Category Archives: Marketing Ideas

postcards

10 Tips for Designing an Effective Promotional Postcard

Marketing Ideas, Postcards, , ,

Designing a promotional postcard is a great way to market your business. A well-designed, full-colour postcard can grab attention, spread brand awareness and generate interest in what you have to offer.
Because postcards don’t need to be mailed in envelopes, they’re extremely affordable compared to other forms of marketing. However, their thick, glossy double-sided cardstock will create an instant impression of quality – which customers will come to associate with your business.
If you’ve never designed a promotional postcard before, it can be tricky to know where to start. Here are some tips to help you create an effective postcard that will get results.

1. Keep It Simple

The best promotional postcards are simple and easy to understand. People should be able to tell at a glance what your promotional postcard is for, and why they should care.
Don’t try to cram too much information into a small space: it will only confuse your audience. If they pick up your postcard and don’t immediately understand what they’re looking at, it’ll go straight in the bin.
Instead, stick to the essentials, and use secondary text or graphics to provide more information if needed. That means details of the promotion, who you are, and how they can take advantage of it.

2. Use Strong Visuals

Visuals are key when it comes to promotional postcards. They help to grab attention and generate interest in what you have to offer.
Choose clear images and visual effects that are relevant to your business, and that will appeal to your target market. If possible, use eye-catching graphics or striking colours to really make your postcard stand out.
Remember that your recipients may have a lot of promotional materials to sort through – you don’t want yours to blend in with the rest. Just don’t make your postcard too complicated (remember, keep it simple).

3. Make Your Message Clear

Your message should be clear, concise, and easy to understand.
Think of it this way: what’s the core reason you’re sending out your promotional postcard? Let’s say you have a new product. Well, a big picture of the new product and a big banner headline with its name and price would be good things to build your design around.
Besides that, make sure that your call to action is obvious, and that the benefits of taking advantage of your promotion are clear. What do you want the customer to do? Buy now, subscribe, call? Whatever it is, be clear about it. Your audience should be able to read your postcard in a few seconds and know exactly what you’re offering. If they can’t, it’s likely that they’ll just move on.

4. Create a Sense of Urgency

In order to motivate people to take action, it’s important to create a sense of urgency. If they see that your offer is time-limited, or that there are only a few items left, they’ll be more likely to want to take advantage of it.

You can do this by using phrases like:
• “Limited time offer”
• “While stocks last”
• “Sale ends Monday”

If you can make people feel like they’re missing out if they don’t act now, you’ll be more likely to get them to do something.
Giving a clear cut-off date is best. That’s why offers like ‘January sales’ are so successful: if you don’t buy in January, the price will go up! So, rather than using an arbitrary cut-off point (e.g. ‘three weeks’), use a specified date or timeframe.

5. Use a Good Postcard Design Tool

When it comes to creating effective promotional postcards, using a good design tool is essential. It ensures that your postcard looks polished and professional, and will help it to stand out. This will influence your potential customers’ first impressions of your company, so it’s an important step.
Business stationery experts 123Print offer a range of design templates that are easy to use, and that will help you create a postcard that looks great.
With our design tool, you can personalise your postcard with your own text and images, and you can even choose from a range of different fonts and colours. You can also preview your postcard before you order it, to make sure that you’re happy with the results.

6. Use Interesting Fonts

When it comes to text, using interesting typography can make a big difference. This doesn’t mean using a huge variety of fonts (in fact, less is more), but rather choosing fonts that are appropriate for your message and target market.
If you’re targeting a younger audience, for example, you might want to use funky or stylish fonts. If you’re targeting a more sophisticated audience, you might want to use more formal, serif fonts. Just make sure that your text is easy to read, and that it fits in with the overall design of your postcard.

7. Be Consistent with Your Branding

Your branding is key when it comes to promotional postcards. If people can see a recognisable design or style running through your postcards, they’ll be more likely to remember you. This is imperative
Ways to stay consistent include:
• Using the same fonts and colours across all of your postcards
• Using a consistent design template if you make more than one
• Having a recognisable, clear logo, and using the same logo as you use elsewhere
Other than that, it’s up to you how you want to present your branding. Just make sure that it’s immediately recognisable, and that it ties in with your overall marketing strategy.

