Send a Postcard Giveaway

Morning everyone! I'm off to France tonight hooray! In celebration of my trip, I've got a tiny giveaway to share with you.

A few weeks ago, Lettr.co contacted me to introduce themselves and tell me all about their postcard sending service. Basically, the concept combines the ease of snapping a photo on your smartphone/ tablet/ laptop with old school snail mail. So, you can snap a selfie in front of the Lincoln Memorial, write a quick little note along the lines of "Wish you were here!" or "Lincoln and I miss you!", and scribble your actual signature. Then, you can fill out the address info, hit send, and Lettr.co will take care of the rest. Plus, they've got a new feature that saves your addresses to an address book so you don't have to fill out the little form every time. I think it's an awesome idea for frequent and infrequent travelers. If you're a wanderlusty minx like moi, you can use it every time you go somewhere really cool and make your friends jealous. If you rarely go on vacation, it's a great memento of your trip. Win-win situation right there.

I feel like in this digital age, we overshare the goings-on in our lives with everyone we know on social media and these moments becomes so impersonal. This is a cool way to use the technology we have but add that personal touch. I mean, how fun is it to get a bit of snail mail? Most of the time I just get credit card applications and car insurance ads in the post so when I get something addressed to me by a friend, it just makes my day.

I gave it a go and sent a postcard to my baby sister at home because I wanted to evaluate the user-friendliness of the site as well as the quality of the postcards for myself. The process was pretty quick. I opted to use my laptop because I'd uploaded all my photos there, but you can also use the site on your smartphone or tablet as well. I picked my photo, wrote down the location (location services can also be utilized), and filled in my message and sent the card on its way. A few minutes later, the confirmation popped up in my inbox.

I sent my postcard to my sister on 19 April and she received it on 1 May. Now, that's quite a bit of time - about 9 business days - but my sister doesn't check the mail everyday, so it could've been there a few days sooner too, who knows? Honestly, that was a bit longer than I'd expected but it was so easy, I don't even really care. The postcard arrived in slightly beat up condition because it got rained on. The quality of the paper is somewhat thick, like a cheap cardstock. I was pretty impressed with the print job though; it was rather decent. I think using a good quality photo is the key here.

It's $2.49 to send a postcard which is actually a great deal if you think about it. I mean, most postcards are along the lines of $0.50 unless you're at a fancy museum or something and it costs upwards of $2 anyway. But then you've got to think about the postage, which can totally suck if you're abroad where postage rules can get super confusing, especially if there's a language barrier and the postman has no idea what you're saying. Plus, it saves you that trip to the post office and time is money, people.

Lucky for you, I've got a fun little giveaway so that you can send your first postcard for free! Lettr.co hooked me up with 10 free postcards to give to my readers. However, I used up one of those for myself (I'm bad, I know!) so I've got 9 for the rest of you. If you are interested, click on over to this referral link to the lettr.co website. The link has a credit built in so that each user can send one postcard for free. If the credit isn't showing up, it must mean that 9 lucky people have already made use of the free cards, in which case, sorry! If this becomes a popular enough request, I'll ask Lettr.co for a few more freebies, all right? Good luck!

Just an FYI, I am not being paid to write this post. Lettr.co just reached out to me to say hi (and gave me the handful of free postcards). I genuinely think that this is a great idea.

Cheers and happy travels!