Postcards are the UK’s most popular direct mail formats. While they are cost-effective, they offer many other benefits. We’ve summarised those postcard mailings formats below using our years of experience.

1. Tangibility and Engagement

Postcards are physical items that can be held and viewed repeatedly, creating a more memorable experience than digital formats. They offer an immediate way to get your message across, with high-quality images and clever copy that can attract and hold attention. The tactile nature and diverse materials engage multiple senses, deepening customers’ emotional connection with your brand.

A5 is the standard size, but many other options are available, helping postcards stand out and be more engaging.

2. Targeted Marketing

Postcards can be tailored to specific customer segments, offering relevant messages based on past purchases or interests. They can also be personalised with recipient’s name, a tailored offer, or a specific call to action based on previous behaviour. This creates a completely unique customer experience, enhancing engagement and increasing ROI.

3. Brand Reinforcement and Trust Building

A well-designed postcard using the right material can convey your brand’s identity, values, and quality, helping to reinforce brand recognition and loyalty. Investing in print and mail can show that you care more about your customers than bombarding them with even more emails.

4. Increased Engagement and Longer Attention Span

Postcards are often kept and visible to multiple people in the household, allowing for repeated exposure to your brand. Compared to the fleeting nature of digital ads, postcards can stay in the home for days or even weeks. This helps nurture an ongoing engagement with your message. Customers may also share postcards with friends and family, spreading brand awareness to new audiences.

5. Direct Path to Purchase

A well-crafted postcard can still include Calls To Action, like special offers, discounts, and exclusive deals to motivate immediate purchases, despite the size. Including QR codes or links to stores makes it easy for motivated customers to take action.

6. Sustainability

Postcards are usually made from paper, and the paper used to produce catalogues is based on wood, which is a natural and renewable material. Paper is one of the most recycled products, embodying the cycle of make, use, recycle and reuse.

Well-managed sustainable forests give multiple benefits to society, such as livelihoods, ecosystem services and biodiversity, while helping to tackle climate change. To ensure the long-term health of European forests, sustainable forest management underpins how the paper industry operates and sources its main raw material. (source – https://twosides.info/myths-and-facts)

7. Complimentary to Digital Marketing

Postcards featuring QR codes, URLs, or social media handles directly drive traffic to digital channels such as websites and social media. Accurately measuring responses and purchases from postcard mailings can provide valuable data for refining digital marketing strategies.

8. Testing, Measurement, and Analysis

The targeted nature of postcard mailings opens up a range of options for testing. Direct mail campaigns are highly measurable, and you can get an end-of-campaign report that gives you full insight into how your campaign has performed, including response rate, average order value, cost of acquisition, and details of how different test segments or formats have performed against expectations.

With the right agency, these insights will be used to refine and improve your next campaign, ensuring that all of the learnings are taken forward to create an even better plan for your next catalogue mailing.

 

Summary

Postcards are tangible, highly targeted, measurable, sustainable, and brand-enhancing. These features make them particularly effective at encouraging existing customers to purchase and re-activating lapsed customers.

Get in touch to find out how we can get the best from your direct mail campaigns.