8. Use High-Quality Images

When it comes to promotional postcards, using high-quality images is essential. After all, you want your postcard to stand out from the crowd, and come across as professional.
What can often trip people up is that a picture might look good at a certain size on a screen, but looks grainy, pixelated or blurry when it’s printed out at full size. You can avoid this by using high-resolution, HD images.

You can either pay for an image or use public domain images – these are available for everyone to use without copyright issues. Or, of course, you can take the pictures yourself!
When you design a promo postcard with 123Print, you’re free to use the images in our templates, or upload your own. So, choose something a) high resolution and b) that fits your branding.

9. Proof Read Your Text

It might seem like a no-brainer, but proofreading your text is essential. Typos and errors can give the impression that you’re unprofessional, that your business lacks quality control or that you don’t care about what you send to potential customers.
If you’re not much of a writer, you do still have options for proofreading your text. Have a friend or colleague run over it for you, hire an editor through an online platform, or run it through a grammar analysis tool. Even the spell-checkers built in to word processing programs do a decent job.

10. Hire a Professional Designer if You Can’t ‘DIY’

If you’re not confident in your design skills, or if you just don’t have the time to create a postcard from scratch, using a professional design service is a good option. You could either hire a freelance designer or use a professional design agency.
Just make sure that you brief them properly, and that you’re clear on what you want them to create. You don’t want any surprises when it comes to the cost, or the final design! You can save money by asking them to send you the design digitally, and using an affordable site like 123Print to have it printed.

Design a Stunning Promotional Postcard with 123Print

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123Print offers high-quality printing that’s totally customisable, so you can be the cool creative person you’re just itching to be – all without breaking the bank.
We offer business card templates, letterheads, compliment slips, address labels, note pads, appointment cards and so much more – including promotional postcards.
If you’re feeling inspired and want to get started, visit our site to browse thousands of promotional postcard templates. For any questions, queries or special requests, please don’t hesitate to contact us today – our design team will be happy to help.

postcards

The Complete Guide to Promotional Postcards: How, When and Why

Marketing Ideas, Postcards, Uncategorized, , , ,

Digital-only marketers reading this article might be asking why they should be thinking about promotional postcard ideas in the 21st century. Isn’t paper marketing a little passé?
It’s a fair question, but there is a lot of data about the importance to a brand of direct mail advertising. For a start, according to the latest statistics, up to 87% of people read all their physical mail – compared to promotional emails, where the global average is only 23%.
That’s less than a one in four chance that your promotional email gets opened, assuming that it didn’t hit the spam folder.

Now, no one is suggesting that you dump your promotional email campaigns—email is a powerful marketing tool—but consider promotional postcards as an interesting and highly customisable adjunct to your online marketing activities.
Aside from being useful for digital marketers, promotional postcards are an essential marketing tool for brick-and-mortar retail businesses, too.

Why Should You Use Promotional Postcards?

Promotional postcards are exactly what they sound like – postcards sent out to past customers, current customers, and potential customers to promote a business.
They can be used as a sturdier alternative to flyers, to advertise your products, services, or special offers. They can also simply be used for brand awareness and recognition, by wishing customers and clients a Merry Christmas, for example.

The one big advantage to postcards is that they can be put straight in the post box without an envelope. So you’re not only saving money on envelopes, but you’re also saving time stuffing and sealing them.

Promotional postcards can be designed to fit almost any colour scheme, theme, industry and occasion. They can also be fully customised with your business’s logo, preferred font and wording options.

When to Send Promotional Postcards

You can use personalised postcards in almost any way you’d like – as a thank you to a loyal customer, or to wish a longstanding client a happy birthday. But they’re most often used to advertise some sort of sale, promotion, or special discount that a business is currently offering.

The point of a promotional postcard is to remind your clients and customers about your company, and encourage them to get shopping now- otherwise they’ll miss the special offer! So, the right time to send a promotional postcard is whenever you’ve got a promotion or sale on.

