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Marketing with Postcards: Taking Real Estate Marketing Old School

By Ben Shepardson | November 9, 2018

Marketing with postcards may seem like an incredibly old-fashioned way of getting the word out about your real estate business in the age of digital advertising. However, this tried-and-true marketing method is still an excellent way to grow your realty brand. Here's what you need to know about marketing with postcards.

Direct Mail Marketing with Postcards Still Works

First things first: marketing with postcards through direct mail is still a highly viable option. In fact, research has shown that overall household response from direct mail sources is a whopping 5.1 percent. That figure alone doesn't reveal much until you put it into context, however -- it outstrips other response rates by a major margin. In fact, email and paid search responses were measured at just 0.6%, social media response just 0.4%, and online display a paltry 0.2 percent.

With the primacy of direct mail still intact, it suddenly makes much more sense to ensure that you spend a portion of your advertising budget on marketing with postcards. To do so otherwise is to deny yourself excellent opportunities to reach as many prospective home buyers as you can. Whether you run a focused campaign that targets specific neighborhoods or demographics or you use direct mail more broadly, you should most certainly keep this old-school advertising tool in your arsenal.

Direct Mail Supports Digital Marketing Goals

If you think marketing with postcards through direct mail only distracts consumers from your digital marketing presence, think again: there's research that suggests direct mail marketing works incredibly well in conjunction with digital marketing techniques. In fact, conversion rates have found to be 28% higher in instances where digital marketing and direct mail have been used together. An excellent example of this is including a call to action on your postcard or mailer to visit the website for your realty business.

Digital marketing being what it is, most of the activity there requires action on the part of the consumer. He or she needs to search the web for a valid keyword in order for your digital marketing materials to get hits, for example. Yet with direct mail, your marketing materials are literally being delivered to a prospect's mailbox. In other words, you're coming to them -- there's no requirement for them to take action in order to get their eyes on your advertising. This takes much of the guesswork out of the marketing equation.

Targeting Your Postcard Marketing Campaign Can Have a Big Payoff

Most realtors assume that marketing with postcards is a wide-scale peppering as many households in your target area as possible. While that's one valid strategy for generating new business, this can be, in actuality, a waste of resources -- especially because you can use marketing with postcards as a way to nurture existing interest instead of trying to generate new interest.

Research bears this out. Not only is it more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain an existing one, your likelihood of closing a sale with someone you have a pre-existing relationship with is 60%-70%, as opposed to just 5%-20% for someone new. This means that you can use postcard marketing to target your warm contacts and you're much more likely to get a better return on your investment as a result. In a world where ROI can make a major impact on your success as a business, ask yourself -- can you afford not to use marketing with postcards?

Ben Shepardson is a Realty Biz News Contributing Writer and has a long track record of success in online marketing and web development. While pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems, he worked doing enterprise-level SEO and started an online business offering web development services to small business customers.
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