Hey, how's it going? This is Seth from retipster.com.
And in this video, I'm going to show you how to send out a direct mail campaign
with a website called Click2Mail using a certain type of yellow postcard.
This is a type of postcard that I have sent out countless times.
If you want to send out postcards, you can go up here to mailing products
and I'm on the homepage right now. And I am logged into my account.
Once you click on this
you go over here and as you can see, even among the postcards,
there are several different sizes and dimensions of them.
The one that I've always done is this one right here
the 4.25 X 6 inch postcard. So click on that.
And as you can see here, if we scroll further down,
there are actually several different layouts
that you can send with this particular size of postcard.
The two that I've always worked with is this one right here, the single sided postcard,
and then also the double-sided postcard and the idea with these,
with the single set of postcard,
that little gray space you see on one side, that's all the space
you have to write your message.
And then on the reverse side, that's where the recipient's address
the postage and your return address would go.
However, if you want more space,
this double-sided postcard allows you to write a message,
not only on the big broad side,
but also on the same side where the address goes.
And I think the benefit of this is that
you basically just have another chance to catch your recipients attention,
and you have more room to write out whatever you want to write out.
So it's up to you.
And obviously, there's also these other versions here.
Those could pretty much do a very similar thing to the double-sided postcard.
I just haven't used these a whole lot.
So if you want to experiment with those feel free.
And the nice thing about Click2Mail is that whichever template you choose,
you can actually download a template in Word format or PDF, or take your pick.
I want to download the Word format
and I'll just show you what happens when we download this.
Okay. So when I opened that up and really what this is,
is a word document that has already been sized to the correct measurement.
And they've overlayed these little images on here, just so you can understand
Hey, don't put your writing outside of this lens because if you do,
they might get cut off.
So I find that kind of helpful.
And by the way, if you do download the postcard templates
that I've put together with my actual copy that I've used many, many times before,
it's been proven to get me a pretty decent response rate.
Those templates are already sized to the standard and the text is within these lines.
Just so you know if you decide to use those, but really if we wanted to get started,
all we'd have to do is click this, just delete it, get it out of the way,
same thing with all this stuff, click delete.
And I've actually got a different template
I was going to work with here, which you can see just shows test, test, test,
just to give you an idea of where that text would go.
So I'm going to be using this one and or this one over here
as I go through this process, this is another similar thing.
This is the double-sided template.
This is just an example for like what could go on one side of it
and then what could go on the other side?
So like you could put a letter or something like that on this side
and then more of like an eye-catching ad or something like that over on this side.
It's really like up to you, however creative you can be to just catch
that person's attention and say what you think they're going to respond to.
So if we scroll back up here,
so the first step as we're getting started with these postcards is to,
first of all, decide which template we're using.
So in this case, I'll just go with the single-sided postcard
just for the sake of simplicity and when it comes to printing
so I'm actually going to do black and white.
My postcards are very, very simple in that regard.
It's not so much about the color that I use.
It's more about the message that I put on it.
And because the card stack that I'm going to be using is
bright highlighter yellow, basically
That color usually ends up catching people's attention pretty well.
For paper. So again, this is the one I use Yellow 65# Uncoated.
I've tried the green in the past.
I didn't find it to be quite as effective.
At least when I got my test postcard in the mail
it didn't seem to jump out to me quite as well as the yellow did.
And same thing with the white obviously.
It looks like every other white piece of mail
that most people get in their mailbox.
I've never tried pink. And I've actually heard from some other postcard marketers
that the uglier you can make your postcard the better.
You basically just want it to look different than everything else.
But again, yellow is the one that I always stick with.
For production time. It's always the next day.
And for mail class, for this size of postcard and smaller, you have to do first-class.
You don't have any other options there.
And then up here. So when it says quantity, as you can see in this pricing share,
the more you choose to send out the cheaper the printing cost is going to be,
however, the postage it does not change.
So, just keep that in mind, if you're sending out a ton of stuff,
it's just going to be less expensive
comparatively speaking, per postcard.
A lot of the times the mail campaigns that I send out when I'm using postcards,
it kind of depends on the type of list I'm sending.
