Controlling Direct Mail Costs

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, balancing your desired delivery times.

A mailing list should be cleaned and refined before the print order is given.  Very often, a mailing list could be reduced 10% or even more after the list is cleaned for move updates, the removal of duplicates and bad addresses and, if appropriate, the removal of moves out-of-area.  Why waste money on excess printing and mail handling?  Be sure that the expert you hire to do your mailing is proficient at this and will work with you to provide your list clean-up in a timely manner prior to placing your print order.

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 mailing where 40% is nationwide and 60% is local.  You have asked mailers to quote the job for presorted first class mail.  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.  You may not have thought of that – mailings is not your business, why should you? 

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.  Again, this is not your business to know, but don’t you have the right to expect your hired expert to direct you. 

Look at all these factors before you compare the total cost, not a single one.