Postcard marketing for tourism industry - The great cheap marketing tool

Thursday, 26 January 2006

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Postcard marketing for tourism industry - The great cheap marketing tool
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As a travel agent marketer, or a hotel promotion, all you need is a good marketing tool is a cheap cost and high effect, contribute to the brand building and create a good relation with your visitors. These things can be obtained when you use postcard to market your services in the local community. And here are the reasons: 1)Postcard is a low cost marketing tool but high visible. Postcard marketing is very affordable. Postcard cost less than 2 cent each to produce I you print them using your own computer or have them printed professionally for about 7 or 8 cents each. You can print 4x6 inch postcard on your own computer for less than 2 cents each. Or you can reduce the cost down to about 1 cent each if you print 4 at a time on 8 ? x11 sheets of card stock and then cut the sheet into quarters. In fact, standard sized postcard is 38% cheaper than using regular size letters. 2)Postcard can be created very easily. You can use your own photos illustrating your services, your hotel image, designed with Adobe Photoshop, or Adobe Image Ready to create a good helpful collection of your own postcard. This collection will be very good for you to build your brand, or will be cost effective if you rotate it in your postcard marketing campaign. There are many ready packages of postcard organization some professional website, so if we do not want to design by ourselves, we can buy these postcards with a reasonable price. Try to find a good supply on Net by Google or Yahoo! Search tools. 3)Postcard is cheap and easy to send. The current postage for mailing a postcard in the US is just 23 cents. That is 38% cheaper than the postage for selling a letter. This reduce the postage rate applies to postcard that are at least 3 ? x5 inches but not over 4 ? x6 inches. Now, there are services online which can complete all the process of postcard marketing for your company with an appropriate rate. Visit www.usps.com/mailingonline to use its cheap services and reduces your cost into 90%. 4)Everybody read postcard Postcard doesn't waste time of people. There are no envelops, just a picture and your message. Almost 90% receivers will read it and feel friendly than any other kinds of advertising. It is because postcard is delivered "ready to read"... especially if you keep it brief and look like a message from a friend to friend. And postcard doesn't take up a lot of space. Your customer can carry them in their pockets easily... 5)Big respond This high rate of readership is the main reason why postcard postcards produce a bigger responds than other type of direct marketing. With other types of direct marketing you often lose prospects that would have respond to your offer-but they never saw it. Postcard are an excellent low-cost alternative to email when there are junk mail are sent to prospects everyday, your prospects will often delete them without read even an legitimate one. Postcard is not, no one receives too much postcard that they even don't want to read! 6)Your competitors can not know your postcard marketing campaign. A new marketing campaign often imitated by your competitor because it is visible on multi-media lines. But postcard is the contact between you and your prospects. It is difficult for your competitor study anything from yours, unless you want them get over you by sending postcard to their office or their private house. 7)Get immediate result Because postcard is simple and easy to use, they produce results quickly. You can finish your postcard marketing campaign from designing to sending within a week and starting get replies 2 or 3 days later. One of the benefits of using first class postage for a regular size postcard is that it will be mailed back to the sender if it has a bad address, which can help you update your list. You can ask the receivers to bring the card into your office for special discount, there for you can calculate the respond rate. Your postcard can brand you and your business in ways that most marketing material cannot. If you start and stick to a regular postcard marketing program, you and your business will gain a quite a reputation, perhaps even a little notoriety. 8)Postcard marketing is rather targeted. You can send it to chosen prospects, and gain the highest effective. Postcard enables you to spend your entire advertising budget on your best prospects. You don have to pay for advertising to a large audience in order to reach a few good prospects. Here are some ways to use postcard. 1) Referrals-send postcards regularly to your friend, your frequent clients or other best contacts and ask them for their referrals. 2) Thankyou notes - use postcard to say Thankyou for business, referrals or information and say that you appreciate their helps. Your postcard receiver will be so surprised and please that you took the time. 3) A follow - up offer or services - after the client use or buy your services, send them a discount offer for a related services or product within 30 - 60 days. Don not miss the opportunity for an after - sale contact. 4) You can also announce a price - increase time and encourage your customer check in to use it at current price. 5) Gift certification or coupons: show your best customers that you appreciate them by sending a gift certificate that they can use anytime in the next year. You should leave a space on the postcard and encourage they fill out their friend or colleagues name and give it to someone else to introduce them to your business. 6) Announce an event - send postcard to let your prospects know about events like a seminar in your hotels... 7) Introduce new services such as a new city tour for children traveling over many educational sites in your city... 8) Build your website traffic- use postcard mailing to tell people your site is there and when you make significant additional which can give them many interesting information. 9) Recognition- sends out a postcard to let people know your good news about accomplishments and awards or reviews you have received. 10) Just stay in touch. People like to be remembered and postcard is economical and easy way to say " thinking of you " 11) Remember special days of your clients: send a holiday greeting a Thankyou not for Thanksgiving. If you keep track of special dates in your customer lives like birthdays or anniversaries, you can send them a colorful postcard letting them know you are thinking of them. You can register a forum account to read more 15 articles of postcard marketing in the Tourism Marketing Forum. Click this link: .

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