If it's a very, very, very highly targeted list that I've spent a ton of time filtering down.
Sometimes I can get some pretty good results with just 500.
However, if it is a less targeted list,
something that I did not spend a ton of time on,
and that case was probably like 1000, maybe 1500,
maybe even more, to get to any real results.
Or if you know your list is like a very specific number
you can just put that in there and you will see the price shop right down here.
So anyway, go ahead and click on start job.
And then the next step here is to get your document all figured out.
And one thing I will say pretty much every time I'm using Click2Mail
the mail that I'm sending out does not involve a mail merge.
And a mail merge, if you're not familiar with that,
it basically just allows you to insert variables
throughout all the different mail pieces you send out.
So for example, you could say,
Hey, there, first name, I saw your property on "blank" Avenue or "blank" Street.
And depending on who the person is in your list,
and depending on what data you have in there,
it can get really specific about each individual recipient
so that they see their first name
and they see the address of their property and fill in the blank,
whatever you want to put in there, you can get really specific like that.
However, I've found that Click2Mail's mail merge system that they've got,
it's kind of clunky, I don't really love it.
So usually when I'm sending out stuff with Click2Mail
the language of my postcard is going to be the same for everybody.
I'll like start out the postcard with, to whom it may concern,
or I'll just get right into my message.
I won't bother with inserting their name.
I won't bother with inserting the address of their property, none of that stuff.
So just so you know if you do want to do a direct mail campaign
that does involve a mail merge like that, the service I use for those types of
campaigns is this one right here. It's ITI Direct Mail.
If you go to retipster.com/iti that'll bring you here.
And I've actually just found this website
to be a little bit better in terms of customer service.
I think the idea with Click2Mail, it's very much a self-serve website.
Like if you get stuck or make a mistake, you're kind of on your own.
And again, with postcards that don't have a mail merge,
it's actually kind of hard to screw it up
because it's pretty simple and straightforward,
and that's kind of why I like it.
But as soon as you start getting more complex and complicated,
that's where this website comes into play.
This is very much like Click2Mail but there are a lot more options you can choose from.
So anyway, I've got a separate tutorial that can show you how a mail merge
campaign works through this website.
I'll link to that beneath this video as well.
But, getting back to Click2Mail.
So first thing here, we just have to select the postcard template
that we already put together, which again, in my case is this word document right here
go ahead and click on this.
We're going to upload it and I'll just drop the file right here.
And we'll just keep it right there with that name.
All right. Now, alternatively, we also could have clicked this create button.
And if we were to go to this route, just click continue.
Let's just show you what this looks like.
And this is not usually how I do it because I don't really like this system.
I find it very clunky and hard to work with,
but this is where you could type out your own message right here in Click2Mail.
But I just kind of like the control that I have in a Microsoft word,
or even something like Google Docs.
So I do all my stuff there and then I upload it over here to Click2Mail.
So anyway, I never used this thing, but just so you know
if you want to monkey around with it, it's there for you.
And here we can see the thing that I just uploaded.
So we're going to click that, click done.
So now that we've got that all set, we'll go over here to mailing list.
So I've never done this, but apparently you can purchase lists through Click2Mail.
Now that may make sense for you depending on who you're trying to send mail to,
since I've never used it, I'm not even sure how much it costs, but the service that I use
and again, I'm a real estate investor and I'm sending out mail to a lot of property
owners with an offer to buy their property, that kind of thing.
And typically the service that I'm using for this it's called DataTree,
and that we've actually got discounted pricing to DataTree
through our affiliate link to them, which is retipster.com/datatree
So if you want to check that out, feel free.
Alternatively, whenever I do want to get those kinds of highly targeted lists
that take a lot more time to sort through
however they else, they get a very good response rate.
There's also something called a delinquent tax list that I've used quite a bit.
And I've got a pretty detailed blog post explaining what that is,
how to get it, how it works.
So I'll go ahead and link to that beneath this video as well.
So anyway, assuming I've already got my list all sorted
and by the way, that's a whole other process that you usually have to go through.
