Postcard Marketing Case Study: When to change your marketing for better response

PostcardMania was not always the multi-million dollar marketing firm that it is today.  In 1998 its Founder, Joy Gendusa, came across a little known idea — postcard marketing.  She took that idea and turned it into a niche that exploded across the nation.  Today, postcard marketing is one of the most effective and economical marketing mediums out there and PostcardMania has been recognized for its fast-track growth by Inc. Magazine.  Joy has now published a book, after years of trial and error, called The Ultimate Postcard Marketing Success Manual, telling others exactly how to use postcard marketing to increase business and expand as fast as she has. 

In The Ultimate Postcard Marketing Success Manual are case studies of 12 different industries that have had success with direct mail postcards.  Here is a case study excerpted from the book of a furniture company that was able to increase its response rate by tweaking its message after mailing 3 times.

Industry: Furniture

Goal: Increase Sales

Customer: St. Charles Office Furniture

The Campaign: Erik Nobs, of St. Charles Office Furniture, has been doing postcard marketing since 2001. He currently mails 5,000 postcards per week as well as sends a monthly brochure mailing of 12,000 pieces.

Through his years mailing postcards, Erik has found that he gets the best response when he mails consistently and uses colorful designs.  He tested and tested and over time determined that changing the design of his postcard every three mailings also helped boost response.  This way he can build up recognition, but the design of the cards doesn’t get stale.

“If we stay too long with one design, the cards just don’t pull as well,” claimed Erik.

Postcards make up 75% of St. Charles’ marketing because that’s where they get the best response. Then they supplement the direct mail campaign with newspaper, radio, TV and trade magazine ads.  Erik has calculated that his return on investment is at least 10 times what he spends on his postcard marketing, but he made the point that you have to send them out repetitively to get that kind of response.

“Find your public, find out what they want and communicate that to them — again and again and again.”

By staying abreast of marketing trends and technology, Gendusa has been able to not only grow her own business, but those of her 28,000+ customers.  In an ongoing effort to educate businesses on the efficacy and economy of postcard marketing, Gendusa wrote The Ultimate Postcard Marketing Success Manual to enlighten entrepreneurs and professionals to the best direct mail postcard marketing tips, and the common pitfalls that one can fall into when lacking proper data.

Gendusa claims some of the best marketing does not have to break the bank and that anyone can learn from her experience. In fact she lets people download the first 3 chapters of her book for free.

“I’ve gone through a lot of trial and error — and I want to make it so others don’t have to,” said Joy.

About Joy Gendusa:

Using a powerful, simple, extremely cost effective way of communicating with customers has earned Joy Gendusa Inc Magazine’s recognition as the nation’s fastest growing direct mail postcard-marketing firm with year 2007 revenues at nearly $19,000,000.  Gendusa began in 1998 with zero investment capital. Today, her Clearwater, FL firm called PostcardMania, employs over 160 people and prints 4 million and mails 2 million postcards representing more than 28,000 customers in over 350 industries each week.  Visit www.postcardmania.com or www.postcardmarketingsuccessmanual.com