Direct mail postcards are my main avenue of promoting a course I teach. My goal is about 30-45 students per class. How many postcards should I send out in order to reach my goal?
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Well put, Kevin. But I’d like to encourage you, Teacher, to think of marketing your class online in addition to or instead of through direct mail. Postcards involve printing costs and postage. And if you’re marketing by email, you can bring those costs to almost zero. If you use your own email program and spruce it up with some color and graphics (not too fancy since you want people to be able to read it on a mobile device as well as on their computer), you can reach an unlimited number of people for free.
I’ve taught a writing class for nearly 10 years and have done all of marketing for that class through an email newsletter. At first, I used my own email as I’ve just described. But once my mailing list went over a few hundred people, it was easier to use a newsletter service since I wanted to send several mailings out per year and I wanted to manage the list in ways I couldn’t do through email.
For a small monthly fee (ranging from about $15-$60 depending on the kinds of bells and whistles you add and how many mailings you send), you can reach thousands of people just by hitting the send button. Online newsletters offer a slew of other benefits — the biggest being information about your recipients. The moment you send out your newsletter, you can start tracking who has opened it and which links they’ve clicked on. If this interests you, check out ConstantContact.com or MyEmma.com, two good online newsletter providers.