And again, I have a separate video explaining that in case
you are getting your list from a service like DataTree,
I've got a couple of videos explaining
how to get that and how to sort it.
But once you get through that process,
your list is going to look something like this.
This is like a super, super simple version.
As you can see here, I've got a column here with the recipient's name,
their street address, a city, state and zip code.
And again, part of the reason why this Excel spreadsheet looks
so clean and simple is because there's no mail merge going on.
So there isn't a whole lot of additional variables
or offer prices or addresses that I need to insert throughout my postcards.
So that's this looks so simple.
So I'm going to go ahead and click this.
And again, we're just going to find that file and upload it.
Go ahead and choose the file.
All right. So we've got the file in there
and the next step is to set the address layout.
And what that means is we're just going to tell it,
Hey, which column is from that spreadsheet?
Do we want to use as the recipient's name, address, city, state, and zip.
And if we look back over at this spreadsheet that we just uploaded,
we can see the names of each of the columns right here in a row one
it's name, address, city, state, and zip
When we go over here, it's basically just going to find those column headers
and we can decide which ones go where,
and because I've got them labeled very clearly,
this is a pretty easy process.
We're going to put the name in the recipient name column
the address in the address line column,
And then city and the city,
state and the state
and zip and the zip. Pretty simple there.
And then also what you're going to see up here is some of the actual addresses
that it's pulling from your list.
You can click this arrow to see the next ones, the next ones,
and these addresses should match exactly what is on your Excel spreadsheet.
So for example, I see this one here. This was the fourth one down.
I should be able to go over here to the fourth one
here on my list and see that exact same name, address, city, state, and zip.
And if I don't, then I know I've got a problem or it's not ordered correctly,
or I didn't select the right thing that is here.
So just so you understand how that works,
We are going to go ahead and click save and then it's standardizing me.
And it's just putting it in the right format for the US postal service
so that they can understand these
in case there are any inconsistencies there.
Alrighty. So this was the one we just uploaded.
So I'm going to go ahead and select that and click done.
And then the next one here returned address.
So mine is already in here, but if this is your first time
getting in here to Click2Mail at doing this,
you'll probably have to actually specify what you want your address to be.
Quick hint. I probably would not put your home address here
because you don't want people showing up at your house for some reason.
I don't ever put my personal name here. I think some people out there do,
but again, I don't really do that. I try to keep it very business-related.
So just keep that in mind.
If you don't have a separate, dedicated business mailbox or mailing address yet
it's really easy to do. All you'd have to do is head over to a UPS store, pack mail,
or any kind of mailbox storefront, and you can rent one there, or you can do this online
through a service like Traveling Mailbox, which allows you to set up mailboxes
pretty much anywhere in the US and you can actually get your physical mail digitally,
they will scan it and send it to you that way. It's super convenient.
We've got a separate video review on that if you want to check it out.
It's up to you however you want to set that up.
So I'm going to go ahead and click save because that returned address looks great.
And that's all set. So I'm going to go ahead and click done
And then anciliary endorsement.
So I don't usually do this, but if you click on this,
you can sort of see what this means.
It basically just means that if there is any forwarding instructions
the postal service will do that for you,
but it can also cost you more for every time they have to do that.
So it's kind of up to you, just so you know if you do choose to do that,
it can cost you a little bit more and you can see it on here
what the current cost of this campaign is going to be.
Now, this list I upload is actually a really small list.
There is only 313 recipients on here, and that's why that number is so low.
But again, however many people you're sending mail to
that is going to reflect in the price. Go ahead and click continue here.
Okay. So it looks like it's showing us an error here.
I'm actually glad it's doing this because I can show you what to do
in case you happen to see this.
So apparently there is an address or two or three or ten
on our list that don't have the correct addresses.
I'm not sure exactly what that means,
but let's go back and see what it's referring to.
So if we go over here and click on this down arrow,
go click on the list we just upload it.
We'll click on edit here and here we can see all the different addresses on our list,
by the way, if we ever did want to manually add a recipient, we could do that right here.
