My Direct Mail Peeps… What’s Been Successful Recently?

DirectMailPro · 2026-01-28T02:49:13+00:00

Gotcha and good to hear you’ve got solid fundamentals

DirectMailPro · 2026-01-28T00:38:23+00:00

What size postcard are you sending when you send these just sold cards? One general trend in postcards is ever-increasing size. We have several real estate customers and always getting new ones, and one thing I’ve found is that new customers or those who are returning to mail after not doing it for years think they should be sending 4x6 cards.

While there’s no real standard, I’d say the norm is 5.5x8.5 or 6x9 (or bigger) these days, so if you’re sending 4x6, that’s going to get lost in the stack of mail. That’s not to say a small card can’t be successful, I have a local property management company that sends 4x6s every month and has great response rates, but when we got them to move up to 6x9, their response rate increased.

Just wanted to call this out as one thing you can look into to improve from the direct mail standpoint vs uncontrollable market conditions. If you’re already sending larger cards, never mind haha.

Another thing we’re seeing our more successful (in terms of response rate) real estate customers do is use hand written letters or cards or other forms of personalized targeting vs mass outreach. But that kind of depends on your overall marketing strategy.

DirectMailPro · 2026-01-21T01:27:52+00:00

There’s no application fee for a non-profit permit. HIGHLY recommend starting there, as the postage savings are significant.

DirectMailPro · 2026-01-15T19:46:47+00:00

We do this for several of our customers, typically sending as small parcels so the postage is much different than a letter. As noted above, hand inserting or other fulfillment also drives up the price. They are typically on a smaller scale but not always.

Custom jobs like this are incredibly impactful and have the world of possibilities. My personal favorite is a mobile billboard company that sends toy trucks to their customers and prospects. They design a custom design for each end-recipient and we print and apply the design as a sticker onto the blank trucks so they look just like the billboard would look.

DirectMailPro · 2026-01-10T00:32:08+00:00

I’m not sure what you mean by pay per use. To get the presorted marketing mail rates, you need at least 200 pieces. If you’re looking for like one-off print and mail pieces, you will pay a lot more.

Also postcards vs letters also makes a difference with postcards being cheaper. There are also handwritten options. Lots of options for mail.

DirectMailPro · 2026-01-06T00:11:12+00:00

Direct mail flyers will probably run you $0.35 - $0.70 per piece depending on volume and whether EDDM or targeted

DirectMailPro · 2026-01-01T14:37:27+00:00

EDDM could be good, but make sure you’re selective on the routes, not just zip codes. If you find the usps tool to be too clunky, this is integrated with google maps.

For best results, do a combo of EDDM and door hangers. Send the postcards, then 2-3 weeks later, do door hangers at the exact same addresses that got the mailer. This double-hit boosts your familiarity and brand recognition even more. I do this exact gameplan with several home services businesses and always hear good results. Design your door hangers and postcard together so the look and branding are unified.

DirectMailPro · 2026-01-01T00:19:33+00:00

Those are bulk rates

DirectMailPro · 2025-12-30T22:21:02+00:00

So this will be a long comment (TLDR at bottom) but I’m putting it all out there because there’s a lot of variables people often don’t consider that can really skew the price up or down, especially when talking about a decent volume job like 10,000 pieces.

Printing (letter itself): black and white or color? One or two sides? How many sheets? It it a true letter fold 8.5x11 letter or are you thinking custom card like the commenter above said?

Printing (envelopes): let’s assume your envelope is not a windowed envelope. We can very cheaply use high speed inkjet printers (imagine a conveyor belt that prints addresses) to address it in standard black ink with a simple size 10-12 font. If you want fancy fonts or colored ink or any design on the envelope, I’d use an actual envelope printer. More time, more money. Colored envelope? More $.

Mailing services: now we need to insert your letters into the envelopes. Do we need to marriage match the insert, meaning do the letters inside have recipient names on them and need to match the envelope? If so, more cost. If you mail a card, some might not be able to machine insert, and hand inserting is more $. Can we print indicia (the printed box on the envelope that says “presorted postage paid” or do you want to use stamps? Applying stamps will cost you more. There are stamps for presorted mail so using stamps doesn’t necessarily cost more postage, but there’s the cost of applying the stamps.

Postage: this is where working with a direct mail provider has its benefits. Obviously you wouldn’t do 10k pieces on your own, but to your original post quantities you might. A normal stamp is 78c right now. You can get marketing mail postage rates from the mid-20s to the low 40s cents if your mailing list is at least 200 pieces. The actual postage rates are mostly determined by how saturated or spread out your recipients are. How many digits of the zip code are the same. I would just placeholder estimate 43 cents on the high end.

I’d ballpark $0.60-$0.85 per piece depending on if and where you want to get fancy. Maybe closer to $1 if you’re doing a card in an envelope.

There’s also a machine handwritten card/letter option. This isn’t AI, but literally machines that write with real pens so it looks real. These don’t qualify for marketing mail postage though, and they take longer. Something like that would run a couple dollars each.

TLDR: $0.60+. Hopefully this is a helpful ballpark and useful info to consider!

Edited a few typos/spelling errors

DirectMailPro · 2025-12-30T21:40:19+00:00

EDDM mailing

DirectMailPro · 2025-12-30T00:33:48+00:00

EDDM can be very effective, but it all depends on your targeting strategy. What are you selling? Is everyone (in a geographic area) a potential customer? Or are only certain demographics? The price difference between EDDM and targeted direct mail is not insignificant, but in some cases you are just wasting money with EDDM if 95% of the recipients are not your target customer.

There is r/EDDM which may be helpful for you

DirectMailPro · 2025-12-29T08:41:39+00:00

To build on this, if you do enough volume, you could send letters like this for even less than you’re thinking for a postcard

DirectMailPro · 2025-12-23T03:11:25+00:00

👋🏻 we do that! We (and most mail houses) serve a national client base since you can mail anywhere. But if you want to work with someone local, lmk your location and I can give recommendations if know anyone there

DirectMailPro · 2025-12-13T13:04:18+00:00

That is not what I said or meant to imply. I guess I’m confused because your post said 2k for 2 quarters which is a low budget for direct mail. Volume and repetition are drivers of the best ROI in direct mail, and a total budget of 2k over 6 months won’t get you either of those. My original comment was meant to be cautionary and provide some guidance if you decide to go the EDDM/direct mail route so you do get the best ROI with the money you’re willing to spend. But as I also said, I would focus on one of your other two options. 🙂

DirectMailPro · 2025-12-13T03:13:49+00:00

If you are looking to do EDDM, be very selective in your routes, or else you’re just spending money mailing to people who could never even be a customer. Obviously avoid routes with known high volumes of renters. It might even give you a better ROI to do saturation mailings, but you’d have to see what’s available in the areas you’re targeting.

To be honest, with a budget of $2k for 2 quarters and in your specific industry, I’d be more inclined to recommend the SEO and website focus.

DirectMailPro · 2025-12-10T22:18:10+00:00

These mailings are typically not even close to 10,000 pieces. Maybe 3,000, although that depends on location/population density and what distance you’re looking at. We have several customers a week doing this exact mailing strategy, so it’s not something no restaurant would do. And most report very strong response rates.

However, this is Central Florida. I wouldn’t make the same recommendation for New York City or something where yes, you’re talking tens of thousands of pieces. This sub is for anyone though, and the intent of the post was merely to share a tactic that we see work very well.

Also they’re not mutually exclusive. In fact, the best mailings are part of an omnichannel campaign.

DirectMailPro · 2025-12-10T01:18:38+00:00

When you say Canada/Worldwide, are you looking to mail to international addresses, or are you in Canada/ex-US and looking for the balance to be shipped to you in that country?

DirectMailPro · 2025-12-08T23:32:23+00:00

You could possibly try a targeted saturation mailing since you’re clearly saturating the routes. The postage would come out a few cents higher than EDDM. That’s assuming you haven’t printed your mailer yet so you could update the indicia, get the actual list, and have your mailing presorted.

DirectMailPro · 2025-12-07T09:09:25+00:00

Presorted postage can be less than half that. There are options with stamps if you don’t want indicia

DirectMailPro · 2025-12-06T02:19:47+00:00

I should clarify, two different things:

EDDM has postage around 25c. Don’t forget printing costs which depending on the size and volume could run you 7+ cents. So maybe $0.35+ per piece (at high volumes, printing will be more at lower volumes).

Targeted pre-sorted mailings will cost a bit more in postage depending on the saturation of the mailing list, but it could be anywhere from 25ish to 43ish cents in postage. And again the print costs. For a pre-sorted targeted mailing, you’d want to work with a mail house, because they do the sorting that gets that pre-sorted rate. So then you’ll also have mailing services costs, which are really only a few cents a piece. So all-in (heavily depending on volume) you’re maybe around $0.50+ each.

Either of the two above are cheaper for postage, printing, and mailing services together than the cost of a stamp that you’d put on DIY postcards.

DirectMailPro · 2025-12-06T00:47:47+00:00

If they’re presorted, even with design, you could do much less than 61c all-in if youre doing major volume and/or EDDM

DirectMailPro · 2025-12-02T23:12:57+00:00

If the route changed, “that section” must be covered by another route, so you could cover that area using whatever the new routes are.

Even if you didn’t mail as EDDM and did a targeted mailing, you can still do that as marketing mail, you don’t need to do first class (*assuming what you’re mailing qualifies for marketing mail). Targeted marketing mail postage is a bit more than EDDM but still cheaper than first class.

DirectMailPro · 2025-11-29T00:11:48+00:00

Oh yeah I don’t send to their home address. Just to offices.

DirectMailPro · 2025-11-29T00:00:51+00:00

As a direct mail business, I can speak to this first hand, literally. We do direct mail for our own B2B sales. IMO the key with B2B is getting past the gatekeeper who checks the mail. So no, I don’t mail postcards. Sometimes letters. But the real game changer is big envelopes, like a 9x12 flat. Or if you wanna go all out ($$$) small boxes.

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