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Guide to Designing an Effective Postcard

Postcards offer one of the best ways to utilize direct mail, providing an affordable method of getting messages to your customers. When done properly, postcards can produce great results for your business. In this blog, we will walk you through some key tips and best practices to keep in mind when designing effective postcards.

Tip #1: Keep It Simple

One of the most important tips is to keep your postcard simple. To get your message across, your postcard should be easy for the recipient to understand and feature clear, concise language. If your point is not easily recognized, you run the risk of recipients throwing your postcards in the trash before understanding the message. To prevent this, keep your design simple and to the point.

Tip #2: Create Different Messages for Different Target Audiences

Fully personalizing your postcards to individual recipients is highly effective and enhances the customer experience but is not always practical. A great alternative is to divide your audience into targeted segments. For example, postcards targeted toward parents with young children will look different than postcards catered towards empty-nesters or single adults. By creating different messages for each targeted segment, your postcards will have higher relevance, which increases the chances that they will be read and acted upon.

Tip #3: Use Eye-Catching Images

Eye-catching images and graphics are critical in delivering effective postcards. Since postcards have a very limited amount of space to get your message across, it’s important to use it wisely. Studies indicate that individuals process visual information 60,000 times quicker than written information, so when space is limited, images offer the best way to tell your story and spread your message.

Tip #4: Don’t Forget the Call To Action

Last but certainly not least, be sure to include an obvious call to action. This step is often overlooked or forgotten by many businesses, which leads to disappointing results. To ensure your customers are directed to where they need to go, include a clear and enticing call to action. For example, if your postcard is announcing a sale, you could include a CTA that says “Visit our website today and use promo code XYZ for 20% off.” 

By leaving out a call-to-action, recipients may throw away or set down the postcard without taking the desired steps. Rather than assuming your audience will act without direction, include a CTA!

Direct Mail Services from ImageMark

Direct mail postcards offer a great way to reach your target audience and generate leads for your business. To ensure optimal results, it’s important to keep designs simple, mail to segmented target audiences, use attractive images, and include a powerful call to action. By following these four tips, you’ll be well on your way to designing effective postcards that will achieve the results your desire.

At ImageMark, we support our customers’ marketing efforts through a wide range of services. From printing and fulfillment to kitting and direct mail services, we are here to deliver the solutions our customers need to drive results for their businesses. For more tips on designing the best postcard for your marketing campaign, or to learn more about our services, contact ImageMark today.

5 Fun Stats for Your Fundraising

Nonprofit organizations know the importance of personalized direct mail. Most likely, you are already personalizing your mailers by the donor’s name, giving history, and often household income. But are there other data points that could help? Here are some exciting statistics that, while they may not all apply to your organization, illustrate how important it is to know as much as possible about your donors. You never know what data might be vital to increasing their support.

1) Should you be targeting Millennials? Not necessarily. Millennials (those born 1981–1995) are more socially-minded than older generations, but does this mean they are a fundraising gold mine? Actually, no.According to Blackbaud, Millennials aren’t significant givers. On average, they give $481 per year, compared to $732 for Generation X and $1,212 for Boomers.

2) Mac users are more generous. On average, Mac users give $182 per donation, while PC users give $137. This reminds us that correlations related to giving can be found in the most unexpected places, so dig deep!

3) Add video. According to Olgive, 57% of people who watch a nonprofit video will ultimately donate. Use print-to-mobile tools like QR Codes and augmented reality to enable donors to feel more personally connected to your cause.

4) Be mobile-friendly. According to Nonprofits Source, 51% of people visit nonprofit websites on mobile devices. Even if you send your appeals through the mail, make sure your website is optimized to look fantasticregardless of what device people use to access it.

5) Don’t overlook lower-income households. If you think the more money someone has, the more likely they will reach into their pockets, you’d be wrong. In one survey, households making $25,000 per year gave an average of 12.8% of their annual income to charity. This is the highest percentage (and nearly double that) of any other income demographic.

All of this points to the need for more and better data. Every nonprofit’s donor base will look and act differently, so before mailing out that appeal, invest the time to understand yours.

What Matters More Than Products, Services, and Price? Customer Experience!

When two companies offer similar products, what differentiates one from another? It’s more than price. When it comes right down to it, there is something even more important. It’s the customer experience.

While “customer experience” can be an overused buzzword, there is a lot of truth behind its importance. At lunchtime, for example, there might be a deli right down the street that makes the best pastrami on rye in the entire country, but if the floor is dirty and the people behind the counter are snarky and rude, it doesn’t matter. You’ll go somewhere else.

The same occurs at the retail level. Take the example of Nordstrom’s, which has been regularly praised by the National Retail Foundation as both setting and raising the standard for customer experience. Nordstrom customers know that when they shop at one of its stores, they will not only find premium merchandise, but they will be treated with value. From their interaction with employees to the chain’s policies designed to enhance speed and convenience, shoppers may buy the same merchandise at other high-end retailers, but they won’t be treated the same way.

Customer experience matters. With so many brands competing for the same customer dollars, experience can become the main differentiator between one company and the other. Not just in a positive way, but in a negative way, as well. In fact, Microsoft found that 58% of American consumers will switch companies because of poor customer service.

That’s why we put so much emphasis on customer experience at ImageMark. We hope that, when you interact with any of our team members, you feel that we really care.

• From how you are greeted when you first contact us, to how promptly and professionally your estimate is handled, we hope that you feel respected and valued from the very first moment.
• If you have questions, we hope our salespeople and customer service team answer those questions promptly and offer suggestions genuinely designed to benefit your business and marketing plans, whether they improve our bottom line or not.
• When things go wrong, we hope that you know that we will take full responsibility for anything that is on us, and we will make it right, no matter what it takes.
• We hope that you do business with us, not just because of the value we offer in print and marketing services, but because you feel that you matter to us and that we value the projects you are doing.

If there is any area in which your customer experience falls short, let us know! We want to exceed your expectations because we know that, even though we take great pride in the print and marketing services we offer, a great customer experience is the greatest value we can provide.