I’ve noticed over that last couple of months or so more real estate agents marketing with real estate postcards for various reasons. Most agents have come to realize that innovative marketing in today’s market is more than posting up Goggle Adwords and having a website. It’s about being first of prospects. Literally. In fact, in their hand. This is what postcards allow you to accomplish; and accomplish without being there.

On our site there are three main benefits we share about postcard marketing. Here they are:

1) Open Mail (no need to open)
When mailing brochures, packages, and envelopes, you’re left hoping that prospects take the time to open and read your message. However, with postcards the visuals and message go to work immediately without any need for opening. Prospects are hit upon contact. This is important since research shows that your marketing pieces have only 3 seconds to capture the attention of potential clients.

2) Effective -vs- other methods
Aside from being cost-effective, real estate postcards beat out other real estate marketing methods by sheer circumstance. Unlike an ad, your postcard competes with only a handful of items in the mailbox on that day, rather than with the 250-300 ads in a typical newspaper or magazine.

3) Personal Interaction
Unlike emails or websites, postcards are held in hand while read. The act of consciously picking up a postcard is the first step toward opening up your prospect to your message. Remember, the prospect is physically holding your message and has to interact with your postcard (turn it over) for more information. This experience makes for a loose personal contact between you and your prospect from right within their home.

And there explains the massive move toward more traditional marketing like postcards. However, mind you, traditional marketing with long over due treatments to postcard marketing. Realasponse.com

With winter coming up it’s going to be difficult for many agents to survive the market altogether. Just this past week many retail stores reported less than expected profits into the next quarter; and they’re right. Because many households have aired on the side of caution with the housing crunch outlook and plan to be frugal for coming months, overall spending will be less than favorable as a whole. However, this doesn’t mean people have stop buying homes. It just means it’ll take more to get them…or at least more whit.

But for many agents that choose to market themselves with real estate postcards that are plagued with recycled messages and weak visuals; their days at marketing to today’s buyers and sellers are almost just about up. Why? Because today’s seller and buyers knows the game and is being persuaded by the “commission debate” to seek out selling or buying a home themself. Companies such as Redfin are helping consumers to see that the market and times are-ah- changin’. What agents have to do is PROVE their value. And guess what? Offering a Free Market Analysis or Free Consultation is not going to cut it! They expect a consultation and are being moved daily to refer to ball-park estimates on Zillow or Trulia (regardless of how far off they are).

Postcard marketing is not dead, however, the old way of just sending any postcard in the name of having to touch the prospect is absolutely the wrong way to think about effective marketing. Prospects aren’t laughing real estate postcards with animals having talk bubbles with cheesy saying. It’s no time to be cute! It’s all about being effective. With the market the way it is, they’re looking for answers.

And what’s better than meeting prospects at their door and offering to address what is already on their minds; then by sending postcards that do, in fact, that. Grab they attention and get them to act.

Check out Realasponse.com and view our demo for more.

First off, as a real estate professional you’re pressed for time when it comes to creating quality real estate postcards and marketing material. You’re generally given a couple of options. You could go to a graphic designer, however, chances are you’d have to keep following up with the designer and they’d probably be late or you could try to design it yourself with some online automated tool dotted with all kinds of restrictions. Let’s take a closer look at this restrictions.

The #1 thing real estate agents sacrifice when creating real estate postcards using online tools is quality. It’s true. The tools you’re given to make your postcards are limited in flexibility.

FONTS
You can only choose from a certain number of fonts. This is a big mistake given that fonts add character and mood to a really good real estate postcard. Most companies will only provide the basics because they could care less about spending the $50-$100 needed to create great looking copy.

EFFECTS
Another effective visual for any real estate postcard is the ability to use drop shadows and gradients on headers to allow certain elements to jump out and grab the prospects attentions. You can’t do this with do-it-yourself online tools.

LAYOUT BALANCE
Also bad is the ability to easily add and move elements around to maintain balance. Generally adding a new element to your real estate postcard means settling for clutter. With a company like Realaspones.com designing it for you (same day) resizing, moving and cropping elements can be done to maintain order and impact on the postcard.

All in all, the truth is many agents get suckered into believing that do-it-myself postcards mean saving a coupling pennies and possessing equal impact. WRONG! You may save a FEW pennies, however, in today’s market, it’s worth paying pennies more to have a message stand out and be seen and also maximize the chance of a transaction happening because you’ve used all the tools needed to make it happen.

I’m partly kidding. However, if you look at many of today’s just listed postcards they do a great disservice to the home being featured; whether the home is a beauty or not. I mean, even if the home is a fixer-upper you still want the home to come across as appealing to shoppers. And that’s just the problem with many of the just listed postcard designs out there on the web. They’re generic!!! A good just listed postcard complements the home in categories of style, presentation and character.

What many postcard companies will do is create a generic template and offer several different color schemes of the same design as if this some how provides options. Many of them have the thought of, “Hey, create something quick and easy and tell the agent that it’s solely a numbers game and they have to buy 1000’s of postcards to see any reasonable return on their investment.” This is in no way the case.

If you use innovative eye grabbing postcards that act as a containers to compliment the home being featured, you don’t have to solely relay on large postcard number to make up for lack of presentation. Certainly real estate direct mail, to a degree, is a numbers game. But the winning element has always been presentation and layout. Focus on those elements and you’ve got a ticket to increasing the chances on a higher response on your mailing.

I’m often asked the question: “How can I make my real estate postcards stand out?” The question can be tough for many agents because today’ real estate marketing requires that you be different from other agents who may have saturated the market with postcards bearing overused and tired messages. Among the most common over used messages you’ll see today (or may have even used yourself) are messages like: ” Buying or Selling?”….”Free Consultation”… or “Call me for a FREE market analysis”. These recycled messages are sure to have prospects disregard your message quickly because they are tel-tale signs of “another real estate agent trying to sell me.”

One of the ingredients that make up a great marketing postcard is “visual appeal”. Remember, you only have so much time to capture the attention of the prospect. So deciding what will be the focus of a piece is of utmost importance. You don’t want to focus the visual so much on yourself, however, marry the relationship of service and self. Also important is layout; you don’t want clutter. Many agents (out of desperation) will try and cram every bit of information about themself and service on one postcard. DON’T DO THIS. You make yourself out to be cheap and unprofessional. You’re no different than the place down the street that sells “Chinese Food & Donuts”. Get the point? Make your message clean and clear.

Also be direct on what you want to offer. Remember, your offer is the call to action.

What Realasponse has done is make it easier on you by implementing these strategies for you already. You can either try to design your own real estate postcards and think up an offer or use or direct mail postcards that do everything for you…including mailing.

Which ever way you decide, remember that visual appeal, layout, and offer are most important when compelling prospects.