What is Direct Mail?

KEY TOPICS

What is direct mail?

What is direct marketing?

What is offline vs. online marketing?

Why use direct mail?

What is Involved in Putting Together a Direct Mail Campaign?

What Are the Different Types of Direct Mail?

What are the Different Types of Postage?

Direct mail refers to a type of marketing that is done through the postal service with physical mail. It is distinct from other types of marketing – both physical and digital – and even differs from other types of marketing done through the postal service. There are several subcategories of direct mail, and its uses range across industries and purposes.

Direct mail marketing is a type of Direct marketing. Direct marketing differs from other types of marketing in that it communicates directly with a predetermined list of recipients, and tailors a message to them (as opposed to the general population).

For example, if you’re looking to sell pizza, you can probably sell to almost anyone, and your best bet is marketing to the general public with marketing techniques that reach as many people as possible for as little money per impression as possible (an impression refers to an instance of a person seeing your piece of marketing). Marketing tactics for a pizzeria might include giant billboards, TV and Radio commercials, or posting flyers around town.

However, suppose – for example – that you are selling expensive pizza ovens for baking enthusiasts. If you advertise to the general population, 99% of people who see your add would likely not be interested in your offering; perhaps they don’t bake, perhaps they don’t have a backyard to put the pizza oven in, or perhaps they can’t afford it.

That’s why you want to use direct marketing – to make sure that you are only reaching your target audience.

Direct marketing can be more expensive per outreach; building a list and paying for a piece of mail with postage to 1,000 is more expensive on a per piece basis than dropping 1,000 flyers at every door. But it is much less expensive when considering the cost of reaching your targets.

For example, consider the pizza oven example above: Suppose that it costs you 20 cents per recipient to drop flyers at 1,000 random doors, and 990 of them cannot afford your product. You just paid 200 dollars to reach 10 qualified customers, for a total cost of $20 per customer.

If you instead employ direct marketing and build a list of 1,000 qualified buyers who you can be reasonably sure can afford your product, and it costs you $1 per piece of mailing to mail them (5x more than each flyer cost you!), you just spent $1,000 to reach 1,000 qualified customers, for a total cost of $1 per customer (20x less expensive than cost of reaching your customer with flyers).

As the name suggests, the difference between offline and online marketing is that the latter is marketing via the internet. There are many pros and cons to online marketing, namely that it is very easy to track and attribute the actions of your customers and leads through tools like cookies (of course there are also many associated privacy implications as well as law and regulations to consider). It can also be very inexpensive and easily scalable to market online.

Offline marketing includes such media as billboards, flyers, direct mail, unaddressed mail (sometimes called every door mail), phone calls, door knocks, TV, radio, and any other type of marketing that takes place in the real, physical, offline world.

The biggest pro to offline marketing is that it is simply more effective in most cases than online marketing. For example, while email has an average response rate well under half of one percent, direct mail response rates average around 5%.

It can also be much easier to accurately target customers by mail, phone, and other methods of direct offline marketing than by digital means.

Compared to other types of direct offline marketing, such as telemarketing and door to door canvassing, there are many advantages to direct mail. One such advantage is that you don’t run the risk of not catching the recipient at home, or in the mood to consider your offer. Direct mail can be read at the recipient’s convenience, and can include lots of information and graphics that can be difficult or impossible to deliver in person or on a phone call in real time.

Direct mail affords the opportunity for a meticulously phrased and well constructed offer to be incorporated into a carefully crafted message with an eye-catching design, and inserted into an envelope stamped and addressed with a thoughtfully-targeted recipient’s name and address. It can then be opened, read, and thoroughly considered by the recipient at a time of their choosing, at their convenience, and even over multiple sittings.

In the case of something like a holiday card or a newsletter, it can find its way to the mantle or the coffee table for days or weeks.

It can also include a direct response device, such as a reply envelope or a pledge card, that can be mailed back by the recipient, thus collecting feedback from them without the pressure of an instantaneous decision. That is why so many donors to nonprofit organizations, especially older donors, enjoy donating by mail.

There are a number of elements involved in putting together a direct mail campaign:

Your recipient list

• The more you can curate your recipient list to include prospects, leads, customers, donors, voters, etc… who would be interested in your offer, the more successful your campaign will be, and the less money you will waste mailing recipients who are not interested.
• There are a host of tools that you can use to clean and sort your data for mailing to make sure that your mail is received correctly by your recipients and not returned to sender or rejected by the post office. Our team of direct mail experts at Postalgia can clean and sort your list for you to ensure maximum deliverability.

