Postage cost is usually the biggest single expense in a direct mail campaign. While you don’t need to be an expert on direct mail, your mail service provider should be. At Knepper Press we offer professional help in these four critical areas:
Mail piece design
Size and weight are basic design considerations. Mailings fall into three categories: letters, flats and parcels. Letters mail at the lowest postage rates while parcels have the highest.Therefore, whenever it’s practical, the mail piece should be within the dimensional requirements of a letter.
Pieces larger than 6-1/8” x 11-1/2” are designated as flats. Flats weighing up to 4 ounces are charged at a piece rate. Any pieces weighing more than 4 ounces are charged at a dual rate of per piece and per pound. Knepper Press will help you plan your mailing piece to weigh less than 4 ounces or as little as possible to minimize your cost.
Address management savings
Ideally, all addresses should be delivery point validated. Addresses that cannot be delivered point validation will mail at higher rates. In addition, the delivery to such addresses is not assured. We can provide CASS certified address validation service which will standardize your mailing list. It will also identify invalid addresses. You won’t waste postage on incorrect or incomplete addresses.
The removal of duplicate addresses can be a complex process. While removing duplicates by address alone is a straightforward process, deleting duplicates by both name and address involves the use of complex algorithms to achieve optimum results.
Presorting
Presorting offers significant savings. Essentially, the finer the sortation the lower the postage cost. The mail list itself limits the extent to which a finer sort can be made. Whenever there is “sufficient saturation” in a mail list, Delivery Sequence Processing is the way to maximize postage discounts through saturation rates (Saturation, high density plus and high density).
Mail induction
Mail induction refers to the point of entry into the USPS distribution system. The bigger the postal discount, the closer it is to the delivery address. We accomplish this by drop shipping a mailing to the postal distribution center closest to the majority of the addressees. We evaluate whether the postage discount associated with the drop shipment is greater than the cost of trucking to a given destination.
When budgeting for a direct mail campaign the costs of design, copywriting, mailing list creation or rental, printing and postage should all be considered. Postage is usually the largest single component of these costs and often is more than all the others combined. A direct mail piece may cost as little as 30 cents or many dollars per piece, depending on its complexity and the number of copies mailed. Direct mail advertising for luxury products, such as high end condos, to a select elite audience may need to be luxurious (and expensive) to be effective. On the other hand, mailings advertising inexpensive products such as pizza to a mass audience need to be inexpensive. Simple pieces like jumbo postcards can be used effectively to reach larger audiences at minimal cost.
At Knepper Press we print, process and mail many millions of pieces annually. Direct mail advertisers rely on us for timely and economical production of mailings as simple as postcards, as complex as large catalogs and kits or almost any mailable product. You can count on our experts for essential advice as you plan your next direct mail campaign.
