Important Functions of Postcards In Direct Mailing

I've recently been writing a series of articles discussing exactly how you get various forms of marketing material to your customers, and feel this is something particularly interesting to consider when dealing with postcards.

The main reason is because postcards have become heavily associated with one specific method, which is direct mailing. In fact, when I often discuss companies who print postcards, I mention postcards and direct mailing as if they were one in the same. Most people don't offer much of a difference between the two, and I've met many people who have been surprised by the idea of using postcards with anything other than direct mailing. This is simply the way to get your postcards around.

I understand fully the basis for this belief. After all, postcards were originally made to be sent through the mail, and if you're going to be sending your marketing to people through the mail than you're engaging in direct mailing, but is this all you can do when you print postcards? Is this the only avenue open to you?

Postcards can actually serve a number of different important functions if you want to use them for other things. The reason why color postcards are effective as marketing is because they're almost always designed to be visually appealing and quickly deliver a short message.

Why not bring some postcards along to a tradeshow just as you would business cards? You can quite literally hand out full color postcards in a way similar to what you would do with business cards, because most postcards also have a company's name and contact information on them. This will be like the business card for your company, rather than you.

Postcards can also be handed out on the streets like flyers. They're smaller than flyers and easier to shove into a pocket, and given the greater flare of colors on them, you'll get more people taking notice in them. The same goes for putting postcards up on bulletin boards, or even leaving stacks of them at specific places for people to pick up and take home with them.

There's no reason you can't put postcards to good use in these different ways. It doesn't harm the postcards or fail to live up to the postcards full potential by doing so, and you still get the good savings that comes when you print postcards because of the naturally lower price tag they carry.

Don't let anyone make you think that you have to use marketing material in one specific way or another. There are always a wide variety of possibilities out there and open to you if you feel like getting creative. There's no reason to completely limit your postcards to direct mailing if you don't want to.