Direct Mailing Costs

[Norman]

Evening guys,

I run a smallish home improvement company. Thinking about doing a direct mail to say about 500 old leads I have in my database. These are people we pitched to but were unsuccessful.

Just wondering whats the most cost effective way of posting these as this size of mailing is too small for any of Royal Mail schemes.

Any advice will be very much appreciated

NP

 

[Leap Frog Data]

Hello Norman,

Have you considered getting a telemarketing company to call this data for you?
A lot of the companies I know will call the data and will only charge upon results e.g: Confirmed leads.

Just an idea.

 

[neildigital]

The cheapest I would think for this small amount is franking, to get the reduced mailing rate. I am happy to price the printing of letters, personalised, enveloped and franked for you if thats of interested.

Neil

 

[Postforce]

Hi there Norman

1000 letters is normally the 'entry' point to obtain cheaper postage. I can post your 500 through our Royal Mail account at 25p a go. (over 1000 it goes down to 22p ish) But to be honest on 500 it will only save you £25 on postage compared to stamps. On this occasion you may be better using stamps - as it will make the envelopes seem more 'personal'.

Need any free advice drop me a line

 

[hdm]

Dear Norman

I agree with Brian that stamps would be more personalised. Even better, use a pen to write out your addresses, for the highest response. Best of luck.

SS

 

[Joe E]

Hi Norman

Speak to Mike Hill @ Mailing partners www.mailingpartners.com top service definitly be able to advise.

Kind Regards

Chris

 

[JohnGrove]

I would agree with Brian above. Stamps in this instance would be the best option.

I you want to outsource the production then I'd be happy to help but the cheapest option would obviously be to do it yourself.

John

 

[SarahCollins]

Cost-effective at that level will be using stamps and as, others have suggested, hand writing the envelopes.

I know it sounds a real bind to sit there and write them out, but people tend to scan and sort their mail into two piles; the stuff that looks personal and the stuff that looks like junk. If you can get yours into the personal pile by handwriting and individually stamping, you stand a much higher chance of your post being opened. Handwriting generates a different feeling in people to printed envelopes. They know it took time and it stands out because we so rarely see handwriting from companies any more.

Don't forget to factor in the costs of paper, envelopes, printing ink and time putting it all together not just the stamps.

A couple of other pieces of advice:

1) In your direct mail, make it personal to each customer. Don't forget to mention the previous job as a reminder and ask them if it went well. You might find the job never happened for one reason or another and they could ask you for a requote.

2) Also, perhaps try to sell them on a home improvement project that is small and relatively affordable as a first step, maybe with an time-limited offer. What projects do a lot of people start in the spring in your line of work? If that succeeds and you've done a good job, you can upsell bigger services to them because they trust you.

3) If you want to increase the effectiveness of your direct mail, try and follow up with a telephone call a couple of days after it has gone out. Sometimes people are interested but life takes over and they put the letter down and other things go on top of it.

Hope your mailing goes well - come back and ask if you need some more ideas about what to write in your letter.

 

[hdm]

Dear Sarah

I enjoyed reading your post. I run a UK mailing house, and we are offering a "handwritten direct mail" service, before handwriting becomes a lost art.

Look forward to reading your future posts.

Sally

 

[SarahCollins]

Dear Sarah

I enjoyed reading your post. I run a UK mailing house, and we are offering a "handwritten direct mail" service, before handwriting becomes a lost art.

Look forward to reading your future posts.

Sally

Ahhhhh...fantastic! I'm glad there are people out there doing it. Do you find your clients get higher response rates?

Sometimes I do long for the old days where everything had a personal touch. Then again, occasionally I find something that makes me glad we have technology.

I found some old documents in my father-in-law's shed relating to a business he shut down 40-odd years ago. There were a load of identical letters, obviously for a mass mailing to the clients, and all were hand-typed perfectly. There must have about 40 of them, all three pages in length. I felt so sorry for the poor typists that did them because they didn't end up being sent out!

 

[hdm]

Dear Sarah

Although Holborn Direct Mail has been established for over 55 years, this is actually a new direct mail service that we are offering, to see if there's much interest out there, so it's too early to say.

I know it's very big is America, and the US companies claim that it produces such a high response rate. So it would be great if it took off in the UK.

Although I agree with your thoughts on handwriting versus technology, it is lovely to receive a nicely handwritten personal letter.

I am also in the process of clearing out some of my late father's old handwritten papers, so it was interesting to read your section about the hand-typed letters. In the old days, we used to send out hand-typed letters, with "matched-in" address blocks.

Sally

 

[emailblaster]

Hi

For the most cost effective way of hitting volume with a professional document I would recommend email marketing.

This is in my opinion the cheapest way to start qualifying a warm/cold list. Direct mail is an expensive way to contact large numbers (when you factor in postage, paper, ink, time! etc).

From email marketing, through the available stats you can select the targets that have opened your communication and/or clicked through to your website.

Then at this stage by all means target them with direct mail > as they are probably worth spending money on marketing them.

We run an online email marketing system: www.mailmanageruk.co.uk - you are welcome to try it for free and see how you get on with it.

Hope this helps.

Regards

Jamie

 

[S Isaac]

Don't forget you can buy stamps online a little cheaper on eBay and I think the price goes up next month so you might want to get it before it bumps up a few pence more.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Norman,

depending on what the mailing will look like, have you thought about using an online service?

We have moved all of our bulk mailings (a couple dozen to several thousands) to this format and it could be marginal as to if it sves money, however, dependant on the type of mailing, you can really save time.

If you are mailing a single page/sided mono letter, the best value I have found is cfhdocmail (note: that is an affiliate link), who will charge 25p for stationary, print and postage. You can use their print driver, so you can personalise your letters via mail merge and then print in the same way you do to a normal printer.

If you want more pages, double sided or colour, their service is also good, but not the best value.

FYI we do have an RM account, but second class is the same price as above i.e. 25p - the main advantage here is that you can print several pages, add in a leaflet etc, but we got so bored of the manual work (stuffing, labelling etc), we have switched everything to online systems!

Also, as mentioned, do not forget email marketing, but maybe after you have done a personalised snail mail campaign.