Now, let’s focus on the typical expenses associated with a direct mail marketing campaign.
1. marketing copywriting costs
The message you want to deliver to your customers or potential customers plays a crucial role in your mailing piece. If you are creative and good with catchy phrases, you can write the message yourself. otherwise, you’ll need to find a professional copywriter. The cost will depend on the writer’s level of experience, as well as the length of copy you need.
2. mailing list
The response rate of your direct mail marketing campaign will largely depend on the mailing list you use. Mailing lists can be free and are especially effective if you build lists based on your existing database. By integrating your CRM with a direct mail automation tool, you’ll be able to reach your older customers quickly. however, depending on your campaign goals (ie attracting new customers versus introducing a new product to existing ones), your existing lists might not be the best solution.
This is why many companies buy or rent lists for distribution. prices vary from broker to broker, and can be between $0.03 and $1 per registration, depending on the number of contacts, the quality of these contacts, and how many times you will use them.
3. design
The cost of designing your direct mail will also depend on whether you have a designer in-house or need to hire a professional designer or agency. If you’ve decided to commission a mail-order design from a professional designer, your costs will range from $150 to $2,000, depending on the software used, how long it takes the designer to complete the task, and how many times you’ll need to order edits. the more complicated the task, the higher the price.
Doing the design in-house will save you some money, and there are many websites that offer free or paid templates for creating postcards or flyers. the average price per template is around $10.
Another option is to use a custom template generator. For example, at inkit we have a custom postcard maker with features for fonts, colors, and image uploads.
4. design print
After you’ve designed your direct mail marketing piece, you need to have it professionally printed. The cost of printing your design will depend on many factors, including paper size, paper type, paper quality, color vs. black and white, ink, 1-sided vs. 2-sided, number of pages, and the amount.
Your message can be short and simple, requiring a smaller format, or more complex, requiring larger formats and more investment. still, it’s better to choose the format based on the message you want to deliver, rather than just focusing on the cost of the format. As a direct mail automation platform, inkit has a large network of printers across the country that allows you to send 5 or 5,000 postcards at a time. With its auto print and ship feature, you’ll be a sole owner of the entire process and won’t have to go through lengthy negotiations with printing companies ever again.
5. postage
Last but not least (and not the cheapest) part of direct mail marketing is the postage fee. if you want to send a postcard using u.s. postal service will cost 35 cents each. the total shipping cost will depend on the postal rate, the size and weight of each piece, the quantity and the destination. respectively, the larger, heavier, the longer the distance, the more it will cost. Many companies use USPS mail licenses, which are not only difficult to obtain, but also expensive. inkit makes this process easy: we can print your postcards and letters, and even mail them.
direct mail marketing costs: calculations
To better understand how much a direct mail marketing campaign will cost, let’s do some simple calculations. Here’s a rough list of direct mail marketing expenses if you decide to manage everything using your own time and effort:
as you can see, you will spend at least $1150 to send a simple postcard (size 4*6) to 1000 recipients. and not even mention the time and effort invested, as well as the cost of possible errors caused by the human factor.
on the other hand, inkit will save you money and headaches by integrating with your crm and automating the printing and shipping processes. To learn more about how inkit can help you with direct mail campaigns, try inkit’s direct mail software now.