Postcards can be a cost-effective strategy to nurture existing clients, bring in new leads, and trigger word-of-mouth marketing. While some may turn their back on old-school marketing, postcards are a sentimental and emotional tool that can build brand awareness and be incredibly effective for different demographics of customers.
A direct mail postcard marketing campaign can have real and tangible benefits to your roofing business when executed correctly. In this blog, we'll look at postcard marketing strategies to maximize results and ensure they don't end up in the trash as junk mail!
Five Tips for Postcard Marketing Success
While you may be asking yourself, do postcards work for marketing? The answer is yes — but only when executed correctly.
Postcard marketing as part of a direct mail marketing plan is more than just a nice photo and some catchy copy. It involves research and a thorough plan as technical as a digital campaign. In fact, with new technologies and analytics software, postcard campaigns can be even more successful than before. 
It's an inclusive practice that can target different demographics and be highly effective when executed to perfection.
Postcards should be considered a feature of your roofer marketing campaign—here's how.
1. Determine Your Target Audience
The first step is to determine, identify and understand your target audience. Consider a broad approach and send out a postcard to current customers on your list or focus on a more targeted system, such as segmented into repeat customers or customers who have reached out to inquire about services.
A targeted approach for successful postcard marketing campaigns will require the grouping of prospects. Some possible grouping orders include:
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Particular prospects in a geographical location
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Grouping based on age, income, profession
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Homes showing signs of decay or roofing issues
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Hot leads (customers who have shown interest in home repairs or requested quotes)
By targeting the campaign, you will have greater insight into the client's buying behavior and how likely they may be to act on the postcard instead of throwing it away.
2. Create Your Message and Offer
Postcards are limited in space. Due to this, short, sharp, and direct messaging is fundamental to ensure maximum success.
Focus on the benefits of your service, optimize a piece of positive feedback, and determine whether you will be promoting a special deal, offering, or generally showcasing your services.
Finally, remember a solid call to action that ties in your details and facilitates ease of transition from the postcard to your platform or sales team.
3. Design The Postcard
Your postcard design must balance promoting products and getting the brand messaging out without taking up too much valuable postcard real estate.
Leveraging free design platforms like Canva can help get the wheels in motion and play around with ideas.
Some considerations to help you get started include:
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Using neutral colors to showcase a more vital message
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Using natural, second-person language, "Is Your Roof Leaking?"
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Focus on one or two strong images rather than cluttering the limited space with lots of different ones
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Focus on your offering: Is it maintenance, installations, maintenance, or something else
For professional design coupled with on-point messaging and postcard copy, consider hiring a marketing agency experienced in roofing and postcard design.
4. Create a Mailing List
Marketing postcards will be only successful if they go out to the right target market or addresses!
To create your postcard mailing list, there are two approaches:
1. Optimize your current list: The first approach is to scroll through your current list of customers and determine if you can segment recent past or potential customers
2. Rent or buy another list: Alternatively, you might consider purchasing an email list to reach a new audience in your local area.
If you haven't already, the time is now to start building an email list. To get started, consider incentivizing leads to share their email address with you—the more personal, the better, as you can personalize postcards with any additional information on the database.
5. Track and Analyze The Results
Tracking the effectiveness of your campaign will allow you to adjust the postcard campaign and prepare more effectively in the future.
Consider using a QR code that links to a landing page to analyze conversions and responses and connect your offline strategy with digital marketing efforts. However, you may consider using a unique URL that leads to the landing page instead of a QR code.
Another option is to establish a unique telephone number for a call tracking system so that your team can track how many calls come through relative to the number of postcards sent and how many conversions from calls to sales take place.
Add Postcard Marketing to Your Omnichannel Strategy
Postcard marketing is a compelling marketing tactic that can build brand awareness and make your business stand out from the crowd. However, for next-level success and a boost in inbound traffic, a comprehensive marketing strategy must be established.
To learn more about how our team can assist with postcards, SEO, mail PPC and more, reach out to Speak to a Geek.
For more tips on offline marketing, Download a free copy of "Marketing a Roofing Company Part 2: Enhancing Your Digital Strategy With Offline Efforts."
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