As direct marketers, we are constantly trying to increase the response of our marketing campaigns and to do so at the lowest possible cost. In fact, the direct response game is all about the most reponses per dollar spent.

One very effective way to reduce your cost is by direct marketing with postcards. As of this writing, a postcard can be mailed for as low as $.24. They are also very inexpensive to print.

A postcard also has the advantage of being able to be read without the prospect having to open a envelope first. That means it has less of chance of winding up in the garbage before your prospect sees your eye headline. It also means if you have done your job and designed an eyebrabbing, compelling headline then you stand a good chance of getting your prospect to read body of that postcard.

A letter, on the other hand, has to be opened in order to be read, and many people will not open their mail if they think it's a marketing letter. The will simply deposit it in the garbage.

One downside to postcard marketing is that you have a much smaller space to work with. That means you will not have enough space to develop a full sales message to your prospects. Sometimes, this can compromise your results because you are unable to create sufficient interest and desire to get a response.

One way around this is to use your postcard in a two-step marketing process. Your first step is to send your postcard with enough information to get the prospects attention and build their interest to the point where they are ready to respond by requesting more information.

Your postcard can then direct them to a call pre-recorded message, go to a website, to call an individual, or to mail a request. Then, you collect that persons contact information and send them the information that they requested.

When planning your two step process, it is important that offer for free information be valuable to the prospect. If it has percieved value, then you will increase the number of responses.

Examples of information that provide value to a prospect are how-to reports, whitepapers, free analysis, free books, and free consultations.

After you have sent the prospect the initial information then, you follow up with more developed sales messages later. This more developed sales message might take the form of a personalized sales letter that has more information and a stronger, more developed sales message.

Following this process, you will develop a list of high probability prospects who are interested in your type of product or service at a relatively low cost. This is because your initial contact with that prospect was through the postcard, a low cost medium.

Now that you have identified these people you can focus additional marketing resources on this list rather than spending your money marketing to the general public. In this second step focus on delivering a well developed message that increases their interest even more and creates the desire to have your product.

This second step is required to drive your prospect to action. You need the second step because you are unable to to create the interest and the desire in your postcard alone.

By using the postcard in a two-step process we are only looking to create enough desire to get the prospect to want to request more information. Once you do that, then can start the selling process.

You will find that postcards can be an excellent way to generate leads for your business. It doesn't matter if your company is b-to-b or b-to-c. Postcards have proven effective in a variety of industries.