There are a few typical sales periods to consider, such as:
Spring sale
Summer sale
Back to School
Black Friday
Christmas or Boxing Day sale
New Year

Think about how your product or service fits the season and create matching postcard promotions. For example, if you sell fashion products, promote clothes appropriate to the season.

Over the past ten years, the amount of online buying has risen massively. Now, throughout the year, there are various ‘cyber’ sales from online retailers, such as Amazon. It’s good to time your promotions to coincide with these sales and hook onto the shirt tails of the online sellers.

postcards

 
What Do You Put on a Promotional Postcard?

Like any other form of marketing promotion, the design and content should be simple and eye-catching. Think about your marketing goal, and design the card in a way that guides the reader to take the action that you want.

If, for instance, you expect someone to buy a gym membership subscription, you might wish to write some enticing copy and offer a two-month-free discount via a QR code. The recipient scanning that QR code and accessing the sales page on your website is your promotional postcard’s ‘call to action’.

That may seem obvious, but without that one clear goal, the recipient might read it once, then toss it into the rubbish bin. The best promotional postcard ideas as simple and easy to execute.

How to Design a Promotional Postcard

How do you design a promotional postcard that will get read, as opposed to being thrown away? It’s all about making clever design choices that will help your postcard stand out from the rest.
Here are some promotional postcard design ideas that are sure to pull customers in.

Try Portrait Format

Most cards use landscape format. A portrait formatted postcard might prompt the recipient to pick it up and read. Getting someone to read your promotional postcard is the first hurdle to clear.

Contrasting Colours

The use of contrasting colours in a postcard design can help direct the recipient’s eye to an important piece of information, like price or a discount code.
However, use carefully, as overusing this technique may make a postcard hard to read.

Include Social Proof

Customers are far more likely to shop with a new business if they’ve got some sort of evidence that they won’t get scammed, or be sold an inferior product. People trust brands that other people recommend.
Where possible, leave space in your design for pictures of satisfied customers, testimonials or reviews. Even including your rating on TrustPilot, for example, is helpful.

Personalisation

Try to avoid sending postcards and direct mail to ‘The Occupier’ or some other anonymous entity. Unless you’re a cable company trying to entice a new tenant or owner to buy your service, it doesn’t work and is very impersonal.

Work at making your customer database as complete as possible. First name/last name and address are the minimum. If you are a local company and your mailshot is small enough, consider writing the name and address by hand, too.

People who receive direct mail consider it more personal than other forms of direct advertising, such as email promotions. Take advantage of this bias and make your promotions as personal as possible.

Use Eye-Catching Images

Use bright images that stand out. Your promotional postcard must grab the recipient’s attention before they move onto the next item. Make sure that your postcard stands out from the rest by choosing crisp, clear, large images that use eye-catching colours such as red.

If you haven’t got any of your own images to use (such as pictures of your products), there are plenty of royalty-free image sites that you can make use of.

Use Both Sides

A postcard has two sides, so make good use of both. What’s on the front of the postcard should entice the customer to turn it over and read the other side.
Of course, don’t forget to leave space for the customer’s address on the reverse of the postcard – unless you’re going door-to-door and won’t need to actually use the postal system.

Include a QR code

QR codes are becoming more popular as a marketing tool. Include one in your promotion and make it easy for your customer to find your online information.
By scanning the QR code, the recipient will be sent directly to your website, and straight to the pertinent page regarding the promotion. This is a lot easier than typing a link into a web browser.

You can even include a personalised tracking number linked to the postcard recipient, so you know who’s reading your mail.

Postcard Promotion Ideas

Understanding your business and customers will lead to many great promotional postcard ideas. Here are a few to get you started:

Loyalty Cards

The invention of the loyalty card has been a great boon to the marketing activities of many brick-and-mortar retail businesses.

The cards enable them to track customer spending and offer discounts for a product that they routinely buy. The loyalty card application process captures a lot of customer data, suitable for direct mail marketing campaigns, including postcards.

Personalised Offers

Using the customer’s purchase history, you can create personalised postcards featuring products that they regularly buy, or products they might like to try in the future.
For instance, if a customer buys an expensive cosmetic product from a boutique store, the store may estimate when it’ll run out and send a 10% off coupon. The customer comes to the store to use the coupon and buys more.

