Direct mail, direct marketing, online, email, pr, if it's marketing, I've got something to say about it.

Saturday, August 06, 2005

OK, Sometimes Postcards Can Work

Anyone who knows me knows my hatred of the dreaded postcard format. Every business that knows nothing about direct mail does a "postcard mailing" because they figure the cheaper the better. They are not in the mind set of "cost per sale" not "cost per mailing."

Time and again I have tested a client out of a postcard format, frequently into a letter package, always into something larger with more personalization than that dratted postcard allows.

However, I'm always open to the fact that it's always good to periodically re-test a concept, just in case.

So I recently did a split test for a company with a similar product on two different regions - one for east coast, one for west coast. Both were for a sports related product, high ticket price, targeted to a youth (i.e. college) market. I hired a very young designer known more for his snowboarding moves than his direct mail savvy.

The results were surprising. The postcard performed as expected in the east (indexing at 20 to the control's letter package at 100) and in the west, it beat the control (115 to 100).

So I'm now rolling out the postcard, to limited list segments only, on the west coast while remaining postcard-phobic in the east.

Which just goes to show you -- the more nichey you get, the more targeted and precise your marketing can be. If I had simply tested a postcard across a broader spectrum of lists and not aimed it specifically at the youth market (who ostensibly are less web-phobic and more willing to buy online, the byproduct of selling via postcard), I never would have discovered that, for one list segment and for certain geo-targeted areas, this format can work.