Mighty Postcard Marketing Course – Marcia Yudkin

Master the Ultimate Low-Cost, High-Results Marketing Medium: The Mighty Postcard

Since 1990, I’ve used postcards to fill seminars, attract the first hundreds of subscribers to an email newsletter, recruit members for a mentoring program, snag a speaker’s bureau, turn one-time buyers into long-term customers and turn influential people into referral sources. My name is Marcia Yudkin, and I’m the author of 16 books on business and communication, including 6 Steps to Free Publicity, Persuading on Paper and Web Site Marketing Makeover.

Besides generating results for my own business, I’ve helped dozens of clients use postcards to materialize sales leads, launch a new service or business and create spectacular returns, such as $242,000 in orders from spending less than $200.

Learn everything you need to know about getting results from postcards in The Mighty Postcard Marketing Course.

Who can profitably use postcard marketing?

• Online business. More and more, Internet marketers understand that contacting people offline can get busy people’s attention, increase repeat business, promote special offers and improve referrals. Postcards do all this for dimes rather than dollars!

• Local business. Do customers typically come to your office or shop? Postcards make folks aware you exist and give them a reason to come back. In the course, I’ll share the example of a Main Street business in my community that got me in the door and turned me into a regular customer using a postcard containing all the necessary ingredients.

• Small business. Postcards enable you to zero in on a very, very specific target market without wasting money on prospects who are wrong for what you sell. You’ll hear case studies of how to create predictable demand for your wares on an extremely low budget.

• Big business. These days, even well-funded organizations want to get the biggest impact from each marketing dollar. Postcards can yield a spectacular return on investment when sent to an in-house list, to warm leads or to cold prospects.

• Non-profit organization or advocacy group. Need donations for a particular purpose? Postcards are the answer! Want to encourage supporters to write Congress, show up at a rally or vote on a referendum? Postcards effectively supplement email.
• Product business. You’ll learn the crucial postcard math that lets you know which price points you should and shouldn’t use postcards to promote. Discover other do’s and don’ts for marketing with postcards when you have a large product line or a cool new widget being launched.

• Service business. Ever receive a reminder postcard from a dentist? Way too few service providers use postcards to motivate their client base and give prospective clients an immediate reason to spend money with them. Postcard offers can flood you with appointments, and postcard newsletters can keep your firm “top of mind.”

• Event business. Events and postcards are a perfect match! Timing is crucial here, and once you understand the proper scheduling of postcards for events, you’ll know how to use postcards for early registrations, last-minute ones and everything in between.

• International business. Although some of the information in the course pertains to the U.S. only, most of it also pertains to postcard marketing in Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South America and elsewhere. And if you’re based outside the U.S., learn the no-muss, no-fuss ways you can reach North American prospects and customers through postcards without needing to open a North American office.

A complete package of instruction, feedback and resources

Whether you’re new to marketing or a professional marketer who just doesn’t know much about postcards, The Mighty Postcard Marketing Course offers a concentrated curriculum that takes you step by step to successfully creating profitable postcard campaigns, for yourself or others.

The teaching takes place in a four-lesson, five-hour home-study course (audios plus handouts) that you take in on your own time, at your own pace.

Lesson #1: Postcard marketing strategies

• More than half a dozen goals that can reasonably be met with postcards, and why
• Three major postcard strategies and the pros and cons of each, along with a warning about a “deep pockets” approach to avoid
• When one-shot postcard campaigns can succeed and when you really need to be sending a series of postcards
• Ways to steer clear of the three most common reasons for postcard campaign failures
• Case studies illustrating successful postcard tactics for a range of industries and purposes

Lesson #2: Keys to postcard profitability

• Essentials of postcard math – how to calculate the break-even point for postcards so you understand their profit potential
• Situations in which postcards are a no-brainer and others where postcards are a never-never proposition
• Why typical response rates are mostly a red herring, yet they offer limited guidance in one respect
• Testing tactics that ensure you get the biggest response for your postcard marketing investment
• Tracking techniques so you’ll know what’s working

Lesson #3: Mailing lists, production and delivery

• Kinds of mailing lists available (you’ll probably be amazed at some of these!) and the virtues of various kinds of list sources
• When compiling or using your own list works best
• Production pitfalls and disasters to avoid
• When and how to handle production and mailing yourself, along with several kinds of completely hands-off outsourcing options
• First class or standard? Guidelines for choosing among mailing rates
• Fast, fast, fast! How to reach people way before competitors do with incredibly speedy postcard campaigns

Lesson #4: Design and copy for postcards

• Wildly different approaches to postcard design and copy, along with the particular rationale and benefits of each
• Which postcard content ingredients are necessary and which are optional, and why
• When you can forget about “looking pretty” and when visual appeal matters
• Conventional ideas about how to write and design a postcard that are incredibly wrong
• Personalization: when it’s essential and when it doesn’t make or break the postcard campaign
• Things even many marketing pros don’t know about where to put different elements on postcards
• Avoiding costly copyright and proofreading pitfalls

How is this program unique?

Numerous factors make this program stand out from other courses available on postcard marketing:

• A multitude of business models: Most marketing classes assume you share the business goals and resources of the person who’s teaching. When this isn’t true, much of the advice becomes useless. Instead of sharing just one person’s methods and successes, The Mighty Postcard Marketing Course gives you numerous viable success models to learn from.
• Up-to-date information: One postcard marketing course I looked at was last updated in 2005. Another says it was updated in 2008, but neither it nor the other course mention the print-and-mail services that now enable you to design and finalize a postcard online. Nor do they tell you about online list brokers that are an incredible research resource and list source. The Mighty Postcard Marketing Course tells you what you need to know now. All the links were updated in 2015.
• No-financial-interest recommendations: Many marketing teachers share long lists of recommended vendors without disclosing that they receive payments from those included. They do not tell you about vendors who will not agree to their demands for up-front payments or commissions. Vendor lists in The Mighty Postcard Marketing Course were created without any such bias.
• A multitude of postcard marketing tools: The handout for each class session contains a practical list of case studies, examples, online services, checklists and more.