9 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Starting a Postcard Campaign

You were hit with a spark of inspiration and you’ve thought up a creative idea for a postcard marketing campaign. Now what? Before you can start your campaign, you need to be able to define its objectives, audience, and several other factors.

One of the easiest ways to define your campaign’s goals, audience, budget, and more is to ask yourself the right questions. Before you start preparing your campaign, ask yourself the nine questions below to increase its marketing efficacy.

What do you ultimately want to achieve?

What is the goal of your campaign? Marketing campaigns need to have quantifiable goals in order to be successful. Without the right goals, it’s impossible to judge your campaign’s performance and determine whether or not it’s a success.

List what you want to achieve from your campaign using quantifiable goals. These could be a certain number of sales, a certain amount of new leads or an amount of revenue produced as a direct result of the campaign.

Who are you targeting?

Who is your small business postcard marketing campaign targeting? Knowing your audience is the key to crafting a marketing message that achieves your goals, and it’s essential that your campaign has a clearly defined audience.

Create a buyer persona – a representation of your ideal customer – and keep them in mind while you create the campaign. The more detailed your persona, the better your campaign is likely to perform.

What is the value of a new customer to your business?

Do you know the lifetime value of a new customer (LCV) for your business? If you’re unaware of how much a new customer is worth to your business, working out your campaign’s total return on investment can be difficult.

Before you launch a direct mail campaign, study your existing customer base and try to work out how much each customer, on average, is worth. Knowing your LCV lets you work out exactly how much you can afford to spend to acquire new customers.

What is your budget for this campaign?

Without a clearly defined, concrete budget, it’s easy for your campaign to cost more than you expected it to. As well as setting quantifiable goals for your campaign, you should always prepare a clearly defined budget before you begin.

Having a clear budget allows you to assess your campaign’s performance before you make any adjustments. Even a modest budget can be enough to test an audience and determine its value for your business as a future marketing target.

What are you going to offer as an incentive to respond?

Greg Mankiw, author of Principles of Economics, defines one of the Ten Principles of Economics very simply: “People respond to incentives.”

Without a good incentive, it’s unlikely that anyone will respond to your marketing campaign, no matter how stylish the design or persuasive the copy. Think about the value you’re offering and whether your incentive is strong enough to get people to respond.

How will you follow up with warm leads?

Does your business have an established system for following up with leads? If not, you should make sure you have one prepared before you launch any direct mail or other marketing campaign.

Campaigns that are too successful can leave your business in a state of paralysis if it’s not adequately prepared to deal with warm leads. Before you start any direct mail campaign, establish a scalable process for following up with warm leads.

How will you integrate your postcard campaign with online or in-store elements?

Does your business have an online presence? If so, how could you integrate your small business postcard marketing campaign with your online marketing efforts, online store or social media presence?

Consumers are increasingly beginning to expect a consistent, smooth experience across multiple platforms. Integrating your direct mail campaign with your other marketing efforts can have a powerful, synergistic effect for your business.

How will you track response results?

You’ve launched your campaign and phone calls are coming in. How can you track your results? Measuring your campaign’s response rate lets you understand what works and what doesn’t and, in the future, make improvements to your campaign.

There are a variety of ways to track your campaign’s response rate. One of the most effective ways is by using CRM software. Enter leads into your CRM application and, at the end of the campaign, count them to determine your total response rate.

What does a successful campaign look like to you?

Sometimes the most effective way to achieve marketing success is to map out what you view as success and work backwards. Instead of counting up your campaign’s new leads, set a target and count down as you get closer to reaching it.

Before you launch your campaign, map out what you view as success. It could be a certain number of new clients, a certain number of phone calls or, if your campaign is built for maximum ROI, a certain amount of revenue.