The Most Advanced Marketing Move You Make This Year Might Be a Postcard

I come from a generation that remembers when getting something in the mail was a completely normal way for people to communicate. Before email, text messages, social media, push notifications, and whatever else is trying to get our attention today, people actually wrote something down, put a stamp on it, dropped it in a box, and trusted somebody to physically carry it across town or across the country. For those of you who grew up entirely in the digital age, we called this amazing technology “mail,” and believe it or not, it worked pretty well.

Somewhere along the way, physical mail began to feel old-fashioned. Businesses moved heavily into email because it was faster and cheaper, then text messaging became another way to reach people almost instantly, and social media gave everyone yet another place to compete for attention. Now most of us carry a device in our pocket that can interrupt us dozens of different ways before lunch, while the mailbox outside the house has become considerably quieter than it used to be.

That change creates an interesting opportunity for a firearms retailer because something as simple as a postcard can stand out precisely because it is not another email, text message, notification, or social post. The customer has to physically pick it up. It may sit on the kitchen counter for a day or two, another person in the house may see it, and the customer may look at it several times before throwing it away. That is a completely different interaction from an email that disappears underneath 30 others or a social post that gets half a second before somebody moves his thumb again.

I am certainly not suggesting that firearms retailers abandon digital marketing and start licking stamps. What I am suggesting is that we may have spent so much time separating “traditional” marketing from “digital” marketing that we have overlooked how well the two can work together. A postcard can arrive physically in someone's mailbox and become the doorway that sends that same person directly into your digital business.

When most retailers hear “direct mail,” I suspect they picture a large piece of paper covered with sale prices, coupons, bright colors, and enough giant lettering to make absolutely certain the recipient understands that SOMETHING MUST BE BOUGHT RIGHT NOW. There is certainly a place for promotional mail, especially when you have a specific event or offer, but limiting a postcard to advertising misses some of its more interesting possibilities.

Imagine one of your best customers spending a significant amount of money with you throughout the year and receiving a simple postcard a week or two later thanking him for continuing to support the store. There does not have to be a coupon attached or a demand that he buy something else. His name is on the card, your store sent it to his home, and he now knows somebody noticed that he continues to choose your business.

A range could do something similar with members. Maybe someone gets a birthday card, a membership-anniversary card, or an invitation to see a new class or benefit being offered at the range. Someone who completed a basic training course could receive a card a few weeks later showing him what the next level of training looks like, while a long-time customer could receive something before hunting season wishing him a safe season and pointing him toward resources the store has put together for local hunters.

There are plenty of other ways to use the same idea without turning every piece of mail into a sales pitch. A retailer could invite a select group of customers to a product demonstration, customer-appreciation event, training day, range event, or hunting-season kickoff. A customer who has not visited in a while could receive a card simply letting him know that the store would like to see him again. Someone who has been a customer for five years could receive something recognizing that relationship, while a new range member might get a welcome card that gives him a quick path to the information he will need during his first few visits.

None of those ideas require the postcard to make an immediate sale. They create another interaction between the customer and the business, and some of those interactions can feel much more personal than another automated message appearing on a phone. A customer who receives dozens of promotional emails every week probably does not remember most of them, but a physical thank-you from the local gun store where he knows the people behind the counter has a very different feel.

Sending something physical becomes much more interesting when the conversation does not end at the mailbox. If you mail 500 postcards and have no way to tell what happened afterward, you can end up in the same situation businesses have dealt with for decades. The cards went out, the store may have gotten busier, and a few customers might mention seeing them, but it becomes difficult to separate the effect of the mailing from everything else happening in the business.

A QR code changes that considerably because the printed piece can now send the recipient somewhere specific. A birthday card could lead to a page with a special offer or a small selection of products chosen for that audience. A hunting-season postcard could lead local hunters to a page containing season information, featured products, a checklist, classes, events, or whatever else the store has assembled for that campaign. A range postcard could send someone directly to membership plans instead of making him search through the entire website trying to find them.

The same approach works with events and classes. A postcard could invite customers to an upcoming event and let the QR code open a simple RSVP form. Someone interested in training could be taken directly to upcoming classes and registration. A giveaway could use the postcard to attract attention and then move the customer to an online entry form, while a customer-appreciation card could take recipients to a page where they can see upcoming events, new benefits, or something created specifically for that group.

The card gets the attention, while the digital destination gives the customer somewhere useful to go. That relationship between the two is where an old piece of media starts doing something that would have been much harder when I was growing up.

A QR code is probably the easiest connection, but it is not the only one. A retailer could use a short website address created specifically for the mailing, a promotional code that can be entered online or mentioned in the store, or a registration page that exists only for recipients of that campaign. The method can be simple as long as you can distinguish people responding to the mailing from people who reached the same website or offer another way.

