
How to Send Postcards as Effortlessly as Email - bavidar
https://lob.com/blog/how-to-send-postcards-as-effortlessly-as-email
======
aareet
From the article >"Everyone is unique, so you should make sure each individual
mailpiece is customized as much as possible. Don't be afraid to use customer
data to personalize and make a statement with your mailing."

"Dont be afraid to use customer data" seems like a dangerous general
recommendation to make for an article recommending using the API to send
postcards that are open to the world to read. Now I can't just discard spam
mail adressed to "Resident", I'll have to read it all and make sure to shred
it in case it has some sensitive data automatically encoded into the postcard?

~~~
IgorPartola
I think they mean "you know you can use the person's name instead of listing
'Current Resident'?". I don't think they are encouraging you to send the
recipient's social security number on the card.

------
Animats
From the article: _" You can mail a single postcard and it will only cost you
$0.70 all-in, no strings attached._" That appears to be the cost penalty for
sending postcards from an API. Less than half of that is postage.

There's still a direct mail industry, but it's all about getting the big
discounts available if you send in bulk and pre-sort everything. It's a form
of spam; most of it is discarded.

Worse, people who still pay any attention to paper mail are likely to send you
back a reply on paper or call you. Now you need a mail room, a data entry
operation, and a call center.

~~~
crb3
> Worse, people who still pay any attention to paper mail are likely to send
> you back a reply on paper or call you. Now you need a mail room, a data
> entry operation, and a call center.

I'm not all that happy about paper spam either, but this makes sense depending
on your target demographic. If you're selling to seniors, for instance...

------
IgorPartola
I struggle with this. On the one hand, direct mail is the bane of my daily
existence. I get so many catalogs, flyers, etc. (mostly directed at previous
owners, or just random names), that my recycling bin just can't handle it.
Yes, I am actively unsubscribing from these things, but it's a slow one-off
process.

On the other hand, between the Valpacs and the Red Plums, I do get occasional
good things. A reminder that my sprinkler system needs to be winterized, or a
card reminding me that my dogs are due for their vaccines. These things could
be email-based, but a postcard is a great point of initial contact with a
customer.

As a developer I am excited to see if I can use this service to send out party
invitations, birthday cards, etc. Combined with a database of people's
addresses and birthdays, I could automatically send postcards to lots of
people, whereas doing it manually would mean that I would constantly forget.

------
rathboma
I really like their API documentation pages
([https://lob.com/docs](https://lob.com/docs)), does anyone know if this was
built using an open source project of some sort, or have any recommendations
for one?

~~~
jamescun
Looks to be inspired by GoCardless
([https://developer.gocardless.com/](https://developer.gocardless.com/)) and
Stripe's API ([https://stripe.com/docs/api](https://stripe.com/docs/api))
docs.

As an aside, GoCardless open-sourced their API docs
[https://github.com/gocardless/api-docs](https://github.com/gocardless/api-
docs) .

------
idoh
I'm working on an iOS Postcard app, so I tried them out. lob.com is a really
great service, very easy to set up and get started. Do note that in my test it
took over ten business days from ordering the card to deliver, so it is good
for marketing postcards, but not good for transactional postcards (e.g.,
welcome to the service type things).

------
throwaway7349
How do you get the physical address from the email address? Or you need them
to have provided that somewhere else in the sales funnel?

------
shittyanalogy
You should send me these so I don't leak out of your conversion funnel.