This is pretty simple. I usually include postcards
that's just mailed to myself just so that I can know
Oh, okay. all my recipients probably have gotten their mail on this day as well,
or at least they're about to, since I just got mine.
So if ever I wanted to do that, you can do that here.
But really what I'm trying to do here
is I'm trying to figure out what is this unmailable address?
And I can apparently just click this to trash it, but I don't really know which one it is.
Same thing over here for the non-standard addresses.
So these are ones that, because the address format isn't quite right,
there may be a lower chance of it actually getting to the recipient.
I could trash that as well, but again, how do I know which ones I'm trashing?
They can go up here and click this thing
and we can sort by first of all, unmalleable and it's kind of just
show us whichever one was the problem.
I can click on this.
Let's see here, edited, let's see what's going on.
Well, that's why it's not malleable because it doesn't have a state or zip code in there.
So if I know what that is, obviously I could put that in here, but I don't know what that is.
I could guess, but it's just not there. So I'm not sure.
So what I'm going to do is just click this and trash it, get rid of that thing.
And then likewise, we can go up here again
and let's look for the non-standard addresses and these are all of those.
And I'd basically have to go through each one of these things,
one by one until they're all fixed.
Or if I just don't want to risk sending mail to people that may not ever receive it,
I could just as well hit this trash button and delete them all.
But it's basically just pointing out because it's not standardized
we don't know what's going to happen.
Just be aware that if you do send out mail like this,
there is a higher likelihood that it's going to come back to you
or just not get delivered at all.
So I'm actually going to delete these in this case,
and that will make my list even smaller.
And I won't be wasting postage on these non-standardized addresses
and we'll save and close this.
Now we can go on to the next step, click continue here.
All right. Now the next step is to view the proof.
And this is basically going to show us exactly
what our mail piece is going to look like to the end-user.
Like this is literally, what's going to get printed on the yellow card stock
that's going to get sent out.
I'll click on view proof.
This right here is what every single one of our postcards is going to look like.
And this is only showing me the first three examples.
So this isn't showing me everything,
but if there was something in my message that I didn't like,
say, if I put a typo in there or anything like that
this would be my cue to go back and fix that
and get it revised before I go ahead and send it out.
I can also see what my return address is going to look like up here.
And the recipient's address.
It is an option to put like a peel and stick stamp on these postcards,
but I'm just going to have the postage printed on there in this case.
I think the whole idea behind that peel and stick stamp is that
it tends to look like it's a little bit more personal.
Like somebody actually did this in their home
and put a stamp on there and sent it out that way.
But I'm not going to bother with that.
So that's the proof and I'm good with how that looks.
I don't have any problems there.
So I'm going to go back here and click on "yes".
And then put my initials here and then I'm going to add it
to the cart and then I'm going to finish checkout.
And this is a summary of everything I just put together
and you can see the final price up here.
You can see the individual price for postage and printing right down there.
So assuming everything looks fine, we'll go ahead and proceed to checkout.
And then all I'd have to do is, decide how I want to pay for this and place the order.
Pretty much as simple as that.
So again, Click2Mail I don't think it's the right option
for every single type of direct mail campaign.
At least it's not the right option for all the types of mail that I've sent out.
But again, when it's a super simple message without a mail merge
and I don't need a whole lot of customer service and I don't want to commit
to paying for thousands and thousands of mail credits at a time,
I just want to sort of do it à la carte whenever I want to
Click2Mail is super fast and easy and convenient, and the pricing is great.
And I don't have any kind of affiliate relationship with Click2Mail.
They're not paying me for this. I don't make any money if you choose to use them.
I just want to show you them because this is who I've used a lot.
And for certain types of direct mail and applications,
I think it can be a great option to use.
So again, if you think a mail merge is something that you want to do
when you direct mail pieces
go head over to retipster.com/ifi
That's our affiliate link to letterprinting.net.
And I can also include a video tutorial showing you
how to set up a mail merge through that website.
And in that video, I'm going to show you how to do this with letters,
but the same principles apply to postcards.
So that's all. Thanks for watching.
And I'll talk to you again soon.