A week or two ago, my writer and ace editor friend Betty Bolte sent me a postcard marketing her new book series. It was a new approach to me, and today I’d like to share it with you because I found it effective.

First, let me show you the postcard:

The front provides an attractive layout showing the books she’s selling.

The back contains a lot of useful content, which prompted this post:

• A summary of the book series.
• A personalized note that managed to pique my interest because Betty knows I am not a romance reader (her usual genre).
• A QR code that links the smartphone user to Betty’s website to buy the books.

Betty’s postcard does several things well:

• It’s personalized/targeted for the recipient.
• It provides a brief, effective description of her products.
• It offers a call to action by linking the reader to the website to buy a book.

Betty informed me that if she hands out the postcards at romance-writing conventions, the box where the stamp is usually placed has a note that says, “Thanks for reading!” so it can be used both as a mailer and in-person piece of marketing collateral. All in all, a slick and useful product.

I asked Betty about some of the details of the postcard, such as where she got it made and whether she was getting results. In response to the former question, she replied, “I created the front and back jpg files in BookBrush. Used Vistaprint to make the postcards. Google Chrome has an option to make a QR code linked to a URL, so I went to the series page and right-clicked to create the code and included it on the back image.”

As for whether she’s getting increased sales from her postcard, it’s a bit too early to tell (I received this postcard for a dark fantasy series just in time for Halloween). However, Betty indicated that she was at least getting increased traffic on her site from the QR code. I’m not certain what more she can do to turn those looks into sales, but overall, the postcard is a slick marketing item and worth considering…for technical writers as well as fiction writers!

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2021 Bart Leahy