Postcards do not have a lot of room, which may actually be one of their advantages. There is a temptation to squeeze the range, five classes, ten products, a membership plan, gunsmithing services, social media accounts, three promotions, and the owner's favorite hunting photo onto the same card because you are already paying to send it. By the time all of that gets crammed onto a few inches of paper, the customer has to study the thing just to figure out what you want him to do.

A thank-you card should feel like a thank-you card, with a natural next step if the customer wants to continue interacting with the business. A hunting-season invitation should send him to the hunting-season information. A card introducing range memberships should take him directly to membership options, and an invitation to a training class should lead directly to the information needed to register. The digital experience should feel like a continuation of the conversation that began when the customer picked up the card.

That also gives the retailer something useful to observe afterward. If 300 people receive a range-membership postcard and 70 visit the page, you know the message generated enough interest for those people to take another step. If some of them complete the form or purchase a membership, you have even more information. If almost nobody responds, you learned something before spending money on the same mailing again.

You may also discover that different types of cards create different kinds of responses. A birthday card might not drive much website traffic but could become something customers mention the next time they walk into the store. A hunting-season card might drive substantial traffic to a local resource page, while an event invitation could produce registrations almost immediately. Those are different outcomes, but each gives the retailer more information than simply putting cards in the mail and hoping they did something.

We tend to divide marketing into separate buckets because that is how the tools have traditionally been sold to us. Email is digital, social media is digital, the website is digital, and a postcard is physical. The customer does not have to experience those things as separate parts of the business.

Someone can pull a postcard out of his mailbox on Tuesday afternoon, scan the QR code while standing in the kitchen, look at a range membership on his phone, send the page to his wife, return to it Thursday evening, and walk into the store Saturday morning. One postcard just connected the customer's mailbox, phone, website, and physical store without asking him to think about any of those as separate channels.

That is where I think the idea becomes much bigger than direct mail. Physical media can become another entry point into your digital presence. The mailbox can essentially become another front door to the website, and unlike an internet visitor coming from halfway across the country, the person receiving a locally targeted postcard may live close enough to walk through your actual front door later that week.

For a firearms retailer or range, that local connection can be particularly useful. You are already paying for a physical location, inventory, employees, utilities, insurance, security, fixtures, and everything else required to open the doors each morning. A postcard sent to customers living around that location can put the store back in their minds while simultaneously giving them a reason to interact with the website, sign up for something, look at products, or learn more about a service they did not realize you offered.

A stronger physical presence and a stronger digital presence do not have to develop separately. A well-designed physical campaign can create digital activity, and that digital activity can eventually bring people back into the physical business.

I would not send the same postcard to everyone in the database simply because you happen to have their mailing addresses. Different customers have different relationships with the business, and that gives a retailer plenty of ways to experiment without mailing thousands of cards.

Start with a small group of customers you already know well and give the message a reason to exist. That could mean thanking your most loyal customers, sending range members something tied to training or membership, reaching out to hunters with a seasonal piece that matches their interests, or inviting previous class attendees back for the next level of training. You could also use the same idea to reconnect with customers who have not been in for a while and give them a reason to come back.

You could also start with only 50 or 100 customers. Build a simple destination for them, include a QR code or another trackable method, and see what they do. The next mailing can be different based on what you learned from the first one, and after a few rounds you may discover that certain audiences, messages, or destinations consistently create more engagement than others.

The mailing address sitting in a customer record is easy to overlook because email addresses and phone numbers have dominated marketing for so long. That physical address is still another way to communicate with someone, and it can work alongside the customer's email address, purchase history, website activity, membership, and the relationship your employees have already built with him in person.

One of the reasons I find this whole idea interesting is that the postcard itself has barely changed. If you handed one to me decades ago, I would immediately know exactly what it was. The technology around it, however, has completely changed what that little piece of paper can do.

We can now send somebody something he physically holds and provide an immediate path from that card to a landing page, product collection, membership plan, registration form, event, giveaway, or whatever else fits the reason we contacted him. We can create different destinations for different audiences and see whether people actually use them. Something that once ended at the mailbox can now become the beginning of a measurable customer journey.

That creates some interesting possibilities for firearms retailers because they do not have to choose between old-school customer relationships and modern technology. The technology can support the old-school relationship instead of replacing it. A birthday card can still feel like a birthday card, a thank-you can still feel genuine, and an invitation can still feel personal while the QR code quietly provides a bridge into the digital business for anyone who wants to take the next step.

Coreware now allows firearms retailers to create and send postcards to selected customer audiences from within the platform, while campaign QR codes can connect those physical pieces directly to a digital destination. A retailer can send someone a card he can hold in his hand, guide him to a landing page, form, product collection, membership information, event, or another part of the business online, and still have a way to see what happens after that card reaches the mailbox.

Something we once thought of as old-fashioned mail can now strengthen both the personal relationship with the customer and the digital relationship with the business, and that is exactly the kind of connection we want to help retailers build at Coreware. The stronger those relationships become, the more opportunities you create for customers to come back, engage with your business, and buy from you again.

To learn more, visit coreware.com.