Home Buyers

Through public records, it is usually possible to find when properties are bought and sold. It is safe to assume that when someone moves into a new property, they need to buy household goods or services.

If your business sells anything that would interest a home buyer – such as kitchen gadgets, soft furnishings, home décor, or anything of the like – create a welcoming personalised postcard and send it to their new address.

Discount Codes

The discount code is probably the most effective form of promotion. An estimated 40% of direct mail receivers will access a target website after receiving an attractive offer.
Even if you only offer a small discount – such as 10% off your first purchase, or buy two and get one free – it will entice new customers to shop with you. Include a special coupon code that you only distribute through your postcards, and you’ll be able to track how successful your postcards are!

Free Gifts

This is a great way to reward loyal customers. The gift doesn’t need to be super expensive, and you can save it for your long standing clients. When they come to your store to redeem their gift, they’ll have a browse of your other products and may leave with more than they bargained for.

Customer Feedback

Postcards aren’t just for selling products. Shops and restaurants may also use them to get customer feedback. Include a few questions on your postcard such as “how did you hear of us?” and “how would you rate our products or services?” and leave space for your customers to write their answer.
You can also offer a free gift or discount in return for a completed survey!

Greetings Cards

If your customer database includes your customers’ or clients’ dates of birth, send a personalised birthday postcard with a gift certificate or coupon code. You can also send out promotional postcards at Christmas, New Year, Easter, Valentine’s Day, and so on – simply to wish your customers a great holiday.

Where Can I Buy Promotional Postcards?

You’ll want to have your promotional postcards printed professionally, rather than trying to do it at home. And there’s no better place to order promotional postcards in the UK than 123Print!

At 123Print, you can choose from hundreds of promotional postcard templates in two sizes. Our standard postcards measure 143 x 102mm, while our large postcards are 203 x 127mm. All of our postcards are printed on high quality 330gsm cardstock.

When you’ve found a template that you’d like to work with, simply click on it to begin editing. You can upload your business’s logo or other artwork straight from your device, and play with the text colour and font until it perfectly matches your company’s aesthetic. Feel free to save your design and come back to it later, if you haven’t the time to perfect it in one sitting!

We aim to dispatch all orders within 2 working days, and offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Head to 123Print today to browse all of our affordable and high-quality business stationery.

Help Your Business Correspondence Stand Out with Personalised Rubber Stamps

Building your small business, Marketing, Marketing Ideas, , , , ,

Personalised stamps are a great way to set business correspondence apart and increase brand recognition. The best thing about personalised self-inking stamps is that they’re so easy to use. All you have to do is stamp your information onto a piece of correspondence, send it off, and voila! It’s that easy.
Stamps come in many shapes, sizes, and colours. They can be customised with your company’s name, tagline, address or contact number. Rubber stamps make business correspondence faster and easier for busy people; stamping your information on the mail or an envelope takes just seconds. And you’ll save plenty of time with bulk mailings too. You just need one stamp for each envelope you send out. So there’s no need to spend the extra time writing out mailing addresses on every letter you send.

What Are Personalised Rubber Stamps?

A rubber stamp is, as you likely already know, a rubber tool etched with a design (shape, logo, or text). Traditional rubber stamps are dipped into ink and then pressed onto paper; however, self-inking stamps are a modern improvement, and are much easier to use.
Personalised rubber stamps can be customised with any text you’d like. Smaller stamps are great for stamping your business’s name or contact telephone number, while larger stamps can fit your business address as well.
You can also get stamps that use images, such as loyalty stamps, which are designed for stamping a small image onto a loyalty card.

Why Should I Invest in Personalised Rubber Stamps?

Business owners are always looking for ways to help their company stand out in a crowd, and personalised stamps are a great way to accomplish this goal. Using custom rubber stamps will help create a unique and professional image for your company.
Stamps are one of the most effective marketing tools you can invest in with your business, and they’re a great way to help your company get noticed.
Personalised stamps are very inexpensive when compared to other promotional items. They also help save you a lot of time – and time is money! Rather than writing your address or company name on all of your communications, you can stamp it quickly and easily.

What Types of Rubber Stamps Are There?

