Targeted direct mail marketing is often more effective than TV, radio, newspaper and yellow page advertising. Direct mail is a smart option for small business owners because it can communicate complete information about a product or service and reach almost any target audience and at a reasonably low cost. By using custom-made letters you have more written space to sell your services than you would in a magazine or newspaper ad. Instead of competing with large companies who have enormous advertising budgets and can afford to continuously run full-size magazine or newspaper ads, you only compete with the other mail pieces in that person’s mailbox. You can increase your response rate and increase your sales by getting the "right offer to the right person".

Have your previous Direct Mail campaigns failed?
Times have changed... so the old methods of direct mail don’t always work. Below are some of the most common problems we see in direct mail today.

Many companies discontinue direct mail due to low Return on Investment. This low ROI is generally contributed to the following factors:

Our main goal is to increase your response rate while keeping your cost to a minimum.

A large number of mail pieces do not get opened, because they look like “junk mail”. Most mail recipients have developed an eye for spotting junk mail and will usually throw away these pieces without opening them.

We take steps to insure that your mail pieces do not resemble “junk mail” by printing envelopes that appear personalized and professional and do not resemble mass-mail. Many other printers in the industry, due to the high cost, do not generally practice these steps. [More]

The mail piece is opened, but the recipient does not receive it positively, because it appears to be a mass-mailing, which makes them feel like a number in an assembly line environment without any personal service or concern.

Our letters look personal. The letters are mail merged with your customer’s information. The letter directly addresses the recipient by first and last name and can also include specific information about the customer. [More]

Mail piece is too “gimmicky” and is not well received by the recipient.

Our letters are professional in quality & design. They appear as if they are coming from a smaller business that can identify with the recipient’s specific needs and offer them personalized service.

The mail piece contains too much material to read, is confusing, and cannot be easily understood after reading through it one time.

We can mail as many pages as you’d like, but we do not recommend having too many pages. Many experts in the industry agree that your mail piece needs to get the point across in about 15-20 seconds. Most people will not spend too much time reading an advertisement received in the mail, simply because they receive too much.

The mail piece is not professional and is not appropriate for the target audience, e.g. very low cost postcard to a sophisticated business client.

The majority of our mail pieces are one-page fully mail-merged letters in a #10 envelope. The letters include your signature and additional recipient information merged/printed in the body of the letter. Your return address & the recipient address is printed directly on the envelope; we do not use labels or window envelopes.

Increasing postage cost. Naturally the obvious solution would be to use “discounted postage”. Unfortunately most mailing houses in the industry, to keep their cost down, will use a “postage imprint” (permit number printed directly on the envelope), which significantly takes away from the "personal appearance" of the mail piece and makes it look like “junk mail”.

We highly recommend using regular postage stamps and we clearly understand that this could be a cost prohibitive option. We can certainly accommodate discounted postage and we go out of our way to make the discounted postage work harder & better for you. Most mailing houses will use imprint postage (permit number printed directly on the envelope); we use actual postage stamps (called “pre-canceled” stamps). Pre-canceled stamps always get a better response than imprint postage because it makes the envelope look less like "junk mail".

High printing cost: Most printers believe that the more expensive a mail piece is the higher your response rate will be. Therefore they’ll try to up-sell you to full-color printing, more expensive paper, more pages, and even include promotional items.

A more expensive mail piece doesn’t necessarily create more response; the “right” mail piece for the target audience will generate the highest response rate.