✓ If you’re designing your own fliers, postcards, or brochures, include a Quick Response Code (QR Code) so recipients can scan with their smartphones to receive immediate information on your listing. ✓ Include any URL to make it easy for potential buyers to find your information. ✓ Use the larger 5.5” x 8.5” postcard to stand out in a typical pile of mail, catalogs, and newspapers in the mailbox. ✓ Use eye-appealing colors in the design that will complement your photos. ✓ Use bold, large, and easy to read text. Abril Fatface and League Gothic are two great font choices. Avoid informal fonts such as Comic Sans or Papyrus. ✓ Include clever, attention-grabbing graphics. Ideally, your postcards will arrive in people’s mailboxes a couple of days before your open house. Check with your local mail carrier to see how long bulkmail takes to be delivered once it has been delivered to the post office, so you can calculate what day to put your postcards in the mail. Keep inmind that there will be a price attached to this type of marketing, including hiring the service, buying the lists, producing the mailings, and the postage. However, failure to properly market your open house will result in a poor result. It’s kind of like throwing a party and nobody comes. It’s expensive, labor-intensive, and very demoralizing to put all of the effort into hosting an open house for only a few shoppers. Research the most economical ways of sending commercial or bulk mail to keep your costs down. First Class mail will be expensive, so investigate a bulk mail campaign. You can investigate the details at your local post office, but just be aware that there are many fine details and rules about bundling and you can be sent away if you have not followed all the rules of bulk mailing. It can be exasperating, so be prepared and learn it and get it right the first time! If you have several months to plan, send approximately 100 postcards per week to your list. Don’t be shy about sending more than one postcard to
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