How to Make Postcards for Your Business

Why Postcards Are Still Powerful in 2026

Every year, someone declares direct mail dead. And every year, the data proves them wrong. In 2026, postcards remain one of the highest-performing marketing channels available to businesses, and the gap between physical and digital engagement continues to widen as consumers grow increasingly numb to screens.

The numbers paint a compelling picture. According to the Data & Marketing Association, 79% of consumers act on direct mail immediately, compared to just 45% for email. That means nearly four out of five people who receive your postcard will do something with it, whether that is visiting your website, calling your business, or redeeming your offer.

Here is why postcards deserve a place in your marketing strategy:

• Tangible impact: Physical mail triggers multiple senses, touch, sight, even smell. Neuroscience research shows that tangible materials create stronger emotional connections and are processed more deeply by the brain than digital content.
• 100% “open rate”: Unlike emails that sit unopened in an inbox or letters hidden inside envelopes, postcards have no barrier between your message and the recipient. Your headline, image, and offer are visible the instant they pick up their mail.
• 17-day average in-home lifespan: A postcard does not disappear after a click. It sits on a kitchen counter, gets pinned to a refrigerator, or lands on a desk where it is seen repeatedly over weeks.
• Works for virtually any local business: Restaurants, dental practices, real estate agents, home services, fitness studios, salons, retail shops, and professional services all see strong results from postcard marketing.
• Less competition: While digital channels are saturated with thousands of daily ads, the average household receives just two to three pieces of marketing mail per day. Your postcard gets noticed.

The challenge is not whether postcards work. It is knowing how to create them effectively. This guide walks you through every step, from initial planning to final delivery, so you can produce postcards that look professional and actually generate results.

Step 1: Plan Your Campaign

A great postcard starts long before you open a design tool. The planning phase determines whether your campaign generates leads or ends up in the recycling bin. Get these four elements right and everything else becomes easier.

Define Your Goal

Every effective postcard campaign starts with a single, clear objective. Trying to accomplish too many things with one postcard dilutes your message and confuses the recipient. Choose one primary goal:

• Generate leads: Drive phone calls, form submissions, or appointment bookings from new prospects.
• Drive store visits: Bring foot traffic to your physical location with a compelling offer.
• Announce an event: Promote a grand opening, open house, sale, or community event.
• Promote an offer: Distribute a specific discount, coupon, or limited-time deal.
• Build brand awareness: Introduce your business to a new neighborhood or market.

Write your goal down. Every design decision, every word of copy, and every element of your postcard should serve this one goal.

Know Your Audience

Who are you trying to reach? Your audience determines your messaging, design style, offer, and even the neighborhoods you target. Consider these audience segments:

• Existing customers: People who already know and trust your brand. Great for repeat visits, referral programs, or loyalty offers.
• New prospects: People who have never heard of you but match your ideal customer profile.
• Neighborhood residents: Everyone within a specific radius of your business location.
• Demographic targets: Households matching specific criteria like income level, home ownership, age range, or family size.

Choose Your Postcard Size

Postcard size affects cost, postage rates, visual impact, and how much space you have for your message. Here are the most common sizes and when to use each:

• 4 x 6 inches: The most affordable option. Qualifies for the cheapest First-Class postcard postage rate. Best for simple messages, appointment reminders, and small-budget campaigns.
• 5 x 7 inches: A good balance between impact and cost. Gives you more room for imagery and copy without a significant price increase. The most popular size for marketing postcards.
• 6 x 9 inches: Maximum impact in a standard mailbox. Stands out among other mail, gives you ample design real estate, and is still mail-friendly. Ideal for high-value campaigns.
• 6 x 11 inches: Oversized format that demands attention. Required for EDDM campaigns. More expensive to print and mail but delivers the biggest visual punch.

Set Your Budget

Use this simple formula to figure out how many postcards you can send: divide your total budget by your estimated cost per piece. If you have $500 and your estimated all-in cost is $1.00 per piece, you can send 500 postcards.

For your first campaign, start with 200 to 500 pieces. This is large enough to generate statistically meaningful results but small enough to limit your financial risk while you test your messaging and audience.

Step 2: Design Your Postcard

Your postcard has approximately three seconds to grab attention before the recipient decides whether to read it or toss it. Design is not decoration. It is the difference between a campaign that generates responses and one that gets ignored.

