I first wrote about this idea a couple years ago, but as I’ve been traveling again the idea keeps coming up over and over again. It’s simple, but carries an interesting bit of old school potential.

To begin, let me ask you a question. Well, a few questions. I’ll even put then in that fancy quote styling so you notice it:

What if there was a content type that carried many times the weight of a Facebook post?

What if it could be delivered personally 1-to-1 instead of 1-to-everyone?

And what if you could distribute them directly to a guest’s three closest family and friends for less than $1?

Given that setup, would you:

1. Consider this a ridiculously valuable way to spend your marketing budget.
2. Force your guests to scrounge a few quarters to pay for this themselves.

Do you know what I’m talking about yet?

No?

I’m talkin’ about postcards, man. I’m not talking about the social media game, I’m not talkin’ about that game, I’m talkin’ about postcards.

What if…
Let’s say that you have a nice postcast-style shot of your mountain. Maybe this one from Vail a while back:

And let’s say you printed up, I dunno, 1,000 of these at Vistaprint.

And let’s say you you made part of the check-in process this single question:

“Would you like a few complimentary postcards and postcard stamps?”

If people said “yes”, the agent would give them 3 with an invitation to come back for more if needed and directions to the nearest post office drop box. And let’s say it took a full month for all of them to be sent.

After one month you would have:

• Hundreds of guests who had shared their experience with their closest, most trusted friends and family.
• 1,000 people seeing an incredible view of your resort on the flip side of a personal message from one of their most trusted friends who was just there.

And the cost?

A grand total of $585.

We talk about social sharing, but man, every time I see a rack of beautiful postcards for $0.75/each and then embark on a yet another anything-but-straightforward crusade to find a place to buy postcard stamps…well…the wheels start turning as they often do.

Still Beloved
Postcards are still an extremely fun thing to send and receive, we’ve just made it so inconvenient to do so we sometimes forget they exist.

But if we flipped the script and made these a marketing expense instead of retail inventory? And what if, because we’re out there making ridiculously good images all the time, we put our most popular, timely, relevant images on the front?

If you ask me, that’s an idea that could go places.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.