A postcard is the only piece of marketing that cannot be closed, filtered or deleted before it is seen. That single property is why direct mail keeps outliving its obituaries — and why the details of how a card is printed matter more than the copy on it.
This guide covers the four decisions that determine whether a postcard campaign works: size, stock, finish and postal setup.
Start with the size, because it sets the postage
A 4 by 6 card on 16pt stock mails at postcard rates, the cheapest per-piece option there is. Push past those dimensions and you move into letter or flat rates — which is not automatically wrong, it is a trade.
The 6 by 9 and 6 by 11 jumbo sizes cost more to mail and reliably pull better, because they sit on top of the stack rather than under it. Most buyers who test both end up mailing fewer jumbo cards rather than more small ones.
Stock: 14pt is the floor, 16pt is the standard
Anything thinner than 14pt curls in a mail tray and arrives looking like a flyer. 16pt coated cover is the workhorse: heavy enough to stay flat through the mail stream, stiff enough that it feels deliberate in the hand.
Weight is also the cheapest signal of quality you can buy. Recipients cannot name the caliper of a card, but they can feel the difference between one that flexes and one that does not.
Finish decides whether anyone can write on it
Gloss makes photography and saturated color sing, and it smears under a ballpoint. If any panel of your card needs handwriting — an appointment date, a signature, a reply field — that panel has to be uncoated or matte.
This is the single most common regret we hear. A reply card printed on gloss comes back illegible, and there is no way to fix it after the fact.
The postal setup is where most first attempts fail
Every mailed card needs an address panel of the right size in the right place, a postage indicia sized to specification, and clear zones the artwork must stay out of. Get any of these wrong and the piece either costs more to mail or gets rejected at the counter.
EDDM adds its own rules: the piece must exceed standard postcard dimensions, the EDDM indicia goes in a specific corner, and the cards must arrive faced and banded in route bundles. We set all of it up for free and show it on the proof.
Foil, when the card has to be an occasion
Foil is not decoration — it is an interruption. A metallic panel catches the light as the mail is carried in, and the hand stops before any sorting decision has been made.
Keep it to a logo, a headline or a border. Foil covering the whole face cancels itself out, because the effect depends entirely on contrast with the matte or gloss around it.
What to send us
Whatever artwork you have, the size you are considering, a rough quantity and your mail date. If all you have is a photo of last year’s flyer, that is enough — we rebuild it as print-ready vector artwork at no charge and send back a mockup of both faces within 24 hours.