I've been talking about this post for a few weeks now and here it is. 

About a year ago General Motors launched a new service initiative called PASE. The program is designed to amongst other things, focus on 2 key aspects of service business.

1. 1st Service Retention

2. 13-72 Service Retention

Like many of you, we have the option of using the preferred vendor of choice to marketing to these customers. But it comes at a high price and you never fully control the creative. 

Right around the same time of this new program from GM I came across a story that was talking about Mailchimp launching their new Postcard Campaigns. 

“ Mailchimp is rolling out a new feature that will let users send printed postcards to existing and potential customers across the U.S. and 26 other countries. Users can customize the images and messages they want to send out using a tool similar to one the Atlanta company already offers for designing social media messages. When a card looks good, it can be sent with a click of a mouse button, no trip to the Post Office required.”

To me, this was some of the best news I had heard in a while. Not just because I love using Mailchimp. But I had also been looking for something I could use to send small amounts of direct mail. So it was perfect timing that Mailchimp rolled this out. 

Exporting a list is pretty easy from any CRM. So once you have your parameters correct all you have to do is export a CSV. 

If you are familiar with Mailchimps interface you will know just how easy it is to create audiences from an import. Doing postcard campaigns is no different except for this time you just need to include the customer's address. 

If you aren't that familiar, no worries. Using Mailchimp is super easy 

There is a little formatting you have to do once you export your list from wherever you are pulling it from. But its as simple as changing the header titles of your .CSV.

I found it easiest to just change my headers from the image below for example to. 

Street -> Address - Street 
City -> Address - CITY 
State -> Address - ZIP
ETC...

You want to make sure you start off each header with "Address - "whatever" "

Since most often you will be including the customer's email address when you are uploading. You can create other campaigns too like email campaigns and custom facebook audiences to accompany your postcard campaign. 

Using Mailchimp to send out postcards to our service customers has helped keep messaging direct and consistent among varied audiences.

We've also been able to save a ton of money in marketing because using Mailchimp is less expensive than many of the other options we have in the automotive space.

Here is an example of a postcard I made using CANVA and then sent out via Mailchimp

 Say hi in real life with printed postcards

What questions do you have that I can help answer?