Steal This Idea: How GotPrint Won My Business With a Single Postcard

Transcript

Hi I’m Carmen Sognonvi, and this is a “Steal This Idea” video.

This is an occassional series where I share with you cool things that other companies are doing, and I show you how you can apply the same ideas in your own business.

Today’s video tip is all about how to customize direct mail for maximum impact.

We get tons of mail at Urban Martial Arts, our karate school: postcards, flyers, brochures.

Most of it ends up in the trash because it seems irrelevant or doesn’t seem particularly useful to our business.

But recently I got a postcard that really piqued my interest, and this is it.

Now the postcard is from a printing company called GotPrint.com and the reason it caught my eye is because the whole postcard is geared around how martial arts school owners can use their services to build a better business.

What I love about this piece is that the whole thing is specifically designed to appeal to me as a martial arts school owner.

Everything from the headline, to every single image that they picked out, was completely martial arts-themed.

The headline, for example, reads: kick, punch, and wrestle your way to a better business with direct marketing.

And on the front of the postcard there are four photos: one of kids doing karate, one of adults doing karate, one of men wrestline, and one of a man doing boxing.

Now on the back of the postcard they feature three or four different samples of the products they can create: business cards, postcards, door hangers, other printed materials.

And what I really appreciate is the level of detail that went into this. Even those four samples are also geared towards a martial arts theme.

What I love about this is that I can immediately see how this company can help me market my business because they’ve shown me visually exactly what martial arts school postcard would look like, what a martial arts school business card would look like.

So I don’t have to make that leap of imagination – it’s all there right in front of me.

The next time you do a direct mail campaign, keep this in mind and think about what GotPrint.com did with their postcard.

Think about what specific target client or customer you’re going after, and think about how exactly you can customize a direct mail piece to appeal to them.

If you’re marketing business-to-business, pull images that specifically reflect the industry that company is in.

If you’re marketing to consumers, try to pick photos that actually reflect the customers you’re trying to reach, whether it’s by age, by ethnicity, by gender.

You want people to be able to recognize themselves in the piece that you’re sending to them.

Technology makes it so easy to do this kind of customization nowadays that there’s really no excuse not to do it.

Now you may be wondering, did this marketing actually work for GotPrint.com?

Did they actually win my business?

And the answer is, absolutely.

After getting the postcard, I went to their website and checked out their prices and found that their prices were really, really competitive.

I’ve since placed two big orders with them for postcards and rack cards and I’m planning to use them on a consistent basis for all of our major printing needs.

In case you’re wondering, no they did not pay me to make this video.

I’m just genuinely a happy customer and I was so impressed with the marketing that they did that I wanted to share it with you because I wanted you to see how you can apply the same tactic in your own business.

If you enjoyed this video, I’d like to encourage you to sign up to get free email updates from me!

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Thanks for watching, and I’d love to hear your tips for how to get the most out of your next direct mail campaign!

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