Direct Mail Marketing
Direct Mail is a common form of marketing that reaches the person directly. It has been one of the most successful tools to increase sales and promote new products to a targeted public for many years. It may be employed by for-profit businesses, charities and other non-profits, political campaigns, and other organizations.
Advertisers often refine direct mailings into a targeted mailing, in which mail is sent following database analysis to select recipients considered most likely to respond positively.For example, a person who is interested in sailing may receive some direct mail for products related to sailing.
Whether at the individual or neighborhood level, direct mail marketing allows recipients to be targeted, attempting to match the demographic profile of the recipients to one most closely matching that of likely customers. Individually targeted direct mail may be tailored based on previous transactions and gathered data.
So, as you can see, direct mail can be a very effective way to reach your specific public.
Bulk Mail is basically a certain quantity of mail, that when handled correctly, can save you a lot of money on postage. The quantity of a Bulk Mailing would be more than 200 for Standard Mail and 500 or more for First Class Mail. We have done single mailings of more than 1,000,000 pieces. Imagine the savings in postage on that!
So, if you plan on mailing anywhere from 200-1,000,000 pieces of promo, direct mail through Zip Printing & Mailing is the way to go. We will save you money and do all the work!
Of course! There is no charge for warehousing your mailing pieces while you mail. If you would like to mail daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly let us know and we can schedule your mailings!
Your Mail should arrive 1-4 Days from mail drop date for first class, and 1-10 days for Standard Mail. Please note that Standard will take longer for delivery during peak mail/holiday seasons. The post office does NOT specify a delivery time for Standard Mail and will possibly defer delivery during heavy mail times. The best way to decide on what class of mail you want is to ask one of our Mail Specialists.
When mailing in bulk, you can only drop the mail at a BMEU (business mail entry unit) registered to the permit on the mail pieces. If you have your own permit, we can presort and ship you the paperwork and mail pieces for you to mail yourself. You should have some knowledge of how Bulk Mail works to ensure you keep your postal discounts.
Discounts
Do you want to save hundreds or thousands of dollars on your postage? We process and handle your mail so that the Post Office qualifies it for cheaper postage rates. No more putting 73 cent stamps on your mail piece.
A lot of people don’t realize how much of a postal discount you can actually get.
From the moment you send us a job, we save you so much money (and work!) AND you get the best form of promotion possible!
Almost too good to be true.
For your best postage savings and postage discounts, direct mail through Zip Mailing is the way to go!
Example:
If you mail 5,000 5.5 x 8.5 postcards yourself. You have to print labels, stick them on, one by one and then stamp each one with 66 cent stamps. Price for postage = $3,300 + hours of work and a bald tongue.
If you mail 5,000 5.5 x 8.5 postcards with us, you send us your list or purchase one from us, we clean up your list and send you those files, then address and mail them. The postage price estimated at 38 cents each (or lower) = $1,900 + Mail House fees as low as $175 = $2,075. That is $1,225 in savings as well as virtually no work for you to do and a higher chance of your mail arriving.
Mailing List
A mailing list can be very important in getting results with your direct mail campaign.
You can either direct it towards your existing database of customers, saturate a whole geographical area, or you can purchase a targeted list of people or businesses to send to.
We provide both consumer, occupant/saturation and business lists. We can help you pick out which kind of list is best for you as well as what unique selectors yo use. The great thing about mailing lists is that you can get really specific in terms of how targeted you want it to be whether its females over 25 that are new parents or people interested in sports. Here’s a couple of the more popular ways you can target:
- Geography
- Age Range
- Homeowner/renter
- Estimated Household Income
- and many more
So, depending on what your industry is or what you’re trying to sell, you can target accordingly. This is obviously one of the more important parts of your direct mail campaign.
We automatically look for duplicates where both the name AND the address match. Our default procedure is to keep just one of the duplicates for mailing. If you want us to remove duplicates using different criteria, such as where ONLY the address matches, please be sure to indicate this when submitting your list. There is no charge for this service. We also take out any un-deliverable addresses per our special software though the USPS.
