Most of the new agents may think that real estate marketing postcards are a thing of the past, but we can assure you that this is simply not true. Savvy marketers realize that postcards for real estate farming are still very effective because people get the message immediately without having to read a lengthy newsletter or flip through the pages of a magazine to see your advertisement. Each 6″x8″ or 6.5″x9″ EDDM compliant postcard is an enormous ad that is placed alone directly into your prospect’s hands. 
In some areas cards easily beat online ads, where one’s attention is divided between other competing ads and offers. It also beats email marketing in terms of deliverability. With so many spam and image filters, it has become almost impossible to guarantee that your message will be seen by its recipient.
Prospecting through real estate marketing postcards is a science more than it is an art. If done correctly, it will give your business a tremendous advantage over your competition that relies on email and social media only.
What are the advantages of real estate farming postcards comparing with email marketing?
First is the limitations of an email list. It will only reach those subscribers who explicitly agreed to receive promotional emails from you. An average Realtor with 10 years of experience will only have 150 to 250 clients in their email database. Any professional marketer will say that is not enough to market anything in any industry.
On the other hand, with real estate marketing postcards you can reach a much larger mailing list without the fear of breaking anti-spam laws. There are many high-quality printing companies like printplace.com that specialize in printing postcards for Realtors at very reasonable prices.
Available delivery methods:
USPS EDDM will deliver your real estate marketing postcards to every house in a specific geographical area that you chose. You may print cards and then hire local teenagers to hand-deliver postcards to certain neighborhoods or resort to the traditional method of sending postcards to your prospects using a mailing list.
One important point should be made about postcards for real estate farming. Real estate marketing has a lower conversion rate than less expensive products and services. You should not expect more than a 2% conversion rate on sales with mail-in postcards. In our case, real estate postcards serve as reminders of your service and should provide valuable community information.
Bragging about your achievements, a number of sales or awards will not develop trust in potential clients. Recommending a reliable and affordable handyman, contractor, gardener, providing free notary public service, organizing a community garage sale or offering free golf lessons will get people to remember you. Other real estate farming postcard ides may come to you after identifying the most common problems for the homeowners in your farming area.
Of course, there are Just Listed and Just Sold postcards that Realtors love to mail but they are not the only cards that you should be sending out on a regular basis. There are a few real estate marketing postcards ideas that may help agents with collecting new email addresses, generating website traffic and referrals.
Three components of postcards for real estate farming.
Textual components:
- Headline
- Message (2-3 sentences)
- Call to action
Here is an example of the front of the postcard using the above outline.
3 Things You Must Do To Increase The Value Of Your Home
Thinking of selling your house? Read about 3 must-do home improvements that will help to increase the value of your property up to $15,000!
To get your free report visit:
www.myRealEstateWebsite.com/3-things/
[QR code and SMS text ID for the above address]
Your contact information and photo should go on the back side of the card with the same URL that is on the front. The URL is designed to have a special and unique ending for tracking purpose. Your website should have a script for redirecting visitors that type in the above URL to the opt-in page where visitors are presented with the first paragraph of the report and are asked to enter their email in order to be able to access the full version of the report.
This way you will be getting new email addresses for your emailing campaigns, creating some targeted traffic to different pages of your website which Google will see as a sign of importance and popularity, measuring the interest of your clients to various topics. As you can see there is some custom automation required for your website.
This is why you should not even consider having a standard cookie-cutter website offered by some companies or brokerages. When you look at the best real estate websites, you will see that they are always custom designed and automated. These websites always have a wide selection of automated tools for collecting visitors’ information and analyzing marketing campaigns.
Here is another example of one of the Real Estate marketing postcards ideas for collecting email addresses and introducing yourself to the community:
September 15th Community Garage Sale!
It is time to clean up your garage!
Go to this page: www.myRealEstateWebsite.com/garage-sale/ and register if you’d like to participate!
We’ll put signs directing traffic to your house!
First 3 registered households will get FREE Starbucks coffee and donuts for breakfast!
For more information visit:
www.myRealEstateWebsite.com/garage-sale/
[QR code and SMS text ID for the above address]
As you can see, real estate farming postcards serve as an excellent ice-breaker for you especially if you are starting your Real Estate career or just trying to expend your “farming” territory.
Let’s compare Real Estate marketing postcards with a few other traditional marketing products starting with marketing Newsletter.
To be effective, marketing newsletter needs fresh content for each new issue. Designing postcards for real estate farming is less complicated. You need just 1 or 2 pictures and a headline.
Newsletters take longer to design and compile than postcards.
Newsletters ship folded with content and offers often hidden inside. Marketing postcards are always “open” & deliver their messages instantly.
Only a few people read articles inside marketing newsletters. Real Estate marketing postcards have much shorter but “to the point” message that is read and understood right away.
Newsletters’ mailing cost is higher comparing to postcards.
Marketing brochures or fliers can combine elements of farming postcards and newsletters.
They can be designed to promote a product or a service the same way as postcards but with more textual content. It usually costs more to print brochures or even fliers than Real Estate marketing postcards and with tremendous advances of smartphones, e-book readers and small tablets multi-page brochures and newsletters are being substituted with their digital versions online.
Although there are older people that prefer to read things on paper, you must consider including elements of virtual marketing into your printed materials: QR codes and SMS text IDs. For example, on Just Sold real estate postcards, many Realtors print both of these codes for people who are not good at typing long web addresses on their smartphones or tablets.
Both SMS text ID and QR codes can be set up in advance by companies like www.homecellers.com for each property listing or in fact any web page that you’d like people to go to. All clients will have to do in order to get instant listing information is to send a text or scan QR code. If you don’t already know, QR means Quick Response and this is exactly what you should aim for when using any of your marketing methods!