Anyone here doing large scale direct mail campaigns?

megatabbers

megatabbers

New member
Jul 21, 2009
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Boston, MA
Trying to get a mailing out the door but I'm getting taken to the cleaners by the fucking printers and mail houses. Fuckers are quoting me all over the place for all types of different shit.

If someone's doing offline mailings, how low are you getting the printing, stuffing, addressing, and stamping costs down to?
 


Shared mail should provide cheaper costs, not sure of the effectiveness decrease by using something like ValPak/MoneyMailer vs solo direct mail.
 
Printers are by far the shadiest bunch of asswipes, for the most part.

I've used overnightprints.com for direct mailers in the past (postcards). Great service and decent prices (0.31 per postcard including postge) if you have volume. I've used them for 5 or so campaigns of 40000 postcards each.

Overnightprints would be my first start, or look for a local printer you can go visit, get pricing and if he fucks you, you know where to send guido.
 
cv2010 said:
Printers are by far the shadiest bunch of asswipes, for the most part.
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Couldn't agree more. The range of prices is fucking mindblowing. I'm doing letters w/ a live first-class stamp and I've had a quote as high as $0.12 to apply it!

I pay my assistant to do some small scale mailings and she can do ~ 1,200 stamps an hour. At that quote I'd have to pay her $144 bucks!

I'll check out overnightprints.com. Thanks for the heads up. Let's see how they compare to the 15 other quotes I've gotten.
 
Oh c'mon now! Any TRUE marketer knows that direct mail is dollar for dollar one of the best "traffic" sources. There's no outing going on here. There have been scores of books written on the subject and even so, only a tiny fraction of "marketers" use it.

It's not like people reading this thread are going to run looking for a list broker (especially all the young blood that believes all marketing revolves around CPA networks or even Clickbank!)

Direct mail is prohibitively expensive. You need a LARGE bankroll and some crazy copywriting skills (or access to a decent copywriter) plus extended knowledge of the ins and outs of the game - like not getting bent over by a printer.
 
Large format:

Creel, Las Vegas (Creel - The premier West Coast printing facility | Home) - large roll outs, good clean work in large quantities. Attached letter shop. Only above 10k pieces, or stay away small fry.

Less then 10k pieces to send?

Small run:

City Blue Print (City Blue Print Inc. Handling all your personal and professional projects!) - Low quantities, real cheap, good quality. Shoot em a PDF and they're ready to go. Talk to Cindy.

Don't give anyone else this info unless they're PAYING you.
 
metoo said:
Large format:

Creel, Las Vegas (Creel - The premier West Coast printing facility | Home) - large roll outs, good clean work in large quantities. Attached letter shop. Only above 10k pieces, or stay away small fry.

Less then 10k pieces to send?

Small run:

City Blue Print (City Blue Print Inc. Handling all your personal and professional projects!) - Low quantities, real cheap, good quality. Shoot em a PDF and they're ready to go. Talk to Cindy.

Don't give anyone else this info unless they're PAYING you.
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Thank you!
 
I'm partnered with a direct mailer on a project. Ping me and I'll get you his info. He really only does major niches. But if you want debt, mortgage etc. He's a master and will issue guarantee's on number of responses.
 
rgordon83 said:
Just curious, what do you consider expensive? What were the quotes you got?
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Well, the highest has been $3718 (and the lowest $2072). It's a test run of 6,000 letters. Postage costs: $2640. The high quote comes to $1.06/letter but the list rental is another $0.12 making it $1.18.

That's $1,118/1000 letters. It's a $50 product and requires ~ 2.2% conversion just to break even on the front-end. That's assuming it's all profit (which it's not, but about $47 of it is not counting refunds).

Those are bad numbers to work off.
 
megatabbers said:
Well, the highest has been $3718 (and the lowest $2072). It's a test run of 6,000 letters. Postage costs: $2640. The high quote comes to $1.06/letter but the list rental is another $0.12 making it $1.18.

That's $1,118/1000 letters. It's a $50 product and requires ~ 2.2% conversion just to break even on the front-end. That's assuming it's all profit (which it's not, but about $47 of it is not counting refunds).

Those are bad numbers to work off.
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check Online Printing Company | Print Online at UPrinting.com! and click the "mailing" tab. looks like they can do 6k double sided trifold brochures (4 color) for about $3k including postage and addressed/stuffed envelopes. I'm sure you coulds get a cheaper custom quote for a plain black letter.

Also, where u getting the list from? InfoUSA?

make sure you really get a targeted list based on what you are selling. And if done right, a 2.2% CR is more than possible. u need great copy and a good list...

ALSO, why the need to test 6k? If you tested 500 or 1k you could print it at kinkos and stuff them yourself. May take a few nights, but you can save a lot of money and see if it's worth it. Get a few friends to come and help you stuff envelopes...
 
And also, if you are really gonne test, you should test a postcard VS. a letter fomat. For the card, have the quick sell ion the card to get them to a URL and then have a more sales-page type offer. For the letter, do the opposite. Have a simpler landing page getting them in to buy right away.

The postcard will be WAY cheaper, so may be worth testing 500 vs. 500.
 
rgordon83 said:
check Online Printing Company | Print Online at UPrinting.com! and click the "mailing" tab. looks like they can do 6k double sided trifold brochures (4 color) for about $3k including postage and addressed/stuffed envelopes. I'm sure you coulds get a cheaper custom quote for a plain black letter.

Also, where u getting the list from? InfoUSA?

make sure you really get a targeted list based on what you are selling. And if done right, a 2.2% CR is more than possible. u need great copy and a good list...

ALSO, why the need to test 6k? If you tested 500 or 1k you could print it at kinkos and stuff them yourself. May take a few nights, but you can save a lot of money and see if it's worth it. Get a few friends to come and help you stuff envelopes...
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Thanks for the link. Will get a quote from them as well. Getting my lists from Macromark. The reason I'm testing 6K is because I want to try out 3 different lists, 2,000 names each, hotline buyers. They're as targeted as they can get. Recent mail-order buyers with price points similar to mine.

Hope you're right about 2.2%! Based on my last quote I'll actually profit on the front-end if I hit those numbers.
 
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