We also offer NCOA (National Change of Address) service which changes anyone address who has submitted a change of address form up to 18 months back. All the new addresses are then sent back to you.
Yes! We never share any list data with anyone and will completely delete a list upon request.
If you have your own mailing list that you have purchased or one that you have compiled yourself, you can use that as well. We have special software to clean up any bad addresses and take out any duplicates so that you don’t waste money sending to them.
We recommend ALWAYS mailing to your own compiled list of customers regardless of what else you do. This way you can take advantage of any past or current customers who have already bought your product and may want to do so again. Then you can mail to your new targeted list to get new customers
One of our list processing services is called NCOA (National Change of Address). This means we can run your mailing list through our software to make sure it gets updated with any recent moves. People move a lot, so it’s vital to keep your list up-to-date.
So even if you don’t want to mail to a list, we can still clean-up your list for you.
Contact us today and find out how we can get you a mailing list to fit your needs
Postcard Design
You may be wondering if there are anything that has to be included in terms of design on your mailpiece.
There are a few things that will need to be printed on your mailpiece in order to get you the bulk mail rate for
your postage.
One thing that any mailpiece will need is called a Indicia or Permit Imprint. This is that little box that you usually see on the top right corner of a piece of mail where a stamp would normally go. You will need this in order for us to send out your piece so that you can take advantage of the bulk mail rates. If you don’t want this, you can have us put presorted stamps on the mailpiece, but this would be more expensive.
This is what our Indicia looks like for Standard Class Mail:
In addition to the Permit, there are a few other things you will need to do in order for us to be able to mail your postcard or brochure. We will need a white, blank area on the right (usually bottom) side of the mailpiece so that we can put the address and barcode on it. This area needs to be at least 2 inches high and 4 inches wide. This allows us to fit the addresses and barcode for each person.
Here is an example of how the back of a 6’x 9′ postcard can look:
The Post Office has a lot of regulations when it comes to mailing something at the bulk mail rates. Because they run them through high speed machines, there are a lot of things that need to be done correctly on the piece. We always recommend that you always show us your design before getting them printed so we can be sure all requirements are met. This way there are no problems later when the piece is ready to be mailed.
For questions about designing a brochure, magazine or any other questions related to the design of your mailpiece, please don’t hesitate to contact us: 727-446-3662
Direct Mail Advantages
The reason why businesses use direct mail advertising is that it’s a far more efficient way to directly communicate to the consumer, as opposed to forms of mass media outlets such as TV, Radio or the Internet. These are effective in their own way, but you are limited to targeting a specific audience and a lot of people who won’t be interested in your products will be seeing the ads. Additionally, these forms of marketing allow the consumer to shut it off, walk away, or block it without every noticing your ad.
With direct mail, the percentage of consumers who would be interested in your product is much higher and the advertisement is directly placed into the consumer’s hands. If the mail piece is designed in such a way that it grabs the consumer’s attention, you can be sure they will read it.
Because direct mail advertising is a much cheaper and extremely effective way to reach consumers, it should be included in any type of promotional campaign.
Direct mail advertising is also quite effective for Political Campaigns. When you want to win an election, you will use any method necessary to get your candidate in front of the voters. A beautiful postcard or brochure can accomplish this quite effectively. Find out more about Political Mailings here.
We encourage our customers to use any and all forms of marketing to promote their business, whether it’s e-mail marketing, web marketing, social media or direct mail. However, it’s been proven over time, that direct mail marketing, if done right, can produce the best ROI for your business.
Here’s some reasons why direct mail has been the longest lasting and most effective form of marketing
It’s Personal – You can build a relationship with your prospective or current customers by creating personalized direct mail pieces with the recipient’s name and a customized message. This personalized touch is critical in building a relationship with the reader and results in a higher likelihood of causing action.
