1. Make an irresistible offer

Evaluate your offer from the customer’s point of view. Your prospects want to feel like they are getting their money’s worth and more. Make them feel rewarded for taking you up on your offer. Offer an incentive, for example, “FREE” or “50% OFF.”

2. Use deadlines for immediate responses

Set a deadline on your offer to motivate the prospect to act immediately, whether you want them to call, visit your website or any other action. For example say, “This offer expires in 10 days. Call now!”

3. Less IS more

Grab your prospect or customers attention with one image or photograph that is in some way related to or represents your company. It will grab their attention, but will not distract them from looking at the important stuff – your offer.

When writing your text, remember you only have a few seconds to catch your prospects attention. Keep your message brief; don’t try to explain all the details. Give them just enough information to entice them to act. Eliminate unnecessary words. Use shorter words versus longer words.

4. Call recipients to action

Don’t make the reader work hard to figure out what they are supposed to do. Have all your contact information displayed prominently. Make sure you reader knows what to do to take advantage of your offer. For example, “Order now! Call us at 1.877.627.9636” – and make it bold.

5. Proof and proof again

We know it is exciting to create marketing materials. We still get excited when we print up our own. Don’t let your enthusiasm rush you. Before approving your postcard’s design, make sure you check your text for misspelled words, inconsistencies or grammatical errors. Print a hard copy and have a few people read through it. Once you’ve read it once or twice, you may start reading from memory and miss errors. Remember one spelling error may not seem like a big deal to you; you know that you know how to spell, but your prospective customer won’t.

6. Follow up

Let’s face it we are all very busy. Your customers may not remember you three or four months down the line, unless you remind them. You can send postcards to individual customers monthly for less than $3.00 per year. Send monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly reminders, thank you postcards, coupons and more to keep referrals and repeat business coming your way.

7. Change the postcard’s size

Catch prospects and customers off guard with different sizes. For just pennies you can use a jumbo postcard to stand out from the rest of the postcards they get in their mail. Instead of a 4”x6” send a 5”x7”, 6”x8” or 6”x11” postcard. If you use a mailing service the postage stays the same; you only pay the extra printing costs (and it looks more professional since the recipients names and addresses are printed directly on the card instead of labels.)

About Author

Cristina Solana is founder of NeedPostcards.com, a full-color printing company in Miami, FL. They offer fast, affordable full-color business cards, postcards, brochures and more with uncompromised quality.