In the world of direct mail, finding ways to streamline operations and cut costs without sacrificing effectiveness is a top priority for many businesses. One of the most effective strategies to achieve this is combining prospects and existing customers in the same mailing. By doing so, you can significantly reduce postage costs while still delivering a compelling message to both groups. Here’s how this approach can benefit your direct mail campaigns and some tips to make it work for you.
Understanding the Cost Benefits
- Bulk Mailing Discounts: When you send a large volume of mail, you often qualify for bulk mailing discounts. By consolidating your prospects and customers into a single mailing, you increase the total volume of mail sent, which can qualify you for these lower rates. This can lead to substantial savings compared to sending separate mailings.
- Streamlined Production: Combining your mailing lists reduces the number of separate mailings that need to be produced, sorted, and delivered. This consolidation can lead to efficiencies in printing and processing, further driving down costs.
- Reduced Handling Costs: With fewer individual mailings, you cut down on the time and labor required for handling and logistics. This not only saves on postage but also reduces operational costs associated with preparing and sending your mail.
Strategies for Combining Prospects and Customers
- Utilize Strategic Personalization: Personalization increases the effectiveness of your mailings. Often, marketers want to present different offers or messages to customers and prospects. There are a couple of basic ways to accomplish this.
- Static color shells with black imprinting. If you use the same creative on your mailings for both customers and prospects, then you can utilize black imprinting to send rich offers to prospects while sending less rich retention offers to current customers.
- Use full color variable data print. This allows you to present different creative to customers, prospects and other segments. You can even toss other objectives for your direct mail campaign into the mix. The cost for print is slightly higher, but there may be a big postage win by taking this approach. If your creative varies by segment or between your customers and prospects, you will want to employ full color variable print.
- Cleaning Up Your Data: It is imperative that your data is optimized for this strategy to be efficient. This includes maintaining a clean customer database with up-to-date information and obtaining as many addresses for your customers as possible so you can send the right offers and creative to the right homes. Removing duplicates once you have combined the list of prospects and customers and suppressing customers from your prospect lists will prevent people from receiving multiple pieces or rich offers that will hurt your margin.
- Tracking Response: Utilize different SKUs or offers for each segment so you can easily track your response in each and track response by location. You will be able to see what offers get a greater response rate and will be able to understand which offers elicit a response while still maintaining as much margin as possible for your mailing.
- Test and Refine: Start with a pilot campaign to test the combined mailing approach. Monitor the results closely to see how it performs compared to separate mailings. Use the insights gained to refine your strategy and improve future campaigns.
Combining prospects and customers in the same direct mail campaign is a smart way to drive down postage costs while still delivering targeted, effective messages. By leveraging bulk mailing discounts, streamlining production processes, and personalizing content, you can create a cost-effective strategy that maximizes the impact of your direct mail efforts. At PrintComm, we’re here to help you implement these strategies and ensure your direct mail campaigns are both efficient and impactful. Contact us today to learn more about how we can support your next mailing project.