Your message

• Consider the best way to phrase your message. Whether you’re writing a thank you card to a donor, persuading a voter to vote for you, or trying to boost referrals for your home services company, the way that you structure your message will have a huge impact on your response rate, as will the actual value that you are offering in your letter.
• What good is your message if it’s addressed to “dear friend” or worse – not addressed at all! You want to leverage your variable data to make your direct mail piece as personal as possible. Another great way to make your message stand out and be personal is to use handwriting on your card or letter, and certainly on your envelope to get it opened. Postalgia uses robots that hold real pens to create the most personal direct mail campaigns.

The Design

• One of the biggest advantages of direct mail is that you can design your piece to be eye-catching and enticing, seriously enhancing the power of your offer. As long as you are staying within the guidelines of what the postal service will allow, the envelope and its contents are your blank canvass.
• Postalgia has certified mail design professionals available to work on your next direct mail campaign today, to ensure that your graphic design is not only compliant with postal standards and specifications, but also visually beautiful and effective.

Print and Direct mail finishing

• Work with a great direct mail vendor like Postalgia to get your mail printed, matched, inserted, sealed, stamped, and mailed.

What are postcards?

Postcards are typically small, double-sided cardstock pieces of mail that have both the message and address information on the same card, so that no envelope is required for mailing. They are stamped and dropped in the mail.

What is Enveloped mail?

Enveloped mail is, as the name implies, letters, cards, inserts, newsletters, or any other type of media that is inserted into an envelope. The envelope is addressed and stamped, and the media inside is matched to the envelope to ensure that the right person receives what they were intended to receive.

What is a self-mailer?

A self-mailer, similar to a postcard (and indeed postcards are a type of self mailer), is a piece of mail such as a brochure, a magazine, a catalog, etc… that includes the postage and addressee information directly on the piece, and does not require an envelope.

What is Direct Response Mail?

Direct response mail is any type of mail (typically enveloped mail) that includes a reply device. That can include a pre-addressed, tear-off buckslip that has postage on it, and can become a postcard when dropped in the mail, or a pledge card and a small reply envelope (maybe pre-stamped with postage, or a business reply envelope that includes postage that will only be charged if it is actually mailed). Some direct response mail only includes a phone number, website, or QR code.

What is Stewardship Direct Mail?

Stewardship direct mail is any direct mail whose purpose is to inform the recipient or inspire goodwill in the recipient, without actually asking for anything (as opposed to direct response mail) or including an offer. Examples include holiday cards, birthday cards, thank you packages, new donor or new customer packages, newsletters and impact reports.

While every postal service has their own type of postage, here are the most common types of postage used in the United States and Canada:

United States Postal Service (USPS)

First class stamp – typically the quickest stamp in terms of time required to get from the post office to the customer. Also a more expensive option for domestic mail. It can be dropped in the mail from anywhere, and will be postmarked at its origin city.

Marketing mail stamp – A little bit slower than first class postage, but also much less expensive. Marketing mail is not postmarked at its origin, but it can only be dropped at a USPS fulfillment center. Mail that uses marketing mail must be sorted, and trayed in special USPS trays, sealed with a cardboard sleeve and strapped. These trays must then be dropped at USPS with the appropriate paperwork. There is a minimum of 200 units to use marketing mail postage.

Nonprofit stamp – Similar to marketing mail, the nonprofit stamp has a minimum of 200 units, and requires sortation, traying, and paperwork. It will not be postmarked, and must be dropped at a USPS fulfillment center. Unlike marketing mail, the nonprofit stamp can only be used by nonprofit organizations that are registered with the postal service and have received a nonprofit number.

Canada Post

First class stamp – Much like its American counterpart, the Canada Post first class stamp does not have any minimums, can be dropped in any mailbox, and is the quickest and most expensive option for domestic mail.

Personalized Mail Indicia – The Canada Post personalized mail indicia is printed onto each envelope, rather than stamped on. It is for orders of at least 100 units, and requires having a registered Canada Post account. It is a bit slower than first class postage, and much less expensive (approximately half the price).