Open your email right now. How many unread messages are sitting there?

Now think about the last time you walked out to the mailbox. How many pieces of mail did you find? Three? Four? Here is what I want you to notice. You looked at every one of them.

That small habit is worth money to you. When you email a customer, your message joins a long line of senders who all want the same glance, and most of them lose. Postcard marketing gives you a quiet way around that crowd.

A card in the mailbox has almost no company. If your best customers skip your emails, your next offer may never get seen at all. The problem is not your writing. The problem is the crowd.

Here is how to get a customer’s address and what to put on the card. Then comes the setup, which takes about an hour.

In This Article...

Why A Postcard Gets A Look Your Email Does Not

Think about what an envelope asks of you. You have to open it. A postcard asks for nothing. It lands face up, and your eye scans it for something interesting before your brain decides to care.

A postcard asks nothing of the reader except a glance.

A postcard asks nothing of the reader except a glance. That is the whole advantage. There is no flap to tear, no link to click, no page to load. Even a tired customer at the end of a long day will look at a card as it crosses the kitchen counter.

Your customers also live offline. They shop, cook, and walk the dog away from a screen. When they do go online, you compete with every other marketer on the planet for the same few seconds.

I still send email, and you should keep sending yours. The card is one more door into your customer’s day, and almost nobody else is knocking on it. Think about where else people give their full attention away from a screen. A text message gets read. An ad in a favorite niche magazine gets seen. A spot on a favorite radio show gets heard. Test any of them for yourself and see. If you enjoy ideas like this, you will find other ideas I have been writing about lately in the Latest Updates.

Start With The People Who Already Said Yes

Your best postcard list is the people who have already bought from you. They know your name. They trust your word. They are far more likely to read your card than a stranger is. That is why postcard marketing suits past buyers best.

Most of the money in a business sits with people who have bought once already. They are waiting for the right second offer.

Pull up your order list and sort it by date. Start with your newest buyers, then move backward through the list. Each name is a person who already raised a hand once.

Timing helps too. A card that arrives soon after the first order lands while the purchase is still fresh in your customer’s mind.

How To Get An Address When Your Product Is A Download

Here is the catch. If you sell downloads, you may have no mailing address for your buyers. Email is all you have.

The fix is a physical bonus. Say you sell a dog-training guide as a download. You also ship a set of training videos on a disc. Or you sell a cookbook and toss in a pair of oven mitts.

The bonus gives you a reason to ask for an address. It also gives you a box to ship, and a box can carry a flier, a coupon, or a card for your next offer.

This mix of download and physical item is called a hybrid product. The download delivers instant gratification. The physical part adds value in the buyer’s eyes. Few people bother to repack a parcel and mail it back, so refunds tend to fall.

Start small. One low-cost item and a clear note on your order page is enough. Mail only to customers who gave you their address on purpose.

What To Put In The Box Besides The Product

Once you ship a box, you own a small piece of space inside it. Use it. A coupon for the next order from your store works well. So does a flier that tells a buyer about your upcoming workshop.

Say someone buys a dog collar from you. Slip in a coupon for their next order from your dog supplies store. Or say someone buys your copywriting course. Tuck in a flier for the workshop you are running next month.

The card and the flier do the same job. Each puts your next offer in your customer’s hand at the moment they feel good about the last one.

Make The Card Match What They Just Bought

A card does best when the offer fits the last purchase like a key fits a lock. Someone who just bought a book on social media marketing wants a deeper book on Facebook marketing. That buyer does not want a random gadget.

Here is another one. Say you sold a patio tomato guide. Your next card offers a short guide on the pests that wreck a tomato crop. The buyer thinks: that is exactly my next problem.

Keep it to one card, one offer, one action. If you give people three choices, they pick none.

Then add a deadline, but only a real one. A workshop that starts in two weeks is real. A bonus that ends on Friday is real. A fake clock costs you the trust you built over years.

A Sample Card You Can Borrow

Here is a card you can copy and reshape for your own market. Fill in the brackets.

“Thank you for your order of [first product]. Your next step is ready: [second product], a short guide to [the very next problem your buyer will face]. Order by [date] and you also get [bonus]. Go to [short web address] to claim your copy.”

The card is short on purpose. It names what your buyer bought, names what comes next, and tells your buyer where to go.

Set It Up So You Can See What Worked

Give the card its own web address, one that appears nowhere else. Every order that comes through that address came from the card. Now you know the answer, and you did not have to guess.

Do not mail the whole list on day one. A small first batch costs little, and it shows you what to fix before the big send.

Send your first batch to a small group. Wait for the orders. Then change one thing on the next batch, such as the headline or the deadline.

Change only one thing at a time. That way you know what moved the numbers. The headline and the deadline are the best places to start.

Pair The Card With A Thank-You Email

Postcard marketing does not replace email. It works best as a team. Send a thank-you email right after the sale, and let the card follow a little later.

That first email does four jobs. It thanks your customer for the order. It reminds your customer why the purchase was a smart call, which eases buyer’s remorse. It gives the download link or the shipping date. And it mentions one related product.

Then the card arrives and carries your offer into the mailbox. Your customer meets your name in two places, and both visits are friendly.

Three Slip-Ups To Skip

Slip-up one: an offer that has nothing to do with the last purchase. The card reads like junk mail, and it goes straight into the trash.

Slip-up two: a fake deadline. Customers talk, and a deadline that keeps moving costs you far more than one missed order.

Slip-up three: no way to count. Without a separate web address, you will never know whether the card paid for itself.

Skip all three and the rest is easy.

Your One-Hour Postcard Marketing Plan

You do not need a big budget or a big team. You need about an hour, spread over a couple of days.

First, pick one past product and its natural next step. Give that ten minutes. Second, fill in the sample card above and trim it until it fits on one side. Give that twenty.

Third, choose a print and mail service, or print the cards yourself, and set up the web address from the last section. Give that twenty more. Fourth, mark the mailing date on your calendar and note the day the first order lands. Ten minutes finishes it.

That is one hour for a new door into your customer’s day. Most of your competitors will never open it.

Where This Naturally Leads

If you want to go further, the next step from here is my book, Six Figures A Year In Information Publishing. Once your cards start bringing customers back, you will want a bigger plan for the business around them.

The book is a free gift for anyone serious about building a real information publishing business, and it was a number one Amazon bestseller. You can request your copy at SixFiguresAYear.com. It arrives the same way your postcards will: in the mailbox.

Send one card this month. Just one. Then watch what happens when your offer sits in a customer’s hand instead of sliding past in a crowded inbox.

You already have the customers, and you already have the offer. All that is left is the stamp. I am rooting for you, and I want to hear how your first card does.

Nick James

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Why Does A Smart, Underrated Postcard Win Repeat Orders Your Emails Miss?