By Joy Gendusa, founder and CEO of Postcard Mania
Are you stuck in the “good enough” rut? It’s a comfortable place, but it won’t get you where you want to be. Just like a treadmill, it keeps you moving but you never get anywhere.
At PostcardMania, we’re all about pushing the envelope and reaching for greatness. Last year, we decided to ditch the “good enough” mentality and invest. We spent nearly $6 million on marketing, a new record.
The results? Revenue went through the roof! An increase of 8% in just one year, and that momentum is still going strong — revenue is up about 20% so far this year.
Here are some key insights I gained last year by spending more on the way to our highest annual revenue ever — $104.6 million.
- Direct mail leads generate 600% more revenue per lead than digital sources
I’ve mailed postcards every single week since I started my business in 1998, and these days we mail around 225,000 postcards a week just to advertise ourselves.
Direct mail takes up a big portion of my marketing budget — it isn’t the cheapest way to generate leads — but it’s absolutely irreplaceable because it generates the HIGHEST quality leads among all other lead sources, bar none.
Here’s the proof: we analyzed 114,373 leads from 2023 that converted to sales the same year. The results? We generated $229.41 in revenue for every postcard lead while we only generated $37.09 in revenue per lead from pay-per-click.
That’s a 519% difference — and 6 times more revenue per lead!
And that’s just the revenue we can track directly back to postcards. There are so many more leads that come in from an “organic search” or another source that has been getting our postcards in the mail for years. It’s my belief that there’s a lot more revenue from postcards incorrectly attributed to other sources, but we can save that for another time…
- Adding and continually improving live chat increased sales conversations by 16%
Fewer people are willing to pick up the phone these days when they need something. In fact, studies show that most consumers (63%) prefer to use live chat to interact with a business.
We added live chat to our website in 2016, and it improved our sales conversations (people willing to talk directly to a sales rep) by 16%. However, I don’t advise that you install a chatbot and call it a day.
The success of our live chat system is rooted in the fact that we have real human beings operating everything. If you’re using bots — even fancy, AI bots — you’re going to run the risk of upsetting people who want help beyond what they can already find on your website.
So, don’t set it and forget it. Play around with your chat’s colors, messages, and placements to see what elicits the best response. We replaced a generic thank you message with a live chat prompt, and it was a great way to drive more calls, the next step in our sales process.
3. Include video in your Meta ads to increase social media leads by 105%
If you’re a social media user, you’ve probably noticed more videos making their way to your feed. In fact, Meta revealed recently that 60% of time spent on Meta platforms is now spent consuming video.
Catching on to this, we used our 139 video case studies — real business owners talking about their successful campaigns — as video ads on Facebook and Instagram. We uploaded lists of our current clients and prospects and generated lookalike audiences to target with these ads.
As a result, our social media leads doubled, from an average of 174 social media leads per week in 2022 to 356 a week in 2023! That’s a 105% increase.
The research is conclusive — video returns are outpacing static images. One recent report found that videos drove almost 30% more clicks than simple static image assets. Another study found that video ads drive 48% higher sales rates than static ads.
So, what’ll it be? The blue pill, and you stay in the “good enough” lane? Or the red pill —the more challenging path to greatness? I challenge you to take a closer look at the hard reality of where you can improve for better results and a better business.
To get an idea of how much your business should be spending on marketing in order to grow, check out our road-tested, results-approved marketing budget calculator at postcardmania.com/budget.