Robert Bean notices a greater response from his mailings when he uses postage stamps featuring his art.
Since the topic of the week seems to be old-fashioned marketing rather than Internet marketing, let’s think about why you might want postage stamps with your art on them.
If Robert sends mail using regular stamps, he says he hears from a few people with RSVPs.
When he adds the postage stamp featuring his art, Robert notices something more.
When I use the stamps with my art, I notice an uptick in messages from people — often just to comment on the stamps. It’s a great way to help jump-start a dialogue about the event. I’ve had people ask about the specific works in the stamps, too. I have several versions of the stamps, some 44 cents and some 28 cents with different images.
They just seem to help raise the level of buzz about events.
Stamps of your own design are not inexpensive. While twenty 44-cent stamps cost $8.80, twenty of your own design are going for $18.95. The US Postal Service has a list of available vendors.
Do you live outside the US and know of a non-US vendor for self-designed stamps?
Have you had good results from using your own stamps?
17 thoughts on “Gallery Space Available: Upper Right Corner”
In Canada, you can create and order personalized stamps on-line at Canada Post: http://www.canadapost.ca/cpo/mc/personal/productsservices/atoz/picturepostage.jsf
The stamps are more than twice as expensive as regular stamps, but may be worth it as a marketing tool, especially for people you know are collectors of your work.
It would be worth it. I’d love to have my own personalized stamp using my artwork I were a famous artist. 😉
Thanks for that resource, Robi. More than double is about what it is here in US.
What a great idea! The UK post office does custom stamps too, although I don’t think they’re actual postage. But would still get some attention next to the regular stamp I think.
You could probably even by your own labels and make stickers out of them, Tina. Especially since they’re not “real” postage anyway. I get labels of every size, color, and sheen at http://onlinelabels.com
Royal Mail in the UK do what they call “Smilers Stamps” that are custom made and have your photo attached to the normal stamp, as if it was another stamp (http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content2?catId=3800007&mediaId=3800008&campaignid=smilers)
Thanks for that, Philippe!
Alyson – I’d love to use this post as a guest column this coming week on my blog. Normally on my Top Ten Tuesdays I have something from you that I refer people to, but I absolutely LOVE this idea, and lately I’ve been writing about packaging, so this seems just perfect. Thanks – Linda
Linda: Rather than duplicate content on your blog, I much prefer you “riff” off of what I write. Google doesn’t like duplicate content and you’ll just raise the bar on the conversation when you write from your viewpoint. Thanks for your interest.
Fun! I gotta do this!
I must say that I LOVE your book. I am devouring it daily.
This post presents a super neat idea…one to think about for sure!
Thanks for all of your resources..
Thanks, Christina! I’m so glad you have found value in the book.
Australia Post offers the same sort of service here: http://pstamps.auspost.com.au/index_wf.html
you have to use their layout (they have a double width template with your choice of their designs on one side and your image on the other), they also have some quite tight guidelines which might get in the way for quite a few artists (like me) the guidelines are here: http://pstamps.auspost.com.au/Image%20Suitability%20Guidelines.pdf
I wanted to post an update for everyone that was interested in this idea of using custom made stamps of their artwork. I often will wait until Zazzle has a sale on postage and then order several sheets of custom stamps, saving quite a bit of money.
With that in mind, Zazzle is actually having a Thanksgiving custom postage sale that ends tomorrow. Their sales usually last about a day, but you can save a bunch of money – in this case you can save $8.80 off a sheet of .44 stamps.
Here is the link to their description of the sale:
http://zazzle.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/430#THANKPOSTAGE
Thanks for that, Robert. I just tweeted and posted on FB.
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