The first is that you need to grab a person's attention right away. They aren't going to just pick up your postcard and casually read it along with the rest of the mail. All they're going to do is glance at it to see if it's important or not. That glance is all you'll have, so you have to grab their attention with it or risk losing your sale.

This detail I think most companies are aware of. Even if they don't manage to get that attention, they at least know they need to use good visuals and information that jumps out at people, or risk being ignored.

But the second fact is where many companies get tripped up. A striking image will have a good chance of getting someone to take a longer look at the postcard, true, but that doesn't mean they're going to take all the time needed to absorb everything the postcard says.

In fact, if you are able to get beyond the first second glance, you'll still probably only have an additional ten seconds at most to make your case to them before they keep your postcard or throw it away.

This means you have to have a very short, to the point message if you want it to be understood and received. Sales are most commonly announced on postcards for this reason. The big letters saying Sale is what captures a person's eye to begin with, and then all you need to tell them is what the sale is and when it will be happening. All of this is information that can be gained in a matter of seconds.

But I see many postcards that try to pack in a much longer message than that. They get the first part done and gain my interest, but once they have it they want to go into an in-depth description of a new product or what exactly they do. They want to tell me more about the details of a sale than I feel like reading right then, and so I stop before I get to any important information.

Given the small space a postcard provides you, they really aren't meant to give people a lot of details. The very purpose of the postcard is to deliver those brief messages that only require a few seconds to absorb and understand. Don't try to cram a full flyer's worth of info into a small postcard. If you're choosing to get postcard printing done than you have to also choose to deliver only a straightforward and simple message.

Just remember this: getting a person's attention initially is the hardest part. If you're able to pass that hurdle you've accomplished something great. So don't waste an opportunity just because you couldn't keep things simple.