Summer time is just about ready to burst onto the scene and your direct marketing campaigns need to be ready for the best sales season of the year. Use the events and activities of this fun season to gain new Business with ideas that say “relax”, “have fun” and “hot”!
The trees are in full bloom and the world is green. Make your visual content on your Direct Mail postcards green! Incorporate summer themes in all of your marketing efforts. Make everything fresh and new by coordinating your website, postcards, business cards and direct mail letters green and new with a splash of warm yellow and hot pinks and beach breezes. Offer your customers or prospects unique deals with a theme for the season. This creative marketing can increase sales in an otherwise slower time of year. Here are some marketing ideas to make the summer hot with more business from colorful customers and prospects.
Start with a summer themed promotion. Whatever service or products you offer, change your visual content to summer sensations. Bright ultra colors and pictures of lazy afternoons can be used to update your logo or website theme. Add warmth and vibrancy to your brand. Vacation images and families having fun are features to add for getting a prospect’s attention.
Get started putting your name out there for summer at the beginning of the season by sending out calendars for local events. Connect with other business people, the chamber of commerce and the visitor’s bureau by coordinating all events on one piece of heavy stock, glossy paper in a three fold brochure. Design the piece to be refrigerator ready with bright colors, summer images and your logo and contact information front and center. Include festivals, contests, fairs, art shows, car shows, antique shows and concerts and theatre programs. This type of direct mail will stay around all summer and your name will be in the kitchen for the season!
Create a summer long contest for clients and prospects. Promote it with a very enticing prize, one that everyone will talk about. Drive entries to your website for the sign up forms. Be the buzz around town with engagement with your business. State what the goal of the contest is and what you want to accomplish so that it is clear to everyone. Schedule a special event on the day the winner is announced. If the prize is big enough, invite local media.
Somewhere in the middle of summer, throw a customer appreciation party or BBQ. Giving back to your customers is always a good thing and summer is a perfect time to get them all together. If you have space at your office or the complex where your business is located, hold it there so that customers can enjoy where you work. Otherwise, a local park pavillion is perfect for these types of events .Appreciation and goes a long way towards building stronger customer relationships. Send invitations that are unique and colorful with sunshine and food photos and ask your clients to bring friends to increase the chances of more new clients. Advertise the cookout on your website and invite everyone who reads it. Take the artwork and photos and use them across all social media platforms. Hold the event annually and it becomes the event of the summer that everyone looks forward to!
Use postcards to send out summer tips and even recipes. How to keep your grass green in dry weather, camping in the backyard, staycation fun and the best hamburgers in town are all ideas to put on a postcard with a colorful photo and a summertime theme. Design one side with the recipe or directions or idea and the other promoting your business. Share a recipe that is easy enough for the kids to make with a beautiful “foodie” picture on the front. This will stay on their refrigerator all summer long keeping your business name right in the kitchen!
When August comes around, prepare your customers for the back to school season. This is the time of year that people spend lots of money as they send their children back to college, off to school with a new bike and new clothes and on things for the changing of the season. It is the second biggest spending season for retailers. Send out a postcard with a list of school supplies to purchase required from each grade. Offer a raffle for a free backpack stuffed with school supplies if clients sign up for your newsletter. Have clients enter the raffle by visiting your website or liking your company on Facebook. Take a photo of the winner with their name and post it on all of your social media sites.
The summer season is the perfect time of year for a strong direct mail campaign that will help you increase sales and keep your name at the tip of an ice cream cone! Postcards are a great eye-catching, tangible marketing tool, formatted to your specific preferences and needs, with endless customization in a multitude of sizes – regular, oversized, and custom cut. We at Everest Direct Mail and Marketing, can create colorful, attention-grabbing designs with your images, logo, and any content you’d like to include – using your own design or one created uniquely for you by our talented and experienced designers. Postcards give a marketing advantage because they allow room for brief, targeted content; they’re an easy read, meaning less of a chance a client will get bored reading it, and no need to worry about open rates. Capture prospects’ attention through the visibility of a customized, colorful postcard in their mailbox and watch your response rates soar!
