PostcardMania Review: We Spent $1,094 and Got a -100% ROI

The Short Version

We're Wildfront — we acquire and grow SaaS companies, and we regularly experiment with marketing channels to see what works. One of those experiments was a PostcardMania direct mail campaign targeting newly formed businesses in Oregon.

We spent $1,094.01 across two invoices. We mailed 1,000 postcards. We received zero calls, zero QR code scans, and zero leads. That's a -100% ROI.

But this isn't a hit piece. We had a genuinely pleasant experience working with the PostcardMania team, and we think the failure was mostly about channel fit — direct mail probably wasn't the right medium for what we were selling. Here's the full story.

What Is PostcardMania?

PostcardMania is a full-service direct mail marketing company based in Clearwater, Florida. Founded by Joy Gendusa in 1998, the company has grown to over 395 employees and reportedly does around $119 million in annual revenue. They handle everything: design, printing, mailing list acquisition, postage, and fulfillment.

Their core pitch is straightforward — you tell them about your business and target audience, they design a postcard, print it, and mail it for you. They also offer integrated digital marketing services (Google Ads, Facebook retargeting, etc.) that they can layer on top of your direct mail campaigns.

PostcardMania primarily serves local service businesses: dental practices, HVAC companies, real estate agents, law firms, restaurants, and similar industries where the customer lifetime value is high enough to justify the cost of physical mail campaigns. If you've ever gotten a glossy postcard in the mail from a local business, there's a reasonable chance PostcardMania printed it.

How PostcardMania Works: Our Experience

Here's how the process played out for us, step by step.

The Sales Call

Everything starts with a phone call. There's no self-serve option — you talk to a sales rep who walks through your business, goals, and target audience. Our rep was friendly and knowledgeable. They asked good questions about who we were trying to reach and what action we wanted people to take.

One thing to know upfront: PostcardMania strongly prefers phone calls over email for almost everything. Even for routine updates or quick questions, they'll want to get you on the phone. If you're someone who prefers async communication, this can feel a bit friction-heavy.

Design and Mailing List

After the sales call, their design team puts together a postcard creative based on your brief. We provided the offer, copy direction, and branding, and they came back with a design.

PostcardMania also offers mailing list building as a service — they can pull targeted lists based on demographics, geography, business type, and other filters. This was an additional cost that we opted not to take. Instead, we provided our own list of 1,000 newly formed business entities in Oregon, filtered to remove addresses that belonged to commonly known registered agent services (since those addresses aren't where actual business owners receive mail).

In hindsight, this might have been one of our key mistakes. More on that below.

Printing and Mailing

Once the design was approved, PostcardMania printed and mailed the postcards. This part was smooth and fast — no complaints about production quality or turnaround time. The physical postcards themselves looked good.

What We Actually Paid: $1,094.01

Let's talk numbers. Our campaign cost $1,094.01 total, split across two charges:

That works out to roughly $1.09 per postcard sent, which includes design, printing, and postage. That's a competitive per-unit price for a fully managed direct mail service — we have no complaints about the pricing itself.

Worth noting: PostcardMania's mailing list services are an add-on that costs extra. If you use their list-building tools on top of the base campaign, expect your total cost to be meaningfully higher. We used our own list, which saved money but may have cost us in targeting accuracy.

Our Campaign: Full Breakdown

Here's exactly what we ran:

Postcards sent	1,000 (976 confirmed delivered)
Target audience	Newly formed business entities in Oregon
List source	Our own list (not PostcardMania's list services)
Offer	Up to $250 cash back for opening free business accounts (Mercury, Ramp, Gusto)
Response mechanisms	Phone number and QR code
Total cost	$1,094.01
Calls received	0
QR scans	0
Leads generated	0
Revenue generated	$0
ROI	-100%

Zero. Across both response mechanisms — a dedicated phone number and a QR code — we received not a single response. PostcardMania's sales team had told us to expect a 1–1.5% conversion rate (meaning 10–15 calls or scans from 1,000 cards). We got none.

Here's our PostcardMania dashboard showing 976 pieces delivered and zero QR code scans:

Why We Think It Failed

We've thought a lot about this, and we don't actually blame PostcardMania for the results. The more honest framing is that direct mail as a channel probably wasn't the right fit for what we were trying to do — and we made several decisions that compounded that mismatch. Here's our self-assessment:

The offer might not have worked for direct mail. Our offer was "get cash back by opening a free business bank account for your newly formed business entity." That's a legitimate, real cash incentive — but it requires trust. A postcard from a company you've never heard of, promising you free money if you open a bank account? That probably triggered more skepticism than curiosity. Direct mail works best when the offer is simple, tangible, and low-risk. Ours was arguably none of those things.

Our list may not have been good enough. We compiled our own mailing list from Oregon business filings and filtered out registered agent addresses. But we didn't use PostcardMania's list-building services, which was an additional cost we chose to skip. It's possible their list tools would have improved targeting — sending to actual business owners at their home or office addresses rather than filing addresses.

The creative could have been better. PostcardMania's design team created the postcard based on our brief. The print quality was fine, but looking back, we wouldn't fully trust an external creative team to optimize a direct response postcard for conversion. Direct mail creative is a specialized skill, and we think the postcard could have been more compelling with a stronger headline, clearer value proposition, and a more aggressive design hierarchy. If we were to do this again, we'd want to design the creative ourselves — or at least collaborate much more closely on copy and layout.

1,000 postcards might not be enough. Direct mail practitioners generally recommend larger volumes and repeated mailings to the same list. A single drop of 1,000 postcards might simply not be enough to generate statistically meaningful results, especially for a new offer from an unknown brand.

What Other Customers Are Saying

We looked at reviews across multiple third-party platforms to see how our experience compares. The picture is genuinely mixed.

On Trustpilot, PostcardMania has hundreds of reviews spanning the full spectrum. Some customers report strong results, particularly in local service industries like dental, HVAC, and real estate. Others report spending thousands with little to no measurable return.

On the Better Business Bureau, PostcardMania has an accredited profile with both positive reviews and formal complaints. Common complaint themes include: campaigns not generating expected results, difficulty canceling recurring billing, and feeling pressured into longer commitments than originally discussed.

On PissedConsumer, the rating is notably low, with complaints about poor targeting, misleading sales pitches, and lack of results.

That said, PostcardMania also has customers who have used them for years and report consistently positive experiences. The company's own website features hundreds of case studies with impressive ROI figures. While those are obviously curated, they're not fabricated — some businesses clearly do well with direct mail through PostcardMania.

PostcardMania Pros and Cons

Based on our direct experience and research:

The upsell dynamic was the most notable friction point. Rather than having a single dedicated rep focused on making our campaign succeed, we heard from multiple people pitching additional services. When you're already spending money on a campaign that hasn't generated results yet, getting upsold on more spend doesn't feel great. A single point of contact focused on campaign success would go a long way.

PostcardMania Alternatives

If you're evaluating direct mail marketing, PostcardMania isn't your only option. Here's a neutral overview of the landscape:

Service	Best For	Approach
PostcardMania	Local service businesses wanting full-service management	Agency-led, handles design/print/mail/lists
Lob	Tech-forward teams wanting API-based direct mail automation	Self-service platform with developer tools
Click2Mail	Businesses with existing materials that need a mailing platform	Self-service technology tool, integrates with digital workflows
Modern Postcard	Design-conscious brands wanting premium print quality	Full-service with strong design focus
USPS EDDM (DIY)	Budget-conscious businesses willing to design their own	Self-service through USPS, lowest cost but most manual work

Your choice depends on how hands-on you want to be. If you want someone to handle everything and you're willing to pay for it, PostcardMania is a reasonable option. If you already have your creative assets and want more control, a self-service platform like Lob or Click2Mail might be a better fit. And if you're testing direct mail on a tight budget, USPS Every Door Direct Mail lets you do it yourself for just the cost of printing and postage.

Who PostcardMania Is Actually Good For

We don't think PostcardMania is a bad company. We think they're a legitimate business that works well for specific use cases and poorly for others. Based on our experience and research, here's who we think they're best suited for:

PostcardMania told us that a 1–1.5% conversion rate on calls or QR scans was reasonable to expect. That may be true for a dental practice mailing to local homeowners with a "Free Cleaning" offer — but it clearly didn't hold for a SaaS holding company mailing a financial incentive to newly formed businesses. Context matters enormously in direct mail, and the channel isn't equally effective for all business types.

Our Verdict: Would We Use PostcardMania Again?

Disclosure: This article contains an affiliate link to PostcardMania that provides a $50 campaign credit; we may receive a benefit if you use it. We are not otherwise compensated for this review. All opinions are based on our direct experience running a campaign in late 2025. We paid for our PostcardMania campaign with our own money.