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How Should I Budget for a Marketing Postcards Campaign?

October 15, 2018

Budgeting for Marketing Postcards Campaign

You’ve read our blog on the importance of direct mail in an omnichannel marketing strategy, and you’re ready to take the plunge and send business marketing postcards to your audience. As with anything in life, it’s important to properly budget your postcard marketing campaign to optimize dollars and avoid overspending. What factors should you consider?


Design.

Starting from the beginning, you’ll need to account for the design of your direct mail postcards. You can design postcards either in-house or hire a freelance graphic designer to do the work. All freelance graphic designers charge differently -- typically by project or through hourly fees -- but on average, you can expect to be charged a few hundred dollars. Keeping design in-house will be cost-efficient, as long you or someone on your team is aware of design best practices for direct mail. If you’re ready to dive into designing your postcards yourself, QuantumPostcards even has an easy-to-use online tool, Design Canvas.


Printing.

There are many factors that come into play when calculating the cost of printing your postcards:

  • Quantity
  • The size and orientation of your card
  • Print sides (whether you’re printing on only one side of the card, or both sides)
  • Paper type (prices will vary based on the quality of the paper)
  • UV coating / no UV coating
  • Rounded corners / not rounded corners
  • Envelopes / no envelopes

Prices will vary based on supplier. It’s a good idea to call various printing facilities to get a quote and figure out what works best for your needs.


Mailing.

Stamps are expensive, and depending on the weight of your postcard, mailing them out can get costly. Generally, it is less expensive and less time consuming to use a company with in-house capabilities to simultaneously provide both printing and mailing services, rather than printing your postcards through one company and then mailing through another company.


Audience.

Being mindful of your audience is a very important component of mailing postcards. In general, there are two types of audience mail lists to consider: Zip code-based mailing lists with limited targeting options, and geo- and demographically-targeted mailing lists. USPS® Every Door Direct Mail® (EDDM®) allows your mailer to be sent to a zip code or carrier route within limited audience targeting capabilities.

Targeted direct mail, on the other hand, allows you to send mail to your specific, ideal customer. With QuantumPostcards’ targeting options, you can get into the nitty-gritty, sending marketing postcards to the exact audience you want, based on age, occupation, gender, buying behaviors, and much more.

USPS EDDM is inexpensive, but the stats prove it’s less effective: EDDM garners a 1% response rate, while targeted direct mail garners a 2-5% response rate, according to the Data and Marketing Association. To learn more about the pros and cons of EDDM versus targeted direct mail, check out this video.

QuantumPostcards even has a Free List Count option so you can easily test out various demographic / geographic targeting options and discover what numbers are available to you, in terms of the potential size of your mail list. With this option, you can appropriately budget your campaign to include all of your targets while being cost-effective.

Accounting for all of the factors above will ensure you create a postcard marketing budget that makes sense for your company and suits your needs. Incorporating targeted direct mail postcards into your marketing strategy is a smart move that has high return on investment -- household direct mail campaigns have a 6% response rate, compared to .6% response rate for social media and a .45% response rate for email, according to the Data and Marketing Association’s 2017 report. Reaping the rewards of direct mail while keeping your budget smart is a win-win!