Prospecting With Postcards

Postcards are a handy and often inexpensive way to get your name out there and stay in touch. You can use them for a variety of things such as a first contact vehicle, announcing a move or a new service. Some folks like to use them as a leave behind or a follow up after a meeting.

You can use a postcard campaign as an introduction to prospects. Like adding to the old client roster. You can use oversized - 8.5" x 5.5" and printed full color on one side and black & white on the reverse side. The campaign consists of four postcards. It is good to trade services if you can. People love to barter their services especially a printer plus bartering can be a lot of fun. A barter deal like this might be just the ticket for you.

With the postcards all there is to do is gain some name recognition like top of mind awareness. Coming up with quirky catch phrases, slick picture or just a photo of something that expresses what you or your company is all about will make an image in the clients mind.

A good thing to do is to gather your prospect contact info and mail out one card each week for four weeks. Timeing the mailing so they'll receive them midweek. Mondays and Fridays are bad since folks are getting over the weekend or looking forward to it. During the fifth week it is good to make a phone call to follow up and ask for an appointment to see if there's a fit for both of you.

The trick here is to first prequalify the prospects as best you can. You'll do more qualifying when you follow up. Next, keep the mailing small for this type of campaign. Doing these in groups of twenty to twenty-five. Anymore than that can be overwhelming for follow up calls. Announcements and such can be larger, wide net mailings. For this type of campaign it's important to remember that if you don't follow up you're potentially wasting your time and money.

This technique will work well for you if you work it. Even in todays high tech e-mail world the touch of a personal note is well received. It's good to ask though if you can add them to your contact list for e-mailed news releases and little "infos" to send out periodically like links to articles, useful sites I find etc. just to stay in touch.