Automated Postcard Mailing System?

Question

I bought 500 postcards for my first round of mailing. Does anyone have a fast and cost effective way to attach addresses to these postcards? I have considered Vistaprint mailing labels, but they are a little expensive. I'll write every address out if I have to, but maybe someone on here has automated this process...ideas?

Colby Hager · Answer

@John Lyszczyk

This isn’t answering your question, I’ll leave that to others. I just want to throw this out to you.

500 postcards isn’t even a drop in the bucket. Most people effectively using postcards send them by the thousands. My minimum for postcards used to be 2500 per week.

You are FAR better off sending a yellow letter or some other iteration of a letter if your list is 500 or less. This will yield far better results when dealing in these small numbers.

Not trying to dissuade you. Just want to give you a different perspective. I guess if you are dead set on sending small amounts of postcards, my advice would be don’t do the whole we pay cash spiel. Convince them to go to your website and then try to convert them there on your website.

My best performing postcard pissed off about 90% of the people who get them. Lots of nasty calls and voicemails. I used to send the recordings to my buddies for a good laugh. Seriously though, that card converted like to other. Another reason not to do the traditional “we buy houses” card

Jerryll Noorden · Answer

Like my man colbey said. You are all doing it wrong.

First 500 postcards? No man try 3000 to 7000, if you want to get a more realistic expectation on getting a deal.

Second.. the simple fact that you picked 500 is inherently alarming because you are doing the same mistake most do.

People spend 1000 dollars on marketing because that is what they can afford at that time.,

WRONG!

You figure out the cost / deal. If you need to spend 4000 dollars to get one deal, or in other words, if you need to send 7000 post cards to make one deal, you will never get a deal sending out 500 cards (well let me not say "never"... I will say, it is highly unlikely to get a deal).

Find out the cost / deal. Get that money, and get your deal.

No winging it!

Allan Smith · Answer

Postcards are so cheap from fulfillment services like click2mail.com, I have no idea why anyone would ever want to physically fulfill postcards. But if you must, you would want to print on them. Remember to get postcard stamps, they are cheaper.

if you truly want to automate, you would probably have to use lob.com API to link up with your CRM.

also I second the person who said you have to send a lot more postcards to get a deal. However, you can send out yellow letters and get more calls, but you won't necessarily get more deals. Yellow letters get a higher response rate but it's a lot of Tire kickers beat. People who call postcards are usually more serious.

Marc Winter · Answer

@John Lyszczyk, Once you have the labels printed (Avery 5160  3-up, 30 per page), recruit a kid from the neighborhood (or your own child) and have them do it.  Otherwise, you can invest in 1-up labels, which need a dot-matrix printer, and an automatic labeling machine, mine cost about $2K, but that was back in the day.

Kids work just fine, and much less $$$.

Annchen Knodt · Answer

@John Lyszczyk, I was working through the same questions myself about a year ago!  To second what @Allan Smith said, I'd be impressed if you came up with a manual fulfillment system that's cheaper than click2mail, especially if you factor in the value of your time.  You can get 4x6 postcards from them for ~$.50/ea including postage, and I'd imagine that your materials and printing costs would come pretty close to $.15/ea which I think is the difference between that and a postcard stamp now.

Since you mentioned you did look into click2mail, i wanted to point out that their minimum volumes (which is likely where you're getting the $1000 - $1600 figures) don't apply if you don't use the "scheduled mailing" option (don't remember what it's called exactly).  So you could use them to send your 500 postcards for $250 with just a few clicks.  Plus all your addresses will automatically be checked so you might save yourself from wasting cards on addresses that aren't real / formatted properly / etc.

But more than that I think what others have said about where to focus your money and effort is really important too!

Best of luck!

Bryce DeCora · Answer

@John Lyszczyk and anyone else wanting to automate and track mail better through a CRM. I wrote up a tutorial on how to do this with Lob.com, Podio and Zapier. Shoot me a message and I can just send it to you.

Colby Hager · Answer

Let me see if I can send you a picture.  Even with great data, they get returned at a high rate.  FWIW I skip trace the returned postcards marked "vacant" by the mail carrier.

Jerry Puckett · Answer

Insted of fooling with labels, I'd suggest printing right on the postcard. Most modern printers will accept the size and stock. Just create a template in word the same size as your postcard and insert some merge fields.

You'll still have to apply your postage though

There are tons of services out there that would do this for you, but of course it costs a little more. Well worth the time saved. Have you figured out how much your time is worth so you know if you're actually saving money?

John Lyszczyk · Answer

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Thanks! I've never had to create mailings in Word, but now is the time to learn I guess lol I'll report back on my progress and if I find ways to automate.

John Lyszczyk · Answer

I'm trying to break into the Wholesaling space, but if someone is interested in selling their house and I can fix-n-flip for a profit, I would certainly consider that route. Overall, I am just trying to strike up a deal through Direct Mail Postcards going to Single-Family Homes. I bought them on Vistaprint, but to my knowledge, you can't upload the address contacts and have them sent out automatically. With all that said, I am resorting to making printing labels on Word/Excel for now.

Automated Postcard Mailing System?

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