Direct mail campaigns require planning and wise financial management. You want to be sure that the audience that receives your mailings are the ones that are most likely to use your products or services. You also want to be sure that the mailing products you use do not cost a fortune. To save money and hit the right target audience, here are a few tips.
1. Use Postcards
Why postcards? Well, for one, they are significantly cheaper to send than flyers, brochures and letters. Most post offices only charge half the postage on a postcard as they do for a first class stamp. Half of that part of your mailing expenses stays in your pocket, and that’s a definite benefit.
2. Target Everyone, or Target a Cross-Section
Clearly, targeting everyone with a post office box and/or a street address is expensive. If your services or goods are not for the average consumer, this is a massive beginner’s mistake. It is extremely expensive to mail to everyone within a ten-mile radius of your business. Of course, if you run a retail store or grocery store, a marketing mailer en masse makes perfect sense.
Instead, target the audience you want. Just contractors? Just banks and financial institutions? Just office buildings? Focus on exactly who you want to do business with, and then send your postcards to these potential customers. You will save a lot of money focusing on just one cross-section of the working population at a time. You can also purchase mailing lists for these very specific businesses which saves time and money on research and compiling your own lists.
3. Do Batch Mailings
Rather than address potential clients specifically, you could do batch mailings. With batch mailings, you pay for the postage, then request that the postcards be delivered to a specific area, such as the business parks or the industrial parks in a particular zip code. The post office then delivers your postcards to these groups and areas only.
4. Buy Pre-Stamped Postage
Printing companies now offer pre-stamped postage services. Not only can you reduce the amount of postage you pay by using postcards, but you can reduce your postage costs further by requesting this service. Your printing company places stamps on all of your postcards and bulk mailings that you order from them. You save a lot of money from this service in addition to all the time saved from stamping the mailers yourself. Once your order from the printing company arrives, you only have to address the postcards and mail them.
5. Buy in Bulk
This is one area of business where buying in bulk is a bonus. Printing companies who print your postcards and other mail marketing products offer deeper discounts when you buy more. Instead of just buying five hundred postcards, why not five thousand? Sure, the final price costs you a little more, but consider the fact that you will go through five thousand postcards in a matter of months, and that each of these from your bulk purchase will cost far less per card than the five hundred you initially considered.