Post Card Mailing-How Easy is That?!

Post cards can be easy and fun. Find a photo to represent your message, decide on what you want to “punch” or promote, and viola! Send the photo and text message, your return address and logo art to your graphic artist or your printer's graphics department and let them set up your post card to your specs. There are several sizes that can be used, from 4.25 x 5.5 (economical) to 8.5 x 11 (huge). There are advantages and disadvantages to all sizes, but large does not necessarily mean better. The right message to the right audience will make the difference, no matter what the size of the piece.

If you are doing a blanket mailing, Rural Routes might be the way to go. With Rural Routes, you must call the post office the day of the mailing and get that day's count for the route. There will probably be several routes within each zip code. The numbers change from day to day, and you must have the exact number of cards to match the count in whatever route you are mailing to that day. It is good to get an idea ahead of time of the different routes and their counts, so you can be sure you have enough cards to cover whatever routes you decide to mail to. Just keep in mind that you can't mail to part of a route.

Example: RR 1 – 609, RR 2- 529, RR 3- 205, RR 4- 890 = 2,233 total. So you would need to order 3000 postcards and have leftovers, or mail to only some of the routes.

Keep in mind that whatever the cost of creating and printing the post card, you still have to pay the postage.

Getting a rural route mailing ready for the post office is not that hard- all you need to do is to have an exact count in separate postal trays for each route, with the correct label on the tray.

For a targeted mailing, a mailing list can be obtained, sometimes tailer-made for your demographic. Or you can use your customer list. The key here is the pre-sorting, a service that can save enough postage to more than cover the cost of the service, which usually includes addressing directly onto the piece, barcoding, CASS sorting, etc. All the extras the post office rewards with lower postal rates.