2009 brought an influx of postcard orders to biplane productions, accounting for 50.5% of the 273 auction direct mail pieces that crossed my desk.
As a designer, I like big canvases to illustrate the messages my clients ask me to convey. With that approach, it would be easy to demote postcards to the lower castes of the direct mail population. To do that, I’d have to discount the two 2009 NAA awards for postcard design that biplane‘s clients won—especially the one that won a full-color brochure category. I’d have to dismiss some of the advantages postcards have over brochures and letters.
There are multiple reasons postcards trump their folded and/or enveloped mail peers.
For one thing, they don’t require opening, tab-slitting, or any effort from the recipient (other than reading) to communicate your message. Their rigidity helps them maintain their image and shape during the automated mail process. They take less time and resources to produce, shortening turn time on production. Large postcards dimensionally loom beyond the physical dimensions of envelopes—helping your images and message stand apart from the bills and other perfunctory mail in the mailbox.
They can be more easily gang-printed—the process where a printer prints multiple jobs from different clients on the same press sheet—which can cut production costs and allow more efficient and economical upgrades like UV or aqueous coating. Postcards are also the easiest direct mail format for variable data printing.
The cost savings that postcards usually provide allows you to spend more in other media or to mail more than one postcard during an auction marketing campaign. This two-stage mailing system can allow you to change or customize your sales pitch or to simply reinforce the first one.
Maybe more importantly, postcards all but force marketers to focus on the big picture—the core message you’re trying to communicate. If you’ve got a web site acting as an information safety net, why try to exhaust all information on your direct mail piece? Why overpower your pictures and crowd your message, when you have a clearinghouse of information online? If someone isn’t interested in the major points of your property, they’re not going to become a buyer with the minor points or directions to the property. If they aren’t interested enough to go to your web site for more details, they aren’t motivated enough to arrange financing, inspect the property, and bid at your auction—live or online.
So, why not just sell them on the sizzle, and get out of there? Postcards help you do that.
For premier properties, a postcard can’t adequately capture the full essence of a property—even on the 6″ x 11″ or 8.5″ x 11″ postcards for which I’m getting more and more orders. For multi-tract real estate, farm machinery, construction equipment, and other collections, sometimes the breadth of the offering is the message; and that can’t be sufficiently expressed on a postcard. But for your run-of-the-mill properties and estates, a postcard might prove the most effective marketing arrow in your quiver.
Everything’s on the outside on a postcard—your sale item(s), your message, your brand. If you only get a few seconds to convey all of that, why not use a postcard as your first impression?
Taking it Personally
One of the biggest changes in my spiritual journey over the past five years or so has been the level of authenticity encouraged by the circles of my spiritual environments. No longer do I feel pressure to maintain a buttoned-up exterior, to play the part of a mature Christian who’s got it all together—a checklist with as many check marks as the next person’s sheet. In fact, one of my weekly small group discussions starts with a disclaimer, “Leave your religious crap in the parking lot.” (The apostle Paul called it dung, too, folks.)
Monday night, I got asked, “On a scale of one to ten, where have you been this week with God?” If the momentum of the answer is trending downward, the followup questions usually sound like, “What are you wrestling with?” or “What would it take to shift the momentum toward ten?” or “What would be the first step you could make back toward fellowship?”
My spiritual health isn’t tied to what I wear to church, the letters on the spine of my Bible, the instruments on the platform, the length of my hair or my wife’s skirt. It’s not a pocket full of passed litmus tests–laurels on which to rest. It’s a marriage, and I need to address the baggage that stacked in the way of communication and intimacy with Jesus. God told New Testament believers to confess our sins one to another—and to him. It’s painful but cathartically freeing to unload the weight of our imperfection.
The church stands less inclined to judge each other, when the inside makes it to the outside. We see that every heart, as God says, is desperately wicked beyond self-repair. Empathy ignites with authenticity—and with it support and encouragement, too. We grow more dependent upon and impressed by God’s mercy and grace the more we realize we are insufficient and broken. And God gets more and deeper praise when things are sweet.