Shared postcards are coming to Windham County.
Postcard Advantage, which Brattleboro Local is a division of, runs shared postcard advertising: one large card, a handful of local businesses, mailed to every home on a neighborhood's postal routes. The cards are coming to Vermont. Tell us you are interested and you will hear first.
How a shared postcard works
A shared postcard is one large card with a set number of ad slots on it, each taken by a different local business, and only one business per category. The postal service's Every Door Direct Mail program delivers it to every home on the chosen carrier routes, so it lands in the mailbox, not in a pile of flyers on a counter.
Because the printing and the postage are shared, each business pays a fraction of what it would cost to mail a card of its own to the same homes. And because a card only prints once every slot is sold, nobody pays for a half-empty card.
There are two sizes: a 9 by 12 inch jumbo card and a 6 by 11 inch card, each with 16 ad slots across its two sides.
One card, many local businesses
An illustration of one side of a jumbo card: ad slots above and below a center band. Each slot is a different kind of business.
From a reserved slot to every mailbox on the route
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Claim your category
Each card carries one business per category: one roofer, one plumber, one dentist. You reserve your category on a card before anyone else does.
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Pay for your slot
One payment, no deposit and no balance later. Until the card locks, that money is refundable.
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We design the ad
Send a logo and an offer, or nothing at all. We lay out the ad, send you a proof and make the changes you ask for.
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The card fills, prints and mails
A card only prints once every slot is sold. The postal service then delivers it to every home on the chosen carrier routes.
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You judge the response
Run an offer that exists only on the card and ask callers to mention it, and every redemption can only have come from the card.
What we cannot tell you yet
The Vermont cards are not scheduled yet, so there are no Vermont prices, mailing dates or routes to share. We would rather say so plainly than guess. When the first Windham County card is being put together, the businesses who asked will hear first, and categories go to whoever claims them first.
To be told first, call (888) 348-1992 or email hello@brattleborolocal.com with your business name, your trade and the towns you want to reach.
Why the mailbox still reaches people here
Much of Windham County is spread out. Homes sit along dirt roads and up long driveways, and plenty of households have no reason to pass a bulletin board in town during a given week. Yet nearly every home has a mailbox that somebody checks.
That is the appeal of mail for a local trade. A card does not wait for anyone to search for it. It arrives on its own, and the household can read it at the kitchen table before setting it aside. Weeks later it may still be there when the furnace starts making a noise or the porch roof begins to sag.
Mail also reaches people who rarely go looking for local businesses online. Some households in the county still find a plumber by asking around, and a card on the counter gives them a name to start with. Others search first and call second, and a card simply helps your name come to mind when they do.
A shared card adds another advantage. Each business on it pays for a share of one mailing instead of a whole mailing of its own, so a small business can appear in front of many homes without carrying the full cost of printing and postage alone. Nobody on the card is promised a particular number of calls, and we will not suggest otherwise. What the card offers is a fair, measurable chance to be seen.
Cards are planned by carrier route, not by ZIP code
The postal service divides each town into carrier routes, and each route is one loop a carrier covers. Every Door Direct Mail lets a mailer buy a whole route at a time, on the condition that every address on it receives the piece. There is no mailing list to buy and no names to print on the cards.
ZIP codes are a blunt tool for this. In a rural county a single ZIP code can stretch from a village center out into scattered farms and a cluster of seasonal homes, and a trade may only want part of that. Building a card's area from individual routes lets it follow the places where the right customers actually live.
For Vermont, those routes have not been chosen yet. Once a Windham County card is being planned, the area it covers will be decided route by route with the businesses on it in mind. Perhaps most of your work comes from the Route 5 towns along the river. Perhaps it comes from the hill towns west of Brattleboro instead. Telling us now helps shape that first card.
For a fuller explanation of routes and how a card is put together, Postcard Advantage has a detailed how it works page that covers the process from start to finish.
One business per category, held to the letter
Exclusivity on a shared card only means something when the categories are clear. A roofer does not want a second roofing company sitting two slots away under a slightly different label. Neither does a plumber want a heating contractor who also advertises plumbing work on the same side of the card.