When choosing a stamp, take into consideration how many letters you’ll be able to fit onto the stamp and where exactly you want those letters placed.
Personalised rubber stamps can be customised for practically any use, but some more common usages for them include:

Name/Title Stamps

These stamps show your name or title together with the business name in a very professional way. They’re great to use on completed proposals, letters sent to customers, or anywhere else you need to display your name as well as the business’ name.
Business name stamps can also contain your company’s name with one line of text underneath, such as a motto or telephone number.

Address Stamps

These stamps allow you to stamp your business’s address on large envelopes or documents, so that your employees don’t have to write it out by hand. It has the added benefit of making your letters appear more official and professional.
Address stamps can also be used in other unique ways, as you can customise the eight lines of text in any way you’d like. For example, create a stamp to display your business’s opening hours, or your social media handles.

Loyalty Stamps

Loyalty stamps don’t use text at all – instead, they are designed to print a small image. They’re mostly used for stamping loyalty cards (where customers can ‘save up’ stamps for a free gift or discount). You can choose from a variety of images, such as a pizza slice or a paw print, and choose your preferred ink colour.

Date Stamps

If you have to stamp dates onto your mail, you’ll obviously need to change the date on the stamp regularly. You can purchase special dater stamps that use a simple roller mechanism to allow you to change the day, month and year.

How to Use Personalised Rubber Stamps

Most businesses get a good return on investment when they use personalised rubber stamps in their correspondence. In addition, because they make mail easier to send, they can be sure of getting their message across promptly and accurately.
Personalised rubber stamps are also fun to use because it’s almost like using your own personal seal. When you see how much time you can save each day on correspondence with personalised stamps, you’ll be amazed at how much more productive they can make you.
To make sure you get the most out of your personalised rubber stamps, follow these tips:

1. Buy from a Reputable Company

You don’t want to buy cheap, low-quality stamps that won’t stick properly and will damage easily if they accidentally hit something hard like a countertop. Instead, be sure to find a company that sells high-quality products, such as 123Print. That way, you’ll get the most out of your investment.

2. Stamp Smartly

Choosing the correct type of stamp and message for your business can be a daunting task. To help you decide, take some time to think about how often you send out letters or proposals, who they’re going to, and what you want them to remember about your business.
Once you’ve got that down, all that’s left is to choose the perfect rubber stamp, and customise the text to your liking. You can even choose the ink that best matches your business’s colour scheme!

3. Test the Stamp Before Using It

If you buy pre-inked stamps, make sure they work properly before using them on important documents or correspondence. This will ensure that the stamp is not defective, and prevent problems down the line. It’s also a good idea to test out any non-inked stamp before using it to make sure you like the positioning of your message.

4. Buy in Bulk

Buying in bulk saves you a lot of money on each stamp and lets you get more uses out of them as well. Plan ahead to buy stamps before you run out, and be sure to take advantage of bulk pricing when you can. The best place to look for deals is online. For example, the more stamps you order with 123Print, the more you save.

5. Use a Self-Inking Stamp

If you have multiple names or titles that would fit on a single personalised rubber stamp, using an ink pad can get quite messy. It can also waste valuable time. Instead, use a self-inking stamp which eliminates the need for an ink pad and is much more convenient to store and carry around.

6. Select a Stamp Size that Fits Your Needs

There are many different sizes of personalised rubber stamps available on the market today. Therefore, it’s crucial to select the right size for your needs. This will ensure that you can use it across all your correspondence and make sure the impression left on letters is large enough to recognise easily.

7. Apply the Stamp Appropriately

Be sure to position a personalised rubber stamp correctly so that your text looks great when it’s stamped. Choose a location on the document that is flat, and large enough to display all of the text. Don’t press too hard, or you could damage the rubber.
Check for flaws in the design before you put it on a document. If it’s not perfect, reach out to the company that designed it. At 123Print, we offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee – so if for any reason you’re not pleased with your stamps, we won’t give up until we’ve fixed the issue.

