Get Comfortable With Your Direct Mail Houses

It is a lot of work getting your direct mail pieces out. What happens is that if you are trying to do everything yourself you finally get to a point that you don't want to do it anymore. Mail houses are very inexpensive and here's why. The United States Post Office offers a presort discount. If you will bundle the mail according to their specification and bundle it to the first three digits of the zip code USPS will give you an even better discount. If you will do all 5 digits of the zip code, they will give you the best discount. If you will do a zip plus 4 presort, in other words sorted all the way down to the carrier route, USPS will give you the best discount.

A mail house will sort it for you and apply that discount to your fee. What that means is if you are at home trying to do it yourself you will pay full postage. Not to mention the hours lost. The savings that you get from the postage will almost pay for the mail house. Let me give you an example and a resource. Alliance Productions, Inc., talk to Mike and tell him you are one of my students and he will give you special pricing. He will print up your postcard, presort, and charge you 24 cents for the preparation and 24 cents for the postage if you are using the half sheet postcard. The half sheet postcard is the best size because it stands out in the mail and it is big enough for you to get plenty of advertising copy on it. The post office is going to charge you regular first class postage as if it were a letter, currently 41 cents. With the presort discount the mailhouse is only going to charge you 24 cents. A 17 cents savings that is then applied to the production of the piece. You are saving 17 so each piece is only costing you 7 cents.

When I say that he is doing the production that means that he is doing all the card stock to go out, the cutting of it, the ink to go on it, because if you do this at home you are going to spend an awful lot of money on ink in your printer. And then he applies the stamp and takes it to the post office, all of the production for 7 cents each. It is well worth it. There is no way that you can do it for that price at home. If you are interested in doing direct mail call him.

You can use a mail house near you as well. I did a lot of research and found him to be one of the cheapest and he understands our business. You can send him a download of the addresses you want it to go to, send him a download of the marketing copy you want and he will merge those two together and create the postcard, print it up, bundle it, get the presort, and take it to the post office.

Mail houses are a much easier way to get your marketing out the door. Let other people do it. Outsource it so that you have more time to put into your business. All you have to do is send him your addresses, send him your marketing file and you are done. That marketing piece is done and off your books. In fact, you can get so good you have five different pieces that you normally send out. You can give all of those to him in advance. Send those to him and say this is mailing one on such and such date, mailing two on such and such date, etc. This is how you want to set up your business so that you are not being consumed by all the individual tasks. Your focus should be on getting more sellers in, negotiating with them, negotiating with buyers and answering the calls that come in from your marketing. That's where you are going to make your money.