So every card is built with one business per category, and categories are defined with care before the card goes on sale. If two trades overlap, that question is settled at the start rather than discovered after the card arrives in mailboxes. Categories are claimed in order, which is why the businesses who ask first hear first. Being on the early list is free and does not oblige you to buy anything. It only means you hear about the card as soon as it is being put together.
Some trades in this county work across several categories at once. A caretaking business might also plow driveways, for instance. Tell us how you describe your own work, and we will talk through which category fits before anything is reserved.
Your ad is designed for you and checked before print
Nobody needs a graphic designer to be on a card. Send a logo and an offer if you have them. With nothing beyond your business name and phone number, the ad still gets laid out for you. A proof comes back before printing, and any changes you ask for are made. Nothing goes to press until you have approved your ad.
Good ads on a shared card are simple. The strongest offers are specific enough to remember: a named discount on a first visit, a free estimate during a set month, a small extra thrown in with a seasonal service. Vague promises about quality tend to blend into the rest of the card. One clear offer reads better than a list of every service you provide, and a phone number should be easy to spot from across the room. The design work is there to make your slot clear at a glance, since a reader looks at the whole card before settling on any one ad.
The finished artwork belongs to you. Ask for the file and it can go anywhere you like. A flyer at the general store is one use. An ad in the local paper is another.
Your card ad can also point people to your website. Plenty of readers will look a business up before they pick up the phone, especially for a bigger job. A Brattleboro Local website gives anyone who searches your name after seeing the card a clear page to land on, with your services and towns spelled out.
A free QR code on every ad, and call tracking if you want it
Every ad on a Postcard Advantage card carries its own QR code in the top-right corner, at no charge. Point a phone camera at it and it opens the business's website, or a page with the business name and phone number when there is no website yet. Each scan is counted and shown to the advertiser: the time, and whether it came from a phone, never who scanned. The code is on unless you ask for it to be left off.
Call tracking is an optional extra for the ad, at $49 a year. Your ad then prints a local number of your own in place of your phone number, and it rings straight through to you, so every call the card brings is counted. You press 1 to accept each tracked call, and we email you about any you miss. One number covers every card you are on. How call tracking works is explained in full on Postcard Advantage.
Paying for a slot, and judging what it did
You pay for a slot once. There is no deposit to put down first and nothing left to owe afterward. Should you change your mind before the card locks, the money comes back. Printing waits until every slot on the card is sold, and when a card misses its fill date, a full refund is yours to take. You are never paying for a half-empty card that went out anyway.
Judging the result is easier than many people expect. Put an offer on your ad that appears nowhere else, and ask callers to mention the card. Any call that names the offer came from the card, which gives you a straight answer without any tracking software. Comparing your phone calls in the weeks after the card lands against the weeks before gives you a second, rougher view.
Keeping score does not need software. A notepad by the phone with a line for each caller who mentions the card is enough. Note the job each call turns into, and after a month you will have a clear picture of what the card did for you.
Patience helps here. Seasonal trades in particular should think about timing, since a card about chimney cleaning lands differently in August than in December. One kept on the refrigerator can still bring a call well after it arrives, so the first few days rarely tell the whole story. More than one drop in the same area tends to build familiarity with a name, though no one can promise a particular result from mail.
Questions before the Vermont cards are scheduled are welcome. Use our contact page to send your business name, your trade and the towns you want to reach. You can also browse the full list of towns and villages we cover to see how wide the county is, and read about planning around the seasons while you think about when a card would help your business most.
Questions about Vermont cards
We do not have a date yet. Call or email us and we will tell you as soon as the first Windham County card is being put together.
Prices for Vermont cards are not set yet. We will tell you before anything is booked. Postcard Advantage cards only mail once full, and if a card does not fill by its date you can take a full refund.
That is decided route by route once the program comes here. Tell us where your customers are and we will let you know when a card covers them.
No. A card works better when people who look you up find something, which is why we also build websites, but the two are separate.