Note to self - be sure to double check the phone number on your postcard before printing. Yup, I went brain dead and printed the wrong phone number on my first 1500 post cards!
While debating the best way to fix the postcards, I quickly ordered 1500 more with the correct phone number and had them rush delivered. VistaPrint had a discount going and the second round of 1500 ended up costing less than the first ($118 vs. $124) even with the 3-day rush. So far, I am very impressed with VistaPrint (if you haven’t done so already, sign up for our free mortgage marketing newsletter and I’ll send you the super VisaPrint discount link).
Being impatient and not wanting to wait for the new cards (not to mention not wanting to waste the ones I already printed), I ended printing the correct phone number on 1500 file folder labels. A couple hours of arts and crafts time later, the postcards were good as new.

Now that I had the postcards, it came time for delivery. I put on some walking shoes and loaded up a backpack with about 500 or so cards and hit the neighborhood surrounding my home. After just over 3 hours I had delivered about 275 or so postcards to neighborhood doors. That averages out to about 70 to 80 deliveries per hour. These 275 cards went out last Tuesday, and as of yet, there have been no responses. I’m not surprised as this is the holiday season and 275 is a relatively small sample.

If I was to pick up my pace and deliver 100 postcards an hour, I’d be looking at 30 hours of delivery time. As these are holiday themed cards, I need them go out as quickly as possible. And, while I did enjoy the exercise and exploring my immediate neighborhood, I decided that I’d look for some help to deliver the remaining 2,750 cards. After doing some research, I found that most companies will charge between 8 cents and 12 cents per door for door to door delivery of a standard flyer / postcard. I’ll gladly trade $270 for 25 hours of my time! But, if you weren’t in a rush to deliver the cards, it is definately feasible to deliver 3000 cards a month on your own.
The distribution service came to my door this mooring and I handed them a check for $270 and 2750 postcards. I believe they will be using a crew of 4 and my cards should be out by the early afternoon.

So, the total for this adventure comes to, roughly, $550. ($250 for printing, $270 for distribution, and $30 for labels to correct my misprint.)

I’ll post the continuing results of this campaign on a semi-regular basis. Going forward, I plan to market to the same 3000 households I’ve hit with this postcard on a monthly basis for at least 6 months. If I decided to design a new postcard for each month, I should average about $500 a month. So, the total six month campaign would come out to $3,000 or $1 per household. If I decide to use the same design for a couple of the months, the cost should come down a bit as I will be able to realize some savings from bulk printing.

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