You’re putting together a postcard mailing campaign for your favorite politician or are working with your child on a project to send postcards to people in all 50 states in hopes that you’ll get mail back from all of them. Now, since your idea isn’t already a postcard design, you need to figure out the ins and outs of printing postcards that are custom designs.

If you don’t have much design experience and you really want to pass the job on to someone else. Just tell someone what you want to see, okay the proof and you’re done. Now all you need to do is address the cards, slap on some stamps and give them to your longsuffering postal carrier.

For people who feel a bit more confident with design, making your own postcard really is simple. To be successful with your design, you should:

 

• Be careful when you are choosing font colors. A light color on a light background or a dark color on a dark background can be very frustrating for people to read.
• Avoid cluttering up the card. Less is definitely more when you are designing postcards.

 

You feel like your business could do better, but you aren’t quite sure how to attract new customers. Should you dress up in a chicken suit and stand outside to wave people in? Somehow that isn’t what you were envisioning when you decided to start a business. Maybe a newspaper ad is the answer? You tried that before and weren’t really happy with the result. No, there has to be a better solution. Then, a fellow small business owner mentions postcard marketing to you. Now postcards, you can do!

Postcard marketing is a great way to test out different sales and discounts on a limited group of people to see how well they work. You know that a sale that turns out to be too good a deal is limited to the number of people you mailed the coupon too. If the sale works just right, you can simply order a much larger set of cards and send them to a larger group of potential customers.

Another reason postcards work well for sale offers is that people dont need to remember to put the paper aside to clip out a coupon. The postcard can go right in a purse or get tucked in a car visor, which means it is much more likely to be used.

You open your address book and gasp in horror. You’re sure you only had a dozen people to send Christmas cards to, but your book has a good 50 names in it. The dandelions don’t spread on your lawn as fast as those addresses of people you need to send cards to multiply! New business acquaintances, parents of your children’s school friends and your old college buddies all need to be remembered over the holidays, but you really don’t want to have to trade in the second car to be able to afford your postage costs! Can you send holiday postcards instead?

Holiday postcards are a great idea for people who need to send a large quantity of cards for a number of reasons. Postage is cheaper, which is always a nice thing. In addition, they are a greener option because they use less paper than cards and don’t need envelopes. This can be an important thing in todays eco-friendly environment. However, sending postcards on holidays certainly isn’t a new option. Many people collect vintage postcards from a hundred years ago. Perhaps in another hundred years, your great-great grandchildren will be laughing over the silly outfits on your photo postcards.

When you send your children off to camp each year, you hope to get notes about their activities and friends for your scrapbook. However, so far, you’ve only received one scribbled message on a half sheet of paper from one child and two notes on the backs of candy bar wrappers stuffed into a single used looking envelope from the other. This year is going to be different. You’re ordering postcards and putting your address and a postage stamp on them. Then you are giving enough to each child so that you can get news twice a week.

Postcards are a great option for kids who are going away to summer camp, especially if you put them in a decorative container, along with pencils with a character design on them and a pencil sharpener. If your child is really a reluctant writer and you are desperate for news from camp, it may not be enough, though. For kids that hate to write, consider creating a checklist on the postcards. A sample checklist could include:

 

• I’m homesick.
• I’m having a blast.
• The food is great.
• The food is gross.
• I have poison ivy.
• I’m the only one who doesn’t have poison ivy.
• I went swimming.
• I won a prize.
• Other ____________________.

 

You would love to make your own postcards, but you just aren’t sure quite where to start. How hard is it to design your own cards? Can someone without much computer experience do it? If you can handle clicking a mouse, you can handle postcard printing. It really is as simple as pointing and clicking, with a bit of typing thrown in. To make your postcards, you should:

 

• Begin by deciding on a design that suits the occasion. If you don’t find the perfect design, you can create your own postcard from scratch and upload it, but to do this, you will need just a bit more computer savvy than someone who has a few basic mouse skills.
• Write your text in the available spaces and adjust the font size and style to create a nicely balanced card. If all of your text doesn’t fit easily, you can add more text boxes. Just be sure you don’t crowd too much information on the cards. If you have a lot to say, consider pointing people to a website with complete details instead of cramming it all on the card.
• Thoroughly proof the cards to be sure you have not made any typos and then place your order.