The Hidden Costs of DIY Mailing

Mailing campaigns yourself can seem pretty straightforward and sometimes even inexpensive—this is where the danger lies.

The inconspicuous issues for companies that do their own marketing mailings lie in the deals and discounts to which they didn’t even know they were entitled to. The postal network is vast and complex, so knowing what all your options are and being able to negotiate better rates is essential to running a successful direct mail campaign.

We break down the mailing process below alongside where costs can start to build up.

Optimizing Your Mailing Lists
Before you even send your mail, you need to ensure the destinations are qualified and worth the expense. That’s why your business’s mailing lists are such a critical component of your campaign. They ensure the right people receive your offers to help boost your response rates and ROI.

But making sure your current list is up to date, and that you have chosen the best list to send to prospective customers, takes both time and resources.

House Lists
Whether it’s through previous sales or your website, how often do you update and qualify the data you have on your customers? People move, leave out details, and often make typos when providing information. That’s why Modern offers data append services to give you a more robust house list and help fill in the gaps—gaps which otherwise could cost your business.

Prospect Lists
There are thousands of lists available, but it’s difficult to know which are right for your product/service. Choosing the wrong list can result in a lot of mail going to the wrong people creating an expensive campaign that doesn’t pay off.

Modern uses customer profiling and analytics to identify who your best customers are and find the lists with the best match. They can also use this data to find people who resemble your best customers and include them as well. This leads to a more effective campaign with higher chances for success.

Specialty Lists
Even with extensive research and analytics, it can be hard to find a list which meets the ideal criteria. If you have no experience in this field, trying to put together a specialty lists can end up costing your business more in time that it does in return. Modern already has these processes in place meaning we can create custom lists that match strict criteria in a quick and efficient manner.

Postal Regulations
Another hurdle facing businesses that do their own mailings is knowing the strict regulations around posting and what criteria need to be met.

These guidelines cover everything from the size of your mail pieces to the way they are sorted. If your mail pieces are cut too large to mail automated, they won’t be eligible for standard postage rates, which risks huge costs. Equally, if you are sending out a large bulk order, each piece needs to be placed in trays or bags and delivered to the post office. To mediate these risks and potential costs, Modern has an in-house printing facility with on-site experts to coordinate each order to fit with regulations and ensure it is correctly prepared for mailing. This not only brings costs down but ensures a higher standard of quality.

Securing the Lowest USPS Rates
Companies that do their own mailings may not be aware of the different ways they can save money and end up paying higher costs as a result.

Our partnership with the USPS® means we can work directly with their representatives to see what will be best for our clients. From using drop-shipping for delivering mail closer to the source destination to co-mail where small orders receive bulk discounts, we do everything we can to bring costs down and save you money.

Tracking
Another potential downside: When you do your own mailings, do you track when the pieces hit the mail stream?

Tracking mail yourself, analyzing the data, and drawing out the most relevant insights is very labor intensive and requires people specialized in analytics. Businesses who don’t do this final step or who lack the expertise can miss out on huge opportunities to improve and enjoy better profits in the future.

Our tracking services offer a range of methods to follow the success of a campaign and provide expert analytics. It removes the guesswork and ensures everything is being done to maximize the data you receive and turn it into tangible solutions and improvements.

Hidden Costs Hurt Your Bottomline
When a business is unaware of the options available, it can end up spending a lot of money for small results and little data to learn from afterward.

Modern Postcard has been successful at direct mail for over 30 years because we know how to keep costs down and maximize ROI. We pass these postage savings directly on to our customers.

Help ensure your next campaign starts as strong as possible by using our expert services.

By Marc Ortiz, Mailing Operations Manager, Modern Postcard

Call a Direct Marketing Specialist at 800.959.8365.