The postcard industry has changed. It’s gone digital. Yes, you can still buy cards with your favourite beach scene from one of those metal racks outside the newsagent on a seafront somewhere. But, as Bob Dylan said ‘..the times they are a changing’.
Many holidaymakers now have a choice of phone apps that supply a customised photo postcard service to anywhere in the world. All you have to do is get your fellow travellers together at sunset, raise a glass of cold beer, say ‘cheese’ and then ‘click’.
Just add your payment details, personalised message and the address you want your card sent to and Bob Dylan’s your uncle! You can also produce a set of cards and send them to all the different members of your family, wherever they are.
We are the service providers for Touchnote whose award winning app and website allows its members to create their own custom-made postcards and greeting cards, getting them delivered for free the very next day. They were awarded the Good Web Guide’s App of the Year 2018, Financial Times Tech 100 Europe, and numerous accolades on the Apple AppStore and Google PlayStore.
There is a good chance that the postcard you upload from that night out in Marbella, to go to your cousin in Australia, will pass through the Touchnote app to the Printed in Guernsey factory in the quiet lanes of St Sampson’s and then off to its final destination.
Last year, we hit an all-time high of processing three million items and distributing them via Guernsey Post. These postcard orders will come down the digital pipe to us as a pdf from the four corners of the globe. Our extremely clever software does the printing, laminating and collation. Then all the cards produced that day will be picked up and on the evening plane to the UK and forwarded to their end destination. If the end address is in the UK it will probably be delivered to a doormat the day after we receive it in Guernsey.
But, digital postcards are not the only new arrivals going through a growth spurt. We also have a large piece of the local personalised greeting cards business and we ship these all over the world too. The numbers are fairly constant throughout the year but rise around Valentines’, Mothers’ and Fathers’ Days. At Christmas time the orders peak quite dramatically.
Growing demand for effective company marketing by online retailers around the world has also had a direct impact on the popularity of the postcard. We live in a digital world but you would be mistaken to think that ‘direct mail’ marketing is dead.
The sophisticated new tools and technology at Printed in Guernsey means we can personalise a whole range of items for online and offline businesses. A recent industry report states that direct mail generates a higher response rate than any direct digital marketing medium – five to nine times greater than email, paid search, or social media. It’s no wonder direct mail is seeing a resurgence in popularity.
We produce a large number of business postcards for Guernsey clients. They are an extremely effective communication tool for a variety of marketing objectives. Some use them for security when registering to a website for a service. Instead of a check email, you get a postcard posted to your door and you have to sign it and post it back.
It is our company’s ethos to provide the best possible service to all our clients. This means staying abreast of all the latest technological developments in our industry, investing in quality machinery and training our team to the highest level. We regularly attend the trade fairs where we speak with the designers and engineers of the latest equipment on the market who advise us on how we should invest.
We believe there will be tremendous growth in this area over the next few years and we will continue to be a part of its development. But, our focus remains on our locally-based clients and the many services we can offer them.
There are so many cost and sustainability advantages of having a premium printing company on your doorstep.