Using postcards to advertise...

[Benz2328]

Hi I am thinking about using postcards to advertise my Landscaping and lawn care company... any suggestions on what to add on the postcards? Should I leave a place for the price or should I only give prices to those who call? ....

I am being charged $350 for 2500 full color designed postcards... Sounds fair?

[mowerbrad]

You should include you company name and number and logo. Also make sure that the services that you offer are on there and your years of experience (if you have a few years of mowing and lawncare under your belt it makes homeowners feel better about hiring you). Never put a price on there as each property is different, only give a customer a price until you see the lawn.

[JJS]

My opinion through using postcards is give them a price , this has gotten my foot in so many doors, on the cards i state that i have given them a curbside estimate, i have never had anyone get upset with me after i survey the lawn and find out that the lawn is bigger than expected and the price is a little more, it gets you invited on the property.
This year though i'm trying a folded brochure, i've heard that people tend to throw postcards away, but a folded brochure tends to make people curious, don't know if its true or not but i'll try anything once....

[chrisludwig]

I would use postcards if you are planning on mailing them. If you are doing "curbside" estimates" I suggest switching to door hangers and put them on the door.
It is illegal to put anything in the mailbox or on the mailbox post without proper paid postage. And your local postal delivery person will go around and collect all that they see. And thats wasted money.

You can write on a door hanger just as easy.

Send me a PM and I will give you some pricing info you can compare to and some suggestions.

[jwillaford]

I agree with Chris about the postcard as mailers.

We use postcards for branding purposes. How they are designed and what you offer are based on your clientele. For our company, we serve a high-end customer that is more concerned with quality than price, so they don't bite on the coupons.

One important decision we made was that we would do a small number of mailers directly to our target ever 2-4 weeks. Before I came, my boss was so frustrated because he didn't see a dramatic return on direct mail. Come to find out, he did it like twice in the spring to an enormous list. This is not how to have success with direct mail. So we spend the same amount of money [actually less] and stay in front of the people that buy. We see it as the sniper approach instead of the shotgun approach.

Benz2328 - See if the designer will quote you just for the design. GotPrint.com is extremely cheap. I just placed an order of 2500 full color cards yesterday and they were $88.50 for printing [before shipping]. You may be able to shave some dollars by handling the printing yourself or even convince him to use this company.

[IN2MOWN]

If you are going to put a price on it then do something like this:


Lawn starting at $....... and put in whatever your minimum is. Then at the bottom put some disclaimer in on how that price covers up to a certain square footage but prices will vary depending on the size of the yard.

Or something like that.

[thefed]

PM me Benz, i cant seem to send you a pm

[Lawn_Enforcement]

Benz .... www.vistaprint.com is extremely cheap , full color and they also offer to sell you mailing list, and even offer to address and stamp all the postcards so you dont have to worry about labeling them and putting stamps on all of them
...

[willretire@40]

Nobody and I mean nobody can beat Gotprint prices.

[Lawn_Enforcement]

Nobody and I mean nobody can beat Gotprint prices.

Im afraid they have been beaten

gotprint.com for 1k postcards 4/4 is 99.99
vistapinrt.com 4/4 for 1k is 84.98

15 dollars is alot when ordering a huge amount

[BeautifulBlooms]

i second the vistaprint.com

I got 20,000 for like $750 the other dya they always are running discounts and if you forget your password or login info they always send you a 25% off coupon! I forget the info everytime just for that coupon.

[Lawn_Enforcement]

BB i didnt know they give you 25% off for forgetting your password .... but what I do occasionally not alot is only get the 100 free its worth it... also Vistaprint does extremely good and fast work

[Kris@PrecisionLawnCare]

vistaprint.com has done a phenominal job with my experiences.
I originally ordered 1000 premium business cards from vistaprint, got them a week later and absolutely love them. I could not ask for a high quality business card.
I was so impressed I went back and ordered 500 postcards along with a direct mailing.
The quality and time has been superb, I could not ask for more. The prices have been amazing not to mention. Run a search on google "vistaprint codes" and there are multiple codes out there to get ridiculous savings, not to mention vistaprint has great email etc offers.

I've recieved free logo magnets, rubber stamps, postcards, business cards, labels, and much more just through their promotional offers.

A+

[BeautifulBlooms]

How much does the direct mail at vistaprint cost? How do you break it down by zip code??? We have still been int he practice of hand delivery to paper boxes with success especially since we are doing it when we have no work to be done anyways. After you factor in vehicle expesne and fuel and paying an employee to do it it costs us about
$ .17 - $ .20 per piece to hand deliver.