I tried postcard marketing for my newsletter — Here's what happened

One of the things I've been adamant about with my Bending Pink Steel project is that I want the growth mechanisms to match the intent. Aka, I want to market in ways that are good for mental health — and stay away from strategies that are not, like social media.

This is a really cool idea in theory, but terribly hard to execute on in the real world (as we'll see once I share some numbers below).

I still believe in this method. I think the quality and kind of reader I'll get from taking the "hard way" will pay off in the long run and fuel the kind of word-of-mouth momentum you don't find much of these days (because we all rely so heavily on algorithms to show us what's worth paying attention to).

This month I want to share a behind-the-scenes look at one experiment I tried towards this end: postcard marketing.

How does postcard marketing work?

When it comes to physical mail advertising, you have a pretty wide variety of options in the US.

Most companies stick to letters (in envelopes), postcards, or mailers (which are kind of a combination of the two). Each comes in various sizes, thicknesses, and paper types. Postcards can be as little as 4x6 inches or as big as 15x12 inches.

Then, you get another set of options with how you choose to send them out. I chose something called EDDM which stands for Every Door Direct Mail. This allows you to send standardized postcards to an entire mail route (i.e., collection of homes) for about $0.19 per household.

This is a steal because the normal cost to mail a postcard in the US is $0.53 ($0.15 cheaper than a standard letter). By going the EDDM route, you essentially cut your send cost by more than half!

Typically, this strategy is used by high-ticket, high-margin service businesses (window installers, landscapers, etc.) that can afford to shell out several thousand dollars each month to acquire a handful of customers.

Why I thought this could work?

There were two main reasons I thought this strategy could pay off.

1. It hadn't been tried before for digital newsletters.
2. You can target demographics very easily.

The first one is obvious — most newsletters stick to the same tried and true methods (FB ads, callouts in other newsletters, social media, etc.). I wanted to take a different route in the hopes I would stumble upon a blue ocean opportunity. The barrier to entry is also higher (i.e., cost), which I interpreted as meaning I would have less competition if this did start to work.

The second insight is one most people don't know about.

USPS pulls in census data to give their routes demographic data such as income, age, and household size.

This is immensely valuable since, from other studies, we know that people who tend to pay for media (news, memberships) typically make $100,000+ per year, are 35+, and have a family. I could target all of these with just a few clicks.

Total Costs

Alright, let's talk numbers.

I used 48 Hour Print to produce my initial batch of 6,000 postcards. You can see the size and other details of the card above.

I paid a little extra (~$50) to have them organized into stacks of 100. This is required for USPS drop off and saved me about 4 hours of manual labor (totally worth it!).

As you can see, they also had a great sale going on, so I got each postcard for roughly $0.07 (before tax & bundling).

I mentioned shipping costs above, but here they are in more detail.

Once it was all said and done, I paid about $0.20 for each postcard to be shipped. The routes vary by size, which changes the numbers a bit.

I actually got an extra 200+ postcards with my printed order, which is why the total sent out is 6,002. I'm saving the last few hundred as I decide what to do next.

So, my all-in price per household was $0.27 ($1,764.39 grand total).

My hope was that I could get between 1 in 8 and 1 in 16 households to turn into 1 free subscriber (which, because of household size, meant something like 1 in 25 to 1 in 60 people).

I understand that's pretty ambitious, but a $2 free subscriber goal with most ads is doable, and I was hoping to match or beat that!

Visuals

My BPS newsletter is sassy. Like a combination of South Park and Brene Brown. So, I wanted to use the same kind of humor in the marketing to attract the right kind of readers.

Bending Pink Steel | David Ramos | Substack

For men who want to love their minds. Click to read Bending Pink Steel, by David Ramos, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.

SubstackDavid Ramos

Here's what the postcard looked like.

I designed it in Cavna with a front and back CTA. The URL is a custom tracking one I bought and redirected to a landing page on Substack. That was I could measure exactly how many people were typing in the domain directly, as well as leverage Substacks analytics to see how many were converting.

I kept the tone light, funny, and informative — but incredibly simple. Ideally, a person would read the postcard, laugh, type in the URL, and subscribe all within a minute or so.

Now, here's the landing page:

The page is bookended by two subscribe CTAs, with a few strategic links spread throughout — each with their own set of strong CTAs.

I wanted to be upfront about the topics & cost.

Either people would be intrigued by my paywalled content or immediately turned off. If you're reading this, you know I'm pretty much done with publishing loads of free content online, so I want to be as upfront with this as possible, especially with people who are discovering me for the first time.

Also, I try to include at least one picture of me in each step of the process (initial web page, welcome email, first posts, etc.). That way, they feel like they get to know me, my voice, and my face fairly quickly (and hopefully, that makes them want to subscribe!).

Did it work?

No, it really didn't. 😂😭🔥💌

It's been approx. 6 weeks since my first mailing and 2 weeks since my last, and I've grown by a total of 2 subscribers.

I double-checked with the offices that they were sent out, and they confirmed they had been. I even spent hours on the phone with headquarters because all of my purchases still say "processing," but they confirmed that's just a quirk of the system and my postcards have indeed been mailed.

So, that's it.

The experiment — while very interesting and kind of exciting — was a $1,700 flop.

So what's next?

I'm going to focus on 1:1 handwritten postcards for the time being and plan to write up a post about them later in the year. I've been sending them to both people I know personally (old college friends, fellow marketers, etc.) and people I admire but have never met (authors, influencers, chefs).

As far as EDDM goes, I still believe it can work, but likely for super niche local newsletters. I'm still narrowing down my who, and people's tastes vary so much I don't think targeting geographic regions is going to get me the readers I'm after (at least not at scale).

If you have any experiments you think I should try (I'm happy to spend $500-$1,000 each month to learn something new), I'm all ears.

I'm doing some of the best writing of my life on BPS and I know I need to get it in front of more people. But how to do that honestly, in a way that's sustainable and protects my mental health — well, I'm not clear on that yet. But I'm getting closer. And the only way to not fail is to not quit.

See you next month!

✌️ DR