123PostcardMarketing.com REAL Relationship Marketing … Easy as 1-2-3

Relationship Marketing via Postcards

Relationship marketing is all about making and maintaining connections with customers and potential customers. And, of course, building and maintaining NON-business relationships with friends and relatives is much the same. How do we let customers, friends and family know how much we appreciate them?

Email can be used, but often just doesn’t seem all that personal, not to mention the problem with SPAM filters these days. Texting is a possibility, but isn’t necessarily any more personal than email (and many people hardly know how to text – like me :–)

A phonecall can be nice (and is certainly more personal), but, let’s face it, often we don’t make the call because we’re afraid we might end up on the phone much longer than we can really afford to be, not only costing us time that we might not have at our disposal, but also costing considerable money, depending upon our phone plan.

So, how CAN we build and maintain those relationships in a personal way that doesn’t create the possibility of spending half the day on the phone?

Why Not Send a Card?

One great way is to send your customers, and even potential customers, personalized cards.

I’m not talking about cheesy, cheapo, pre-made cards with some generic message. I’m talking about a personalized note to say thank you for a customer’s decision to buy from you, provide you with a referral, offer a testimonial, etc.

Maybe a note to tell an employee, associate or downline dealer that you appreciate their input or expertise. Maybe a congratulations on a promotion.

Or, a simple “thank you for being there” to send to a friend or relative that helped you through a rough time.

There are dozens of different reasons for sending a personal note, but, unfortunately, there are a few BIG reasons that it almost never happens – at least not consistently (and consistency is the stuff that successful businesses – and relationships – are made of).

1. Writing and sending cards can be time consuming, especially if you have alot of customers, downline dealers and/or associates to keep in touch with. Christmas and birthday cards for friends and family? A person could easily spend hours each week on such notes.
2. The cost can be high. Between the cost of the card and the postage you can easily spend 50 cents for every card you send, even if it’s just a postcard. Want to send something more and the cost goes even higher.
3. It’s easy to forget. Too often, when we think of it, we don’t have a good card to send or the time to go buy one and once we do have the time to get one we’ve forgotten it.

SendOutCards has effectively eliminated those barriers to doing what we know we should be doing but never do. Send cards to those we care about and to let customers and associates know we appreciate them has never been so easy.

Thought of someone you should send a card to but don’t have time or the opportunity to get to the store to buy one? With a SendOutcards account, just login, choose a professionally designed postcard or greeting card from their categorized inventory of over 13,000 cards. Then, take a moment to add your own personal note (in YOUR OWN handwriting) and your actual signature (or one of 4 different signatures you can provide to them – maybe just your first name, your full signature, or some variation thereof).

Once you’ve completed your card, which often takes just a minute or two, click SEND and SendOutCards will immediately begin the process of printing, stuffing, stamping (with a real stamp) and mailing out your card the same day.

And, the cost to send even a full-color, beautifully designed greeting card, complete with your personal message and signature AND postage is under $1.00. In fact, if you’re someone that sends numerous cards (or would like to) for customers, dealers, friends and family, you can setup a wholesale account which will lower the price even further.

Want to send a postcard instead? The price drops considerably.

But, That’s Just Scratching the Surface

SendOutCards is actually MUCH more powerful even than that. SendOutCards includes a powerful contact manager with reminders built-in. Manually add or import contacts as often as you like and place them into categorized groups. Set reminders to drop them a card at certain intervals or for certain dates (like birthdays, anniversary of becoming a customer, etc.)

You can even setup postcard/greeting card “autoresponder” campaigns.

Say you have a new customer who’s just come on board (or even a bunch of customers). Just manually add or import their contact information into a particular group and then select to have your card campaign begin immediately or on a pre-set start date.

On your que, postcards and/or greeting cards will be sent to these contacts on a preset schedule, pre-designed and customized by you, using YOUR handwriting, inserting their contact details or whatever other information you like (what product they purchased, etc.).

Maybe have a thank you card send to them a few days after they place an order. Then, the following week have SendOutCards send them (automatically) another card which asks them how they liked the product/service, and provides some tips for getting the most use out of it. A couple weeks later, another goes out and requests that they provide their comments/testimonial regarding their experience. Maybe also request that they refer a friend to your company (and even offer to reward them for doing so).

Then, maybe every couple of months, drop them another card telling them about another product that you offer that you feel they might be interested in.

Again, this is ALL on auto-pilot. Once you place their details into your contact manager, you’re done. Of course, you can always login and manually send a more personal card at any time to any contact. But, you’ll know that, even if you don’t, you’ll be following up in a more personal way with your customers.

Let’s face it, numerous case studies have shown that it’s at least 4 times easier to retain and sell to a current, happy customer, than it is to try and gain a new customer. So, the minor expense of sending a card to your customer once in awhile is well worth it – AND, by using SendOutCards, you minimize the expense and time investment required on your part.

A Goldmine Service That Has NO Competition

This could easily be an absolute goldmine for your business, keeping your customers happier and better serviced. In addition, it gives you a quick and easy way to build even more personal relationships with customers, friends and relatives with professional, personalized, yet very inexpensive cards drawn from an ever expanding and categorized database of THOUSANDS of cards.

Powerful contacts manager, reminders, automated mailing campaigns, mail merge features and more make SendOutCards the ONLY service of it’s kind. Although there are plenty of services available to do bulk postcard mailing/marketing, I had absolutely NO LUCK finding any other service that would mail out SINGLE postcards or greeting cards on demand and nobody could beat the pricing of SendOutCards for postcards OR greeting cards.

Take a Completely FREE Test Drive

If you’re serious about relationship marketing, you really should consider at least trying out SendOutCards. You can even test the service by setting up a COMPLETELY FREE account to design and send out a free card or two. No obligation or credit card required.

Take it for a spin. I have a feeling that you will find SendOutCards to be an extremely capable and inexpensive option to take your relationship marketing to the “next level”.