The concept of a print and mail service is simple: you send a digital ad file to a company that will print and mail your ad, usually along with many others to make up a packet of ads, and the company will use their own mailing list for your ad. Bam! – thousands of new clients, just like that. You pay them one fee and they do all the work. If you use a few services at a time, you could potentially mail your ad to thousands of prospective buyers within weeks.
Sounds good, but unfortunately, it doesn’t work quite that smoothly.
Many print and mail companies don’t have a high level of return on the offers they churn out. I say churn because these companies often take as many advertisers as they can without care about the quality of the ad presentation. That means that you’d have to reach tens of thousands of people to get the same return on your offer that you would if you mailed out your postcard or print ad yourself. If you get a 3 percent return from mailing your offer by itself, you can expect to get about .5 percent return if you use a print and mail company, and oftentimes it’s even lower than that.
Why Such a Low Return?
The reasons for the low return rate are speculation from many differing Web sites and marketing experts. No one has done any official research into why the print and mail companies have such a low return rate. Here are a few reasons:
They have a non-targeted mailing list. For products or services that only a chosen population needs, a print and mail company’s list won’t do just because it’s not targeted. The list might be geographically targeted, but that’s about it. The mailing list is one of the most crucial, if not the most crucial, part of a successful direct mail campaign. Your ad can’t do any good