It’s Targetable – With direct mail campaigns, you have the ability to use existing and past customer information so as to target the prospects most likely to respond to your message (from a specific neighborhood to precise household characteristics and personal interests).
It’s Tangible – Direct mail is delivered directly to your prospects’ hands, so they are virtually guaranteed to see your message. Since customers can also physically touch your piece of mail, they are more likely to see its contents as reliable.
It’s Noticeable – Traditional mailboxes are seeing a decline in volume as people and businesses switch to digital both for personal contact and bill paying. With the decreased volume of traditional mail, direct mail is more effective due to fewer messages competing for your recipient’s attention.
It’s Long Lasting – Emails are usually deleted from the inbox quickly, while direct mail has a greater chance to grab the attention of your prospective customer as the message remains in the home for a longer period of time.
It’s Measurable – Direct mail is unique in comparison to other marketing channels in that its results and performance can be easily tracked to measure the financial return on your marketing investment. By using various methods to identify the response, you can track the cost per lead, overall results, and the profitability of your campaign to determine its success.
It’s Cost Effective – Sending direct mail is a cost effective solution to get your message into the hands of your prospective customer. Direct mail is one of the most responsive forms of marketing and typically generates a low cost per order or lead, making your return on investment noteworthy.
Provide Exclusive Offers – With a direct mail campaign you can offer exclusive discounts and special offers that customers and prospects can only find in their mailbox.
Helps to Build Your Brand – Company messaging, no matter the type, can help to build your brand and improve company recognition.
It Can Be Integrated Into a Marketing Campaign – Direct mail can work as part of an integrated marketing campaign when combined with email, social media, TV, or radio and can also drive prospects to your website in order to create a multi-channel marketing approach.
It Generates A Response – With a call to action to dial a custom phone number to place an order, or a custom URL to visit a company’s website, direct mail marketing is designed to generate a response from recipients and has generated successful response rates in comparison to other direct marketing methods.
It’s Proven – Direct mail is a proven marketing channel that has stood the test of time. In 2017 direct mail continues to yield successful results that confirm its place at the top of the marketing ladder.
Direct Mail Tips
In the majority of cases, trust factor is a key issue in order for the prospect to take action. This is especially true if they have never done business with you before or they haven’t heard of your company before.
How do you build trust with your potential customers? Here’s one thing you can try:
You can offer something free which they can test, try and evaluate. This is a win-win because they get something for free and you gain a customer’s trust.
Don’t let them guess what you are offering. Communicate clearly in your headlines, subtitles, testimonials, call to actions, the features, benefits and value of your product.
In addition to all of that, you should always answer the most important question: What’s in it for me?
Based on your experience and feedback from your customers, try to answer the most frequently asked questions – this will improve your conversions.
Every product and sales approach has a few major obstacles – there’s a few thoughts that most prospects generally raise when they read about your offer. Try to address all of them.
One of the important questions when developing and evaluating your direct mail approach is: Is it easy for the customer to respond? Try using an effective reply card or other reply tactics such as giving the customer a toll free number they can call or have them visit your product page online to continue reading and learn more details about your product. Or even a reply by email or make a purchase online option.
Your call to action is critical and will help to drive your conversion rates. Give a strong reason for your customers to act now whether your call to action is to join a mailing list online or make a purchase.
Think about what would be the strongest reason for the customer to buy now or act right now without delaying. People are very busy and they might be interested, but they’ll forget if they don’t act at the time they have your mail in their hands. Use special deals, limited time offers and other legitimate scarcity tactics. This is important!
Direct mail marketing is both an art and a science. It is science because it is measurable and you can track, monitor and measure every step in the process and each and every variable. However it is an art because a small change in your envelope, headlines, call to action, success stories etc. can make a big difference. This difference could be the difference between a profitable and poor marketing campaigns.
You should always be testing and developing an effective continuous improvement plan for your direct mail marketing!