Front Design

The front of your postcard is your billboard. It needs to stop people in their tracks and make them want to flip it over. Follow these principles:

• Hero image: A single, high-quality image should take up at least 60% of the front. Use a photo that shows the result of your service, your product in action, or your space looking its best. Avoid stock photos that feel generic.
• Headline: Keep it to seven words or fewer. The headline should communicate your core value proposition or offer. “50% Off Your First Cleaning” is better than “Welcome to Springfield's Premier Cleaning Company.”
• Logo: Place your logo where it is visible but does not compete with the headline. Top corner or bottom corner works well.
• Clean layout: White space is your friend. A cluttered front signals junk mail. A clean, well-designed front signals a professional business worth paying attention to.

Back Design

The back is where you close the deal. Once the front has captured their attention, the back needs to give them a reason to act and tell them how.

• Reinforce your headline: Echo or expand on the front headline so the message feels cohesive.
• Body copy: Keep it to 50 to 100 words. Explain the offer, highlight one or two key benefits, and address the reader directly. Use “you” and “your” language, not “we” and “our.”
• Call to action: One clear, specific action: “Call 555-0123 for your free estimate,” “Scan the QR code to book online,” or “Visit us at 123 Main Street.”
• Contact information: Phone number, website, and physical address. Make it easy for people to reach you through their preferred channel.
• Postal compliance area: The right side of the back must be reserved for the mailing address, postage, and barcode. Your printer or mailing service will have specific templates for this area.

Design Tips

• One clear message: Do not try to promote three different services and two events on a single postcard. Pick one message and commit to it.
• High contrast: Dark text on light backgrounds, or light text on dark backgrounds. Avoid combinations that are hard to read, like yellow text on a white background or light gray on medium gray.
• Two fonts maximum: Use one font for headlines and one for body copy. More than two fonts looks cluttered and unprofessional.
• Brand-consistent colors: Use your brand colors throughout. Consistency builds recognition, especially if you are running multi-touch campaigns where recipients see several postcards over time.

Step 3: Choose Your Design Tool

You do not need to be a graphic designer to create an effective postcard. The right tool depends on your skill level, budget, and how much creative control you want.

• Canva: Free tier available with drag-and-drop editing and hundreds of postcard templates. The easiest option for beginners. Limited in customization compared to professional tools, and free templates can look generic if you do not modify them significantly. Export as PDF for print.
• Adobe Express: More powerful than Canva with better typography and layout controls. Steeper learning curve but produces more polished results. Good for marketers who want professional output without learning full Adobe Creative Suite.
• Figma: Full design freedom with pixel-perfect control. Excellent for creating custom layouts and exporting print-ready files. Best for designers or teams that already use Figma for other projects. Requires design knowledge to use effectively.
• AI-powered design (Magic Mailer): Instead of starting from a blank canvas, you enter your business information and the AI creates complete postcard designs based on your brand. It pulls your colors, logo, and style from your website, writes the copy, and generates professional layouts automatically. No design experience needed at all. This option is ideal for business owners who want professional results without spending hours in a design tool.

Step 4: Get Your Postcards Printed

Once your design is finalized, you need to get it printed on quality cardstock. You have two main options: online printers that ship to you, or local print shops where you can pick up same day.

Online Printers

Services like Vistaprint, GotPrint, and PrintingForLess let you upload your design files, choose your specifications, and have finished postcards delivered to your door in 5 to 10 business days. Online printers typically offer the lowest per-unit prices, especially for larger quantities. Most offer 250, 500, and 1,000 piece tiers with volume discounts at each level.

Local Print Shops

Staples, FedEx Office, and independent print shops offer same-day or next-day turnaround. The per-unit cost is higher than online printers, but you can see and feel a proof before committing to the full run, and you avoid shipping costs. Local shops are ideal when you need postcards fast or want to print a small test batch before committing to a larger order.

Print Specifications

Regardless of where you print, make sure your files meet these standard specifications to avoid quality issues:

• Resolution: 300 DPI (dots per inch). Lower resolution will result in blurry or pixelated images. This is the single most common mistake in DIY postcard printing.
• Color mode: CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Key/Black). RGB is for screens. CMYK is for print. If you submit an RGB file, the colors will shift and may look dull or inaccurate.
• Bleed: 0.125 inches on all sides. Bleed is the extra area beyond the trim line where your background colors and images extend. It ensures there are no white edges after the postcards are cut.
• File format: PDF is preferred by most printers. Some also accept AI (Adobe Illustrator) or high-resolution JPEG files, but PDF is the safest choice.
• Paper stock: 14pt or 16pt cardstock is the standard for marketing postcards. 14pt feels substantial and professional. 16pt feels premium and thick. Anything thinner than 14pt risks feeling flimsy and cheap.

Step 5: Build Your Mailing List

Your postcard is only as effective as the list it is sent to. Reaching the right people with the right message is the foundation of a successful campaign. Here are your options for building or acquiring a mailing list:

• Your existing customers and CRM contacts: Your current customer database is your most valuable list. These people already know your business and are the most likely to respond. Export addresses from your CRM, POS system, or customer spreadsheet. Great for repeat purchase campaigns, loyalty offers, and re-engagement.
• Data providers and lead lists: Companies like InfoUSA, Melissa Data, and AccuData sell targeted mailing lists filtered by geography, demographics, home ownership, income, age, and industry. Expect to pay $0.03 to $0.15 per record depending on the specificity of your filters.
• EDDM and Neighbourhood Mail: As covered in the mailing methods, USPS EDDM and Canada Post Neighbourhood Mail let you send to every address on selected routes without needing any mailing list at all. You sacrifice individual targeting for complete saturation at a low cost.
• AI-powered lead discovery: Platforms like Magic Mailer use artificial intelligence to find ideal recipients based on your business type, location, and campaign goals. Instead of buying a list or blanketing a route, the AI identifies the people most likely to respond to your specific offer. This approach combines the precision of a targeted list with the convenience of not having to source or manage the data yourself.

Step 6: Mail Your Postcards

You have your design, your printed postcards, and your mailing list. Now it is time to get them into mailboxes. Your mailing method should match your campaign volume and budget.

Self-Mailing

The simplest method: apply postage stamps, hand-write or label each address, and drop them at the post office. This is only practical for very small batches of fewer than 50 pieces. At larger volumes, the time cost becomes prohibitive. A batch of 200 postcards takes roughly three to four hours to stamp and address manually.

Print-and-Mail Services

Upload your design and mailing list to a service that handles everything from printing through delivery. The service prints your postcards, addresses them with variable data, applies postage, sorts for postal discounts, and delivers to the post office on your behalf. This is the standard approach for campaigns of 500 or more pieces.

Bulk Mail Discounts

If you are mailing 200 or more pieces, you qualify for USPS Marketing Mail rates, which are significantly cheaper than First-Class postage. Presort discounts offer additional savings when your postcards are sorted by ZIP code before delivery to the post office. Most print-and-mail services handle presorting automatically, which is one of the key reasons to use them at higher volumes.

All-in-One Platforms

Platforms like Magic Mailer eliminate the need to manage separate vendors for design, printing, list building, and mailing. You design and mail from a single dashboard. The platform handles print production, postage, sorting, and delivery as part of one integrated workflow.

The All-in-One Alternative

If managing four to six different steps with separate tools and vendors sounds overwhelming, you are not alone. That complexity is the number one reason many businesses never launch their first postcard campaign, even though they know direct mail works. They get stuck in the gap between wanting to send postcards and actually figuring out the logistics.

This is exactly the problem that all-in-one platforms like Magic Mailer are built to solve. Instead of coordinating a design tool, a printer, a mailing list vendor, and a fulfillment service, everything happens in one place:

• AI designs your postcard from your brand. Enter your website URL and the platform automatically extracts your brand identity, colors, style, and messaging. It generates complete front and back designs with professional copy, eliminating the need for a graphic designer or hours in Canva.
• AI finds your ideal audience. Based on your business type, location, and campaign goals, the platform identifies and builds a targeted mailing list of your most promising prospects. No list purchasing, no data cleaning, no spreadsheet management.
• Professional printing on premium cardstock. Your postcards are printed on thick, high-quality cardstock with full-color, high-resolution output. The same print quality you would get from a professional print house.
• Postage and delivery included. The platform handles postage, sorting, and delivery to the postal system. Your postcards arrive in recipients' mailboxes without you setting foot in a post office.
• Track your campaign from a single dashboard. Monitor campaign status, delivery progress, and results all in one place. No chasing updates from three different vendors.

Magic Mailer starts at CA$1.48 per postcard with everything included: AI design, premium printing, targeted mailing list, postage, and delivery. For many businesses, particularly those without dedicated marketing teams or design resources, this all-in-one approach is the fastest path from “I should try postcard marketing” to “My postcards are in the mail.”

Whether you choose to manage each step yourself or use an all-in-one platform, the most important thing is to start. Postcard marketing is proven, measurable, and accessible to businesses of every size. Plan your campaign, design a postcard that earns attention, get it printed, build your list, and mail it. Then measure, refine, and send again. The businesses that succeed with direct mail are the ones that commit to consistency, treating it as an ongoing marketing channel rather than a one-time experiment.