How to Print Your Marketing Postcards For A Penny, Address Them For Free, and Automate the Whole Process

How to Print Your Marketing Postcards For A Penny, Address Them
For Free, and Automate the Whole Process
By Jason Van
Orden

This article will show you how to cut your printing costs to a
penny and have your postcards addressed for free without doing
it all yourself, reducing the time you invest in your mailing
to almost nothing.

So, you have a list of hot prospects in hand; you need a way to
get your marketing message in front of them with the hope that
a reasonable percentage will call you. You decide that you
want to send a postcard to each prospect.

You open the yellow pages and randomly select a printer.

After explaining what you want, she gives you a quote of eleven
cents per postcard. That seems like more than you wanted to
spend, so you call a few more printers. Several phone calls
later, you finally get a quote that meets your budget--six
cents each.

A week later you have the postcards in hand. You sit down with
your list on one side and a pile of hundreds of postcards on
the other side (if you aren’t sending at least hundreds at a
time, don’t expect much of a response). You pop a couple of
your favorite DVDs into the disc changer and settle in for an
evening of addressing your postcards.

You finish the first and cross it off your list. After
scribbling through the first fifty, you look at the clock and
realize this is taking much longer than expected. All the
same, you are determined so you continue.

Two movies, two pens, and one band-aid later (for that pesky
papercut), you finally reach the end. The smile that cracks on
your face is broken by the thought that you still need to
stamp them. One movie, one sponge, and hundreds of stamps
later, you really reach the end.

Despite the feeling of accomplishment, you can’t help feeling
dread at the thought of going through the process again in two
weeks when you mail to the list again (if you are not
following up with your prospects multiple times, again, you
are wasting your time). There must be a better way.

Does this scenario sound familiar? If so, then keep reading. I
am about to show you how you can change that. You will be able
to quickly setup multiple mailings in advance, sit back, and
just wait for them to go out on the specified date.

For those who haven’t yet experienced preparing your mailings
by hand, feel free to try it for yourself once and then we’ll
see you back here in a couple weeks when you are ready to
appreciate what I am about to share.

Leveraging Your Time Effectively

Time is as precious as your cash flow and it should be
leveraged just as carefully. Developing efficient systems and
automating repetitive tasks is essential to your success as a
business. When it comes to postcards and other similar
mailings, the United States Postal Service has taken care of
this for you. The postcard mailing system I am about to share
with you is based on a service available online at:

http://www.usps.com/mailingonline (http://www.usps.com/
mailingonline)

The first time you visit the Mailing Online web page, you will
need to click on the Sign-Up button. Signing up for a personal
account allows you to save postcards and mailing lists so that
you can easily reuse them in the future. Now let’s talk about
some of the benefits that this service has to offer.

A Penny per Postcard for Printing

Normal postage for a postcard is twenty-three cents. The cost
of mailing out a postcard through Mailing Online is twenty-
four cents. This is like getting your postcards printed for a
penny each and addressed for free.

Avoid Numerous Steps and Saves Hours of Your Time

Avoid picking up your cards from the printer, addressing and
stamping them by hand, and delivering them to the post office
for mailing. The money saved is significant and the time saved
is huge.

Use Ready-Made Templates to Create Your Mailing Pieces

Mailing Online provides templates for you download and open in
several popular applications such as Microsoft Word. This
makes designing you postcard easy. Then you upload the
postcard to Mailing Online to use in your mailing campaign.

Easily Upload Your Mailing List

Mailing Online allows you to easily upload your mailing list
from several different file formats including Excel and MS
Word.

Verify Your Addresses against Official Post Office Records

Mailing Online will automatically check you mailing list
against official post office records. You will be told if any
of your addresses do not match. Then you can decide whether to
eliminate these addresses so that you don`t waste money on
invalid addresses.

Choose from Several Mailing Formats

You can also choose to mail a variety of other mailing pieces
including brochures, letters, and self-mailer flyers. Mailing
Online provides the templates you need to create these mailers.
However, I suggest using this service primarily for postcards.
I have not tried their flyers, I think brochures are
pointless, and I imagine their letters are label-addressed
which is puts your mailer in the junk pile as soon as is seen
by your prospect.

Saving Mailing Lists, Postcards, and Mailing Campaigns for
Future Use

You can save your lists and postcards to be easily reused for
future campaigns without uploading them again.

Schedule Mailing Campaigns to Go Out at a Future Date

You can pick a date in the future for you mailer to go out. You
could even set up an entire sequence to go out on autopilot.
For example, you could schedule a postcard to go out right
away, another one in 10 days, and another in a month. This
allows you easily follow-up with your prospects.

Your Postcard is Only as Good as the Marketing Message it
Delivers

Without getting into a discussion on copywriting, I want to
make the following points about your postcard design:

1. Your postcard will only be as good as your marketing message.
You have about two seconds to attract the reader’s attention
before your postcard ends up in the garbage. The best way to
accomplish this is with a well-written headline.

2. Don’t waste a lot of space on your logo or other fancy
graphics. Don’t waste a lot of space on your company’s name or
your contact info. Focus on telling the reader what you have
that can benefit them.

3. Make sure you make it clear what you want the prospect to do
next. Most likely this will be to call you or a message
hotline.

4. Since postcard space is limited, just share the most
important aspects of your marketing message. Tell the reader
how they can get more info if they are interested by sending
them to a web site or by asking them to call you to receive
more information (i.e. the rest of your marketing message).
This is called two-step marketing.

Paul White is a 42 year old former teacher. He now helps people
all around the world to become wealthy online. Whatever you
are selling, visit the popular site: http://www.profitmountain.
com (http://www.profitmountain.com) and if you subscribe to
Profit Mountain`s FREE wealth building newsletter, you will
also receive FREE advertising for the next 12 months! (Worth
$200!) as well as loads of other things!