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So, you have a list of hot prospects in hand; you need a way to get your marketing message in front of them with the hope that a reasonable percentage will call you. You decide that you want to send a postcard to each prospect. You open the yellow pages and randomly select a printer. After explaining what you want, she gives you a quote of eleven cents per postcard. That seems like more than you wanted to spend, so you call a few more printers. Several phone calls later, you finally get a quote that meets your budget--six cents each.

A week later you have the postcards in hand. You sit down with your list on one side and a pile of hundreds of postcards on the other side (if you aren’t sending at least hundreds at a time, don’t expect much of a response). You pop a couple of your favorite DVDs into the disc changer and settle in for an evening of addressing your postcards.

You finish the first and cross it off your list. After scribbling through the first fifty, you look at the clock and realize this is taking much longer than expected. All the same, you are determined so you continue.

Two movies, two pens, and one band-aid later (for that pesky papercut), you finally reach the end. The smile that cracks on your face is broken by the thought that you still need to stamp them. One movie, one sponge, and hundreds of stamps later, you really reach the end.

Despite the feeling of accomplishment, you can’t help feeling dread at the thought of going through the process again in two weeks when you mail to the list again (if you are not following up with your prospects multiple times, again, you are wasting your time). There must be a better way.

Does this scenario sound familiar? If so, then keep reading. I am about to show you how you can change that. You will be able to quickly setup multiple mailings in advance, sit back, and just wait for them to go out on the specified date. For those who haven’t yet experienced preparing your mailings by hand, feel free to try it for yourself once and then we’ll see you back here in a couple weeks when you are ready to appreciate what I am about to share.

Leveraging Your Time Effectively

Time is as precious as your cash flow and it should be leveraged just as carefully. Developing efficient systems and automating repetitive tasks is essential to your success as a business. When it comes to postcards and other similar mailings, the United States Postal Service has taken care of this for you. The postcard mailing system I am about to share with you is based on a service available online at:

http://www.usps.com/mailingonline

The first time you visit the Mailing Online web page, you will need to click on the Sign-Up button.

Signing up for a personal account allows you to save postcards and mailing lists so that you can easily reuse them in the future. Now let’s talk about some of the benefits that this service has to offer.

A Penny per Postcard for Printing

Normal postage for a postcard is twenty-three cents. The cost of mailing out a postcard through Mailing Online is twenty-four cents. This is like getting your postcards printed for a penny each and addressed for free.

Avoid Numerous Steps and Saves Hours of Your Time

Avoid picking up your cards from the printer, addressing and stamping them by hand, and delivering them to the post office for mailing. The money saved is significant and the time saved is huge.

Use Ready-Made Templates to Create Your Mailing Pieces

Mailing Online provides templates for you download and open in several popular applications such as Microsoft Word. This makes designing you postcard easy. Then you upload the postcard to Mailing Online to use in your mailing campaign.

Easily Upload Your Mailing List

Mailing Online allows you to easily upload your mailing list from several different file formats including Excel and MS Word.

Verify Your Addresses against Official Post Office Records

Mailing Online will automatically check you mailing list against official post office records. You will be told if any of your addresses do not match. Then you can decide whether to eliminate these addresses so that you don't waste money on invalid addresses.

Choose from Several Mailing Formats

You can also choose to mail a variety of other mailing pieces including brochures, letters, and self-mailer flyers. Mailing Online provides the templates you need to create these mailers. However, I suggest using this service primarily for postcards. I have not tried their flyers, I think brochures are pointless, and I imagine their letters are label-addressed which is puts your mailer in the junk pile as soon as is seen by your prospect.

Saving Mailing Lists, Postcards, and Mailing Campaigns for Future Use

You can save your lists and postcards to be easily reused for future campaigns without uploading them again.

Schedule Mailing Campaigns to Go Out at a Future Date

You can pick a date in the future for you mailer to go out. You could even set up an entire sequence to go out on autopilot. For example, you could schedule a postcard to go out right away, another one in 10 days, and another in a month. This allows you easily follow-up with your prospects.

Your Postcard is Only as Good as the Marketing Message it Delivers

Without getting into a discussion on copywriting, I want to make the following points about your postcard design:

1. Your postcard will only be as good as your marketing message.

You have about two seconds to attract the reader’s attention before your postcard ends up in the garbage. The best way to accomplish this is with a well-written headline.

2. Don’t waste a lot of space on your logo or other fancy graphics.

Don’t waste a lot of space on your company’s name or your contact info. Focus on telling the reader what you have that can benefit them.

3. Make sure you make it clear what you want the prospect to do next.

Most likely this will be to call you or a message hotline.

4. Since postcard space is limited, just share the most important aspects of your marketing message.

Tell the reader how they can get more info if they are interested by sending them to a web site or by asking them to call you to receive more information (i.e. the rest of your marketing message). This is called two-step marketing.

Jason Van Orden may be contacted at http://www.find-real-estate-investing-deals.com
"Discover how to attract more leads and maximize revenue with a minimum investment of your time and money."