2 sections:

  1. The text side on the left
  2. The address side on the right

You can show your photos in the front, and have some black & white text printed at the back.

  • Is that going to be expensive? Actually it's quite cheap. It's much more expensive in Canada than in the US, but it's still less than $0.10 per card in 5 000 quantity. In the US you can get 5 000 cards for less than $0.04 per card.
  • Do I need to buy a mailing list? That will depend on your market. If your market is a local market, you don't need a mailing list, you just drop it in every mail box.
    1. If business is really slow, you can save money on not having to join a gym, and you can walk and deliver the cards in every mailbox. You can do it block by block.
    2. If you don't feel like doing it yourself, you can use kids, or use companies that deliver fliers. In Canada, it's $45 per thousand, that's another $0.045 per card. That makes a total of $0.15 per card delivered
  • Do I need to buy a mailing list? Yes if your market is not local. You can use Adbase or Agency Access. If this is your market, then the mailing lists are worth the price.
  • If I only shoot "restaurants interiors panoramas". It's even better, walk by all the restaurants in your town/city and drop your postcard.

Imagine spending $500 and finding:

  1. New work
  2. New customers
  3. New profits

Is it worth it? I think so, and it seems to be working for me.

You can use postcards for:

  • Weddings
  • Portraits
  • Promote a new studio
  • ...