U.S. Catalogers plagued by the rising postage costs
With the increase in postage rates in effect for nearly a month, some businesses are feeling the heat more than others. While many companies that mainly use catalogs as marketing are being scorched by the new restrictions and costs, companies who use postcards haven’t been affected enough to feel singed. Indeed, all postage prices went up, including the inexpensive postcard that went up from USD 0.24 to USD 0.26 per card. The postcard, however, isn’t nearly as affected due to the weight and size of a postcard being consistent, whereas catalogs are of varying weights and sizes.
Joy Gendusa, postcard marketing guru and CEO of PostcardMania, is letting the solution out to help those businesses burning alive. “The trick is not to send out catalogs to mailing lists in order to get prospects, but to instead send postcards to get people to request a catalog from your business. The point is to get them interested and curious enough to call or email your company for the rest of the information.” For years PostcardMania has been doing mailings for catalogers who send postcards out as their first line of promotion in order to get their prospects to request one of their catalogues. The end result for these catalogers is more qualified leads and less money procuring them.
Several big catalog companies—including J.C. Penney, Spiegel and Brighton—have for some time mailed out postcard campaigns in order to get prospects to call them or visit their website. Once a prospect is interested and requests a catalog, one is sent. This is a more cost effective way for businesses as each postcard costs less USD 0.35 to design, print, address, etc. A catalog can cost up to USD 2. Then when is comes to sending the promotion to the prospect, a postcard costs a flat rate, as opposed to a catalog that has to be weighed prior to being stamped.
Postcards were found to have the highest read rates of all direct mail media, compared to other media such as letters, flyers and magazines. Considering consumers are hit with over 3,000 advertising messages on a daily basis, having the highest-read-rate percentage speaks for itself.
