When most of us think about sending out, let’s say 10,000 brochures or offers, we naturally think of using bulk mail. After all the printing costs are the same, but First Class costs twice as much.
Here is how most of us think the mailing process will happen.
The printer prints 10,000 copies of your camera ready brochure. These are then delivered to the letter shop that stuffs envelopes for bulk mailing. They sort your brochures into zip codes and deliver them to the post office. The post office weighs them and determines the postage. The letter shop pays and sends you the receipt. The post office sends it to other post offices in various cities. Then a local postal carrier delivers them to your prospects.
That is the way it is supposed to happen. Unfortunately, what can really happen is often very different.
The printer is only obligated to print plus or minus 10,000 copies. You could get a few as only 9,000 copies from an honest printer, or even less from a dishonest one. The lettershop will make some mistakes so they might only get 8,000 envelopes to the post office (even though they give you a post office receipt that says 10,000 – there are ways). There are also many cases on record where post offices “lose” bulk mail and many carriers just can’t be bothered with bulk mail by the end of the day. Moreover, bulk mail will not be forwarded even though prospects have left a forwarding address. You might be lucky if 7,000 get delivered to prospects. Unfortunately, statistics show that 80% of people who get bulk mail, take one look at it, consider it junk, and thrown it out without even reading it. The result is that only about 1,400 actually take the time to open the envelope and read you brochure or offer.
Original print run requested 10,000 Actual quantity printed -1,000 10% not printed GIVEN TO LETTERSHOP 9,000 Lettershop damage -1,000 Another 10% gone GIVEN TO POST OFFICE 8,000 Post office “errors” -800 10% Unable to forward -600 7% DELIVERED TO PROSPECTS 6,600 Thrown out without being read -5,280 80% national average NUMBER READ BY PROSPECTS 1,400
What did this campaign cost? Let’s say printing is constant at $1 each brochure. Bulk rate is about $0.22 each. So you would be paying $1.22 for each piece. The cost would be $12,000 for 10,000 mailings. If you got a 2% response rate which is considered good for direct mail, you got 200 leads. Each lead cost therefore $60. (In reality since only 1,400 pieces were read and 200 people responded the actual response rate is really 14% of those who actually read your proposal.)
Is there any room for improvement?
Let’s see what might happen if you decided to use first class postage instead of bulk rate. Three things might improve. First, post office errors could drop in half to 5% because they handle first class letters better than bulk mail. Second 600 more letters would get forwarded.
GIVEN TO POST OFFICE 8,000 Post office “errors” -400 5% fewer mailings “lost” Unable to forward 0 First class is always forwarded% DELIVERED TO PROSPECTS 7,600
That would mean 7,600 people will now get the brochure. The third big benefit is that people are at least twice as inclined to open personally address mail than bulk mail. That would mean cutting in half the number of brochures thrown out without being read
Thrown out without being read -3,040 40% half as less NUMBER READ BY PROSPECTS 4,560/td> 3 times more readers
In other words, 4,560 prospects now will actually read your brochure.
And if 14% of readers responded as above, that would be over 600 leads instead of 200!
The first class mailing cost $1 for the print and stuffing plus $0.44 for first class postage. That is $1.44 per each mailing. The total mailing would now cost $14,400. That is $48 per lead. Three times the leads at 20% less cost per lead.
Now just think what the results would be if you could only get the printer and lettershop to really deliver 10,000 brochures to the post office.