8. Store Your Stamp Correctly

Always replace the lid on your stamp after using it, to ensure that the ink doesn’t dry out. This will help you get the most use and longevity out of your rubber stamp.
Over time, the ink will begin to run out. The easiest way to find out if a stamp needs replacing is by running your fingers across it. If it’s dried up, discard it and use a fresh one to get better stamping results. (You should always make sure you have lots of new stamps on hand!)

Where Can I Buy Personalised Rubber Stamps?

Stamps add a professional touch to business correspondence, envelopes, documents, and promotional materials. Your customers are more likely to respond to you if they feel like you’re a true professional.
Stamps also save time and money by ensuring that letters are promptly sent to their destinations with the correct return address information. But, most importantly, they help you stand out from the crowd.
When choosing where to buy your personalised rubber stamps online from, remember that service is key! You want to find an online store with plenty of customisation options available and fast delivery, such as 123Print.
We offer a wide selection of personalised rubber stamps, great for any business of any size. We pride ourselves on our excellent customer service, fast delivery, and low prices – so shop online with us today to find your perfect stamp!

Postcards

5 Postcard Marketing Ideas That Really Work!

Marketing Ideas, Postcards, , , , , ,

When Theodore Hook invented the first postcard in the early 1800’s, he must have known he was on to a winner. The simplistic ability to say hello with a personalised touch, with the advantage of being cheaper than a letter meant the nation became ‘hooked’ on postcards.

Since their invention we’ve sent millions across the globe and it’s the personalised touch which is so unique to the postcard, which perks/sparks an interest in marketers. At 123Print UK we love using postcards for a wide range of business uses and we love learning about knew ways we can use them.

Below we’ve listed our 4 favourite postcard marketing ideas; let us know in the comments below if you have any of your own.

 

Personalised Customer Service

You will know by now that customer service plays a major role in marketing; and businesses who split the two elements apart are destined for failure. So when it comes to delivering excellent customer service, postcards could give you the extra edge you’ve been looking for.

Think about the effects a simple handwritten apology, accompanied with a gift voucher code could have when trying to retain a disgruntled customer. It not only shows you’ve taken the time out of your day to apologise for your mistakes, but also gives you the chance to show you’re a real human being with personality and emotions; something a customer can really connect with.

A Constant Reminder…

We all get the emails reminding us to reorder, and yet, most of us will promptly delete them. Would you rather receive a personalised postcard with a discount code off your next order as a reminder? .

We know it wouldn’t be practical to send thousands of postcards every week, but you could use them to surprise loyal customers during special occasions such as Christmas. Or perhaps if you have a clever CRM database you could really impress customers by sending them a simple, affordable birthday wish. Plus the glossy print is always going to catch people’s attention much more than a plain and bland letter.

Another example; if you work in a service industry, people always need a little reminder when their car may need an annual service, or they need to book a dentist appointment.

 

Fact: A recent survey found that 85% of women between the ages of 25 and 44 said they read direct mail pieces

Free Postcard Marketing

Why pay big money for advertising when you can let your customers target and advertise for you? With the postcard you can do just that, everyone loves receiving a postcard and we can’t help ourselves from picking them up when they’re on sale. If you have the right type of business you could offer free postcards on your premises with different great designs and you could even add referral codes or discount codes, which your customers could send to friends and family who may be interested in your services. It’s a sure fire winner as it will certainly get people talking about and connecting with your business!

Creative Postcard
American Creative Design Service – El Creative, made a number of creative postcards to market their skills.


Show Off Your Skills!

As you may have noticed, here at 123Print UK, we are massive fans of the business card. It has an abundance of diverse uses when marketing your business, with the only potential downside being its size. With the postcard you get all the positives of a business card – but with much more space to shout about your business and latest offers.

If you’re in a graphic design or illustration niche why not show off your skills with all the extra space a postcard can offer? We’ve seen some fantastic designs here at 123Print and the postcard is one of your most creative tools when trying to show off exactly what is great about your business.

Introducing… Your Business

If your business is new to the area, then postcards are the perfect way to say a friendly hello to your local community! They easily stand out from the usual junk mail, both with their personal touch, and without an envelope the ‘open rate’ is 100%, so you can be sure people will be talking about your new services in the area.

As a great welcome idea you could offer people a first touch/order discount code or even use them for building sign ups to your services by using the several postage paid services available.