If you are planning a direct mail campaign and you put the job out for quotes to a mailing house, do not look only at mail handling costs and believe that printing is printing and postage is postage.   This couldn’t be farther from the truth. The amount of money you spend for a direct mail campaign should be the bottom line that it costs you – printing, mail handling and postage and balancing your desired delivery times.

The Costs an Outdated Direct Mail List

A direct mail mailing list should be cleaned and refined before the print order is given. Very often, a mailing list could be reduced 10 percent or even more once the list is cleaned of targeted customers who have moved, duplicates and bad addresses.  There’s no sense in mailing out your piece and paying the costs to people who will not get it.  Be sure that the expert you hire to do your mailing is proficient at this and will work with you to clean up your list in a timely manner prior to placing your print order.

Direct Mail Postage Costs

Similarly, the class of mail should be examined based on balancing estimated delivery time and postage cost.  It could be that you are preparing a very time sensitive direct mail mailing where 40 percent is nationwide and 60 percent is local.   A good mailing house will direct you to consider mailing the nationwide pieces presorted first class and the balance presorted standard, maximizing postage savings and delivery time.  There can be a lot of wasted expense in postage if you don’t know how to maximize your delivery.

And, finally, postage is not always postage. The more sortation you can do on a mailing decreases the amount of processing the post office needs to do and lessens postage.  Where a mailing house takes the mail to be processed can also lessen postage.

Let Professionals Minimize Your Direct Mail Costs

Printing professionals, like us, deal with direct mail campaigns on a daily basis; we know how to decrease unnecessary costs while maximizing your ROI with printing that works and lists that target your best consumer.  Hiring an expert will save you money in the end.