Direct Mail Marketing with postcards: Got Stopping Power?

Imagine this ...

Tom arrives home from work, parks his car in his driveway, and walks to her mailbox. It 's cold, it hustles. Reaches in, pulls out the deliveries of the day, and then rushes inside the house.

After greeting his family, begins to order by mail. Tom is a busy guy and do not like clutter, so do not need much of a reason to throw in junk mail. In fact, without realizing it, Tom has developed an effective system for doing just that:

1. Order through the mail once.

2. Throw away anything that is not immediately important or worth keeping.

3. Order through the mail again.

4. Start opening up all that is left, in order of importance.

How many American workers, Tom is the "time-starved." He can never find enough hours in a day to do the things you want to do. So why waste time on something like the post?

The need of Stopping Power

In direct mail marketing, this scenario represents one of your biggest challenges - stopping power. The cards must overcome great odds to stop people long enough that (A) read the message, (B) understand your message, and if all goes well, (C) respond to the message.

But it all starts with getting the player to stop.

Without stopping power, the message is ignored, the offer will not be met, and your card will earn a one-way ticket to the nearest trash can. So, in order to maximize the return on investment direct mail marketing, you need to raise the power to stop your postcards.

Here are three ways to do just that.

Stopping Power Ingredient # 1 - Score

Relevance means that the offer should match the audience. This concept is in two parts. First, you need to know exactly who your audience is and what they want or need. Then you must communicate with them in a way that capitalizes on that knowledge.

Direct mail marketing gives you the ability to segment the list and customize your message, rather than with the majority of marketing channels. Database technology now makes it easy to create a highly targeted mailing lists for your postcard marketing campaigns. With this peculiarity at hand, there is no reason not to raise the relevance of the message.

Stopping Power Ingredient # 2 - Singularity

One idea per card - that should be your goal messaging. A product, service, event, one idea, one goal. The more you go over, the more you dilute your message.

The postcards are the best marketing that readers "get" immediately. This comes from having a single goal, a unique idea, and a singular goal. (It also helps when the card is well written, but that's another article).

There is not much space on a postcard marketing, so you can fill with more arguments. This is the work of a brochure website, or book - not a postcard. Putting too much information in a confined space, and it will seem intimidating and inaccessible to many readers.

Remember Tom and his ruthless screening process? Give it too much to think about at once, and off you go!

Stopping Power Ingredient # 3 - Simplicity

Here's a good formula to keep cards clean and simple, while at the same time deliver a message strong enough to evoke a response:

Create a billboard side and one side of the message. The first billboard is the purest form of power of arrest. And 'light but heavy copy of the message. It includes a killer title, relevant, eye-popping graphics, and something that gives the postcard immediate value.

The message side picks up where the first left off the bill. It holds the promise and tell the reader what to do next. It also offers a sort of reward for the reader to take such action.

Conclusion

Tom has finished screening his mail. In the trash, you'll find a handful of marketing pieces that had significance, uniqueness and simplicity. Held on the refrigerator with magnets, you will find the pieces of marketing that had all these ingredients - and these are the samples of braking power.

* You may republish this article on your website as long as the byline, author's note and hyperlink are left intact. Please include the article in its entirety....