Summer Sessions Postcard a Hit

by Tavonna Goodman

UAlbany�s Office of Summer Sessions is getting the message out to prospective summer session students with improved and redesigned postcards.

The office is the first in the region to use Customized Market Mail, a new service offered by Brigar Mailing Services. Customized Market Mail allows advertisers to create postcards of various shapes and designs to be mailed in bulk.

Lianne Fenn, director of mail services, and Ms. Shawn Sorce of Brigar helped to produce the postcards. Albany district post office representative Diane Horton provided post office specifications. Director of Summer Sessions Michele Lasak and assistant to the director Joanne Razzano designed the postcards.

Summer Sessions mailed more than 12,000 postcards to prospective summer school students in the region.

Razzano said, �I tracked the hits to the Web site which was printed on the postcard, and found that there were 594 hits to that site during the month of January 2004. On first glance that seemed rather low, but after figuring that it was a five percent response rate (when the average is two percent for most mailings), I decided we did pretty well, especially since we did not have any special handout or giveaway to use as a response mechanism.