1. Postcard printing is cheap. This is the top reason to use postcards – you'll have a high ROI (return on investment). Even with fancy graphics and high-tech printing techniques, you won't pay more than $1.00 per postcard, and that includes postage costs. If you sell televisions that net you a $200 profit and you send out 200 postcards to announce your store's grand opening, you only have to sell one television to come out even on your postcard marketing effort.

2. Postcards are uncomplicated to design. There isn't much space to deal with, so the less information you put on the postcard, the better. You could even just print your best ad on a 4” x 6” postcard and mail those to your best prospects. As long as you have a call to action and your contact information, you're good to go. A friendly design that makes the postcard look like it's coming from a friend works best.

3. Postcards lack the dreaded envelope barrier to your message. Many brochures and flyers and other direct mail sent in envelopes don't make it out of the envelope. With postcards, your message will get read, or at your logo and company name will, because there will be nothing blocking recipients' view.

4. Postcards cost less to mail than regular mail. If you have a short flyer you want to send through the mail, it'll cost you 42 cents. If you can condense that message into a postcard-size message, you'll only pay 27 cents per postcard. If you send out 500 postcards instead of 500 flyers, you'll save $75 in mailing costs alone!

5. Postcards are great for generating Web site traffic. All you have to do is list some benefits of your product or service along with a great photo or graphic and point people to your Web site to order or to find out more about your product. Your Web site traffic will go up within a matter of days of sending out your postcard.

6. You can easily measure the effectiveness of postcard campaigns. You can track the effectiveness of the coupon on your postcard by including a specific coupon code to use on your Web site or by using a color-coded system so you know from which demographic most of your business is coming from. If people are going to respond to your postcard, most do it within two weeks, so you can quickly tell if your postcard marketing campaign is working.

7. You can implement a postcard mailing within a week of deciding to use a postcard mailing. Once you decide to use postcard printing and have come up with the content for the postcard, you can see results from your postcards within a week of getting them printed. It can take as little as one day to print postcards, and only a few days to get them delivered to your prospects' houses. You'll see results much faster than if you had to design a print ad and wait for it to run in the newspaper or to run a radio or television ad.