Direct Mail Campaigns
Print-and-mail campaigns run end to end. The list built and verified from scratch, the card designed, the vendor managed, the drop confirmed.
Good fit for
- Businesses whose buyers are a findable list rather than a search query
- Shops with a specialized service and a scattered national market
- Owners who have bought a mailing list before and got nothing back
- Anyone who needs the campaign run, not just the artwork handed over
Deliverables
- A recipient list built and verified from source, with the unmailable rows removed and shown to you
- Print-ready card artwork with a compliant address panel
- Vendor selection, order placement, and proof approval
- Any landing page or QR destination the card points at, checked before the drop
- The final counts, the mail date, and what it cost
The list is the campaign
Everybody obsesses over the card. The photo, the headline, the color of the coupon.
The card is maybe a quarter of it. Send a beautiful postcard to a rented list of people who don’t want what you sell and you’ve bought yourself an expensive way to print. Send a plain one to five hundred people who specifically need the thing, and the phone rings.
So I build the list first, from actual sources, and I show you what I dropped.
What running one actually looks like
The campaign I ran this summer mailed 496 six-by-nine cards, First Class, for a marine canvas shop with a national mail-in service. The list started as a national sweep of boat dealers and yacht brokerages, got scored down to the ones that plausibly needed canvas work, and then every surviving row went through an address check. Twelve duplicates got caught at the vendor and pulled before postage.
The owner’s own ten names went in by hand. Those are the ones you can’t buy.
The card carried a QR code, so the page it pointed at got fixed and redeployed before the drop, not after somebody scanned it.
You can see that client’s site in the We’ve Got You Covered case study.
What it costs and what I need
My side starts at $650: the list, the card, the vendor, and the order. Print and postage go through at cost with a cap you agree to in writing first, so the print bill can’t run away from you.
From you I need the offer, the service area or the buyer type, your own list of customers worth including, and a logo and a few real photos of the work. If there’s nothing usable to photograph, say so early. A card with no real pictures of the work is a different card.
How the work runs
- Step 1 Work out who gets it
We define the buyer, then I build the list from real sources and score it. You see the count and a sample before anything is printed.
- Step 2 You add your own names
Your best customers and the ones you already have a relationship with go in by hand. They matter more than anything I can find.
- Step 3 Design and proof
I design the card around one offer, clear the postal requirements, and get a vendor proof approved before the run.
- Step 4 Drop and report
The order goes in, and you get the final mailed count, the in-home window, and the cost breakdown.
Common questions
What does a mail campaign cost?
My side starts at $650 for the list build, the card, and running the order. Print and postage are billed at cost and depend entirely on quantity, so you get a cap agreed in writing before anything is spent.
Can't I just buy a mailing list?
You can, and that's usually why direct mail gets a bad name. Rented lists are stale and broad. I build from sources that match your actual buyer and drop every row that fails an address check, so you pay postage on real addresses.
How many pieces should I send?
I'd rather send five hundred to the right people than five thousand to a general area. You're not paying postage to reach people who were never going to buy, and a smaller drop leaves budget to send again.
How do you know the addresses are good?
Every row is gated on a deliverability check before it ships, and duplicates get removed at the vendor. You see the dropped rows, not just the surviving ones.
Do I have to have a website for this to work?
No, but the card has to send people somewhere that works. If it carries a QR code or a URL, I check that destination before the drop rather than after.
Can you do a postcard for a local area instead?
Yes. Saturation mail to selected postal routes is cheaper per piece and makes sense for a local trade. It's a different list method and gets quoted separately.
Have a project that fits this service?
Send the brief, or look through the work before you decide.