How to Use Direct Mail to Build Excitement for Your Grand Opening

Whether you’re opening a nail salon, a lawn care service, a restaurant, or something else entirely, one thing is for sure: you’ve got an incredible opportunity to start your new business strong. How? By getting people excited about what you’re doing and ready to burst through your soon-to-be-opened doors.

For maximum buzz at minimum cost and effort, start with direct mail! By following the quick steps outlined below, you’ll be poised for a memorable first day that’s full of customers.

This article talks about EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail®). If you're not familiar with EDDM, we suggest you read our EDDM Guide first.  

Step #1: Consider Your Audiences

One great thing about EDDM postcards is that you can target your mailings down to the specific zip code level—giving you precise control over who receives what. We’ll talk more about the mailing details in step #4, but for now, the important fact is this: You can very easily target different mailers to different audiences.

In fact, with MyCreativeShop, there are two ways you can reach audiences: 1) by selecting addresses on a map or 2) by uploading your own mailing list. Below are some strategies for reaching each audience effectively.

Selecting Audiences on the Map

If you’re planning to mail your postcards to addresses chosen on the map, then you can tailor your brand messaging, value propositions, and offers based on what you think will resonate best with that particular area and demographic. For example:

• You might create a more high-end, luxurious-looking postcard for a particularly high-income area, focusing more on quality than price.
• You might include an especially steep discount for any EDDM postcards sent to a more affordable or “starter home” part of town.
• Opening a restaurant? Then you might try out a BOGO or “kids eat free” discount in any zip code with a high concentration of young families.
• You might create a postcard in Spanish or another common first language for areas with a significant bilingual population.

It doesn’t matter who you plan to target on the map—only that you understand who it is you’re trying to reach.

Mailing to Your Own Audience List

Mailing postcards to your own mailing list has the benefit of reaching people who have already engaged with you in some way. You’ll be able to add a more personalized message to your postcard because the recipients already know about you.

Don’t have a mailing list yet? No problem! Here’s an idea for building one out before your grand opening: host a survey or giveaway on your social channels, website, and email marketing list. Collect physical addresses as part of the entry form, and then put those addresses into a spreadsheet.

Now you have a mailing list! For continuity in your marketing, you could even tailor your grand opening postcard to tie into whatever survey or giveaway you just had.

Step #2: Plan Out Your Grand Opening Postcard

Based on your audiences above, you can start to map out what needs to go on each EDDM postcard you’re planning to send. As a rule of thumb, every component of your postcard should be chosen with its specific audience in mind. That includes:

• Headlines: Try to write headlines that are either clever or clear. You could make a joke or a pun to earn a smile and some goodwill, or you could instead captivate with something incredibly obvious and attractive—like “50% Off All Grand Opening Purchases.”
• Offers: Different types of offers will resonate with different types of people, so think about what your postcard recipients would want the most. Is it a low price? A certain percentage off? An exclusive gift? A BOGO offer? An “early access” pass? 
• Value propositions: Every successful business has something that sets them apart—but just like the offer, your most compelling value props will depend on who you’re talking to. Try to explain what it is that makes you different, keeping your audience in mind. (It might be safety, speed, price, experience, location, reputation, quality, etc.)
• Design: Choose imagery, colors, and other design elements that reinforce your offer and overall brand message for each postcard. A high-end postcard, for instance, might use a lot of blacks and metallics; a family-focused postcard might keep it playful with lots of colors and pictures of smiling kids.
• Calls to action: Make it 100% clear what you want people to do. Where and when is your grand opening? How can recipients claim your grand opening offer? The clearer you can be here, the more likely someone will take the initiative to act.

Pro tip: Take the time to write these items down for each audience. Then you’ll have a quick and easy checklist for your final postcard design.

Step #3: Write & Design Your Direct Mailer

By now you’ve got your unique audiences and your key copy and design elements for each postcard…so it’s time to bring everything together. Start with a grand opening EDDM postcard template, and you can customize every aspect (no design know-how needed):

• Replace placeholder text with your own headline, offer, and body copy.
• Upload your company’s logo.
• Choose colors from your brand palette.
• Upload your own photos or choose from tons of stock assets directly in the editor.
• Add patterns and shapes, play around with the layout, and experiment with awesome fonts until it’s looking perfect.

MyCreativeShop’s EDDM templates come with all the USPS sizing and indicia requirements already taken care of. But if you create your postcards elsewhere, we recommend carefully doublechecking the EDDM requirements so you don’t end up with something you can’t mail.

Get more tips on common EDDM mistakes and how to avoid them.

Step #4: Choose Your Recipients (Map or List)

Since you’ve already thought so much about your audiences, you may know exactly where you’d like to send each postcard variation. (And if you followed our strategy in step #1, you might even have your own mailing list ready to upload.)

If you don’t have a list, no worries at all. You can select zip codes on a map and see exactly how many addresses you’ll reach. Our direct mail platform not only shows you which streets fall into which zip code, but it also highlights key demographics that could impact your targeting decisions:

• Median age
• Median income
• Average household size

You can also choose to exclude businesses from your address list if your grand opening isn’t relevant to commercial enterprises.

After you’ve selected your recipients, you’ll complete a few more details to place your order—and that’s it for you! We’ll handle the printing and mailing so you can get back to the many other tasks on your to-do list. You won’t have to think about your grand opening postcards again until you’ve got all those customers coming through the doors.

Step #5: Think Beyond the Grand Opening

Beyond the grand opening?! We know—you’ve put so much work into the start that it can be hard to think about what comes next. But before you call your postcard complete, take a few minutes to consider what you’ll do moving forward. 

How can you capitalize on the sure-to-be-roaring success of your EDDM postcard campaign? Putting those pieces in place now can help ensure long-term feasibility for your marketing efforts, both direct mail and not.

Here are some things to think about:

• How will you track ROI? Easy ways to track print ROI would be asking recipients to bring the postcard in, to include a unique coupon code, or to drive people to a unique landing page on your site. Anything that allows you to know with confidence that X number of customers came through your grand opening postcard.
• How else will you reach customers? EDDM postcards are a fantastic place to start, but there are so many other print materials you can use to increase exposure and awareness. Consider pairing your postcards with grand opening door hangers or grand opening flyers—making it more likely that your message is heard multiple times.
• What about future EDDM campaigns? Because it takes many distinct exposures to a new company for most people to consider buying, it’s important to continue reaching out over time. To make it easier, you can even schedule future EDDM campaigns through MyCreativeShop.

Congratulations on making it this far and being so close to getting your business’ doors open! With the tips above—and some help from our hassle-free direct mail service—you’ll be ready to welcome customers on day one and the many days ahead.

For more tips and inspiration, check out 9 grand opening and reopening ideas.