Automated Real Estate Direct Mail Postcards 

Brace yourself: Direct mail marketing, often overshadowed in the digital age, remains a powerhouse marketing and business channel for real estate investors, Realtors, and nearly every other business owner and other small business owner.

You read that right. If you're ignoring direct mail marketing, you're missing out on business.

In fact "powerhouse" of mailing may even be an understatement. In a recent survey of more than 200 small businesses, 23% percent reported that direct mail outperformed email, paid search, free organic search, local advertising, and even Instagram.

In other words, direct mail marketing and postcard mailing may sound like traditional forms of marketing, but that's far from the truth. 

This revelation is flipping pre-conceived notions upside down, compelling business owners and marketers to revisit and reevaluate the potential of direct mail in their marketing strategies.

Direct mail marketing isn't just one-dimensional; it offers a variety of formats to capture your audience's attention.

Let's break down some of the most common types:

• Postcards are simple, cost-effective, and ideal for promotions or event announcements.

• Brochures and catalogs provide detailed information about products or services, perfect for in-depth showcases.

• Letters offer a personalized, formal touch, suitable for building client relationships or customer retention.

• Flyers and inserts quickly highlight key information, great for promoting events or special offers.

• Dimensional mail adds a unique, interactive element, effective for memorable product launches.

• Self-mailers are envelope-free and versatile for newsletters or updates.

• Magalogs blend magazine and catalog styles, useful as engaging informational pieces in complementary businesses.

• Lumpy mail creates curiosity with its unusual shape, enhancing first impressions for campaigns with promotional items.

• Response devices like coupons or reply cards encourage direct action and help measure campaign success. 

While picking and choosing which type of direct mail works best for your campaign can seem like a major undertaking, there's still one more part...

It's choosing what type of paper is best for the type of direct mail you're sending!

Here are some of the most common types of paper used in print for the production, printing and delivery of direct mail postcards:

• Ultra smooth

• Semi-gloss coated paper

• Matte card stock

• Gloss coated stock

• Matte coated stock

• Dull coated stock

• Linen stock

• Soft touch stock

• Lightweight paper stock

• Cardstock

Like we said before... the delivery, direct mail delivery here is anything but one-dimensional.

Taking the time to do your research, test, and feel different paper and direct mail combos, and not jumping into anything too quickly before you've seen success on a small scale will help you methodically determine what's best for your campaigns. 

For direct mail postcards, the best place to start is by creating highly targeted addresses, segmented mailing addresses for recipients and lists of recipients.

These contact lists are indispensable, ensuring that your direct-to-mailers and campaigns address and connect with the most relevant prospects.

While baby boomers and older generations have demonstrated a propensity for direct mail, it's actually equally as likely to land with younger generations (despite the myths that it won't). 

With this in mind, you'll want to turn to your existing customer base to help build your target audiences for your direct mail postcards. 

To build great audiences, focus on your best customers first

A great first step in getting started with Direct Mail is analyzing the characteristics, behaviors, and needs of existing successful customers, which will help you learn how to more effectively create, target and create messaging for and create an audience that most closely resembles your best customers.

Now that we've settled that, the question becomes... what exactly should we focus on? 

Here are a few places you can start with while building your target audience:

• Analyzing demographic data

• Defining campaign goals

• Analyzing best customers

• Building profiles for primary and secondary audiences

• Tailoring messages for maximum impact

• Combining current customer lists with USPS broker lists for targeted reach

Remember - the depth at which you understand your audience(s) will either make or break your direct mail postcard campaigns.

In order to build great lists, you need a deep understanding of your audiences

Understanding the demographics, preferences, and pain points of the target audience, will not only help your campaigns be highly tailored but also can contribute to a more aesthetically pleasing mail campaign that resonates with your audiences.

At the end of the day, this will all lead to higher account open rates, heightened personal engagement with customers, and improved response rates.

More importantly, a highly tailored message that's packaged and delivered in a unique, aesthetically pleasing way will help you cut through the noise of a crowded mailbox. 

Whether it's through consistently updating and maintaining your lists, or sharpening your skills with your postcard design tools, Direct Mail campaigns shouldn't necessarily be a set-it-and-forget endeavor. 

For the time being, let's take a look at some of the ways you can manage your mailing lists and help make your direct mail postcard campaigns successful. 

Some best practices include:

• Keeping the mailing list organized and up-to-date.

• Segmenting the list based on relevant demographic, situation, and financial criteria.

• Utilizing the double-opt-in method.

• Personalizing postcards beyond just standard criteria like name and address.

• Regularly cleaning the list and removing leads that no longer match your criteria. 

• Tracking and analyzing campaign performance through QR codes, unique website URLs, etc. 

Some will argue that a Direct Mail campaign is only as good as the list of addresses it's being sent to. While we don't necessarily agree with that 100%, spending the time to keep up with these best practices will help ensure you lay the foundation for success.

Direct mail marketing isn't just alive and well; it's thriving. However, it's important to note that success in direct mail hinges on knowing how to implement it effectively. 

Simply engaging in direct mail marketing isn't enough; you must be driven to execute it properly, just like any other marketing strategy.

When done properly, direct mail marketing is the most effective channel in hyperlocal lead generation dollar for dollar.

One of the distinct advantages of direct mail marketing over digital communication is its tangibility.

Direct Mail is effective because it's tangible

Being able to simultaneously hold, touch, smell, and sometimes even hear, a piece of marketing material is something that, as of writing this piece in 2023, digital marketing can’t deliver. Couple that with the fact that 80-90% of direct mail gets opened, you have a recipe for success.

Direct mail is powerful because it stands out

Direct Mail is also effective due to there being less competition for your attention. Thanks to the rise of digital marketing, many companies have underinvested in direct mail and postcards, giving you a great chance to stand out. 

Direct mail is an incredible tool for brand-building

Additionally, outside of generating a direct response, direct mail postcards are a great tactic for building trust and credibility with your local market. 

When personalization is done correctly, you can establish yourself as a local authority and instill a sense of trust in your audience. 

Couple all of these things with Direct Mail's ability to integrate with other marketing channels (through QR codes, personalized URLs, and more), and its measurability, the question of "is it effective" doesn't quite do Direct Mail justice. 

The question really is: are you ready to handle the results from a well-executed Direct Mail marketing campaign?

With all of the talk about how great Direct Mail is, it's only fair that we take some time to look at one of its most common challenges.

With direct mail postcards, there's a universal challenge of maintaining compliance with standard postage rates and regulations and the impact of your postage address and direct mail's size and weight on delivery.

This front page advice is all especially relevant if you're including free product samples or larger promotional items in your direct mail.

Here are some considerations when launching a more specialized direct mail campaign:

• Heavier postcards may incur higher postage costs.

• Online postcard printing tools can often set wrong expectations of online proofs vs. reality.

• Postcard sizes, especially unorthodox or larger than normal sizes, can incur additional costs.

Always remember that USPS specifies certain dimensions for postcards to qualify postage as such, and you'll need to ensure your postcards meet these postage amount requirements.

In PropertyRadar, our postcards are designed to follow these guidelines to ensure a smooth, seamless post office, postcard-to-office, and delivery process.

In direct mail marketing, you're basically dead in the water if you can't deliver an effective value proposition.

Not only that, but if you can't deliver it in a way that inherently stands out from the other clutter in your lead's mailbox, it's going to be difficult to see ROI. 

When you're crafting a value proposition for your direct mail postcards, you'll need to make sure you consider:

• Creating an engaging headline that jumps off the post card (not literally...)

• Showing how you're different from your competitors. You don't necessarily have to claim you're different - let the phrasing of your value do that for you.

• Highlighting the value of your product or service in an inspiring way.

• Crafting messaging that aligns with the target persona you're directing your postcard campaign at.

As we mentioned before, you'll need to make sure you're doing everything you can to see the return on investment you need from printing and mailing your direct mail postcards.

Value prop is everything for your postcards

Your value prop is a HUGE factor in seeing a return on your direct mail campaigns. If you work on refining it through ongoing small-batch tests, you'll incrementally see your return get higher and higher as you figure out what works. 

Building an audience, like direct mail itself, isn't a one-dimensional exercise.

If you're building an audience by going in and just selecting one age group in one area of one neighborhood and calling it a day, you need to stop right there.

Real audience building comes down to stacking lists and criteria to find the perfect balance of personalization. It's just as much an art and a science and isn't something that you'll ever really be 100% an expert in.

Effective strategies for direct mail audience building

With that being said, here are some effective strategies you can start implementing to help define your target audience for direct mail postcards:

• Analyzing demographic, situational, and financial data to identify exactly who you want to reach out to.

• Defining campaign goals so you can properly track ROI.

• Analyzing best customers to create audience profiles that you know drive your best business.

• Building profiles for primary and secondary audiences.

• Tailoring messages for maximum impact among your ICP.

• Combining current customer lists with USPS broker lists. Blending and stacking lists is going to help you find opportunities nobody else is working.

Why you should tailor your messaging to your audience

Audience preferences can have a substantial influence on the effectiveness of a direct mail or postcard mailing campaign.

By understanding the demographics, preferences, and pain points of the target audience, you can craft and upload tailored and aesthetically pleasing mail campaigns that strike a chord with the recipients. This can result in higher open rates, heightened engagement, and improved response rates.

Moreover, targeting specific audiences with accuracy allows for more compelling and personal messaging and can generate higher conversion rates, especially in situations where too much traffic might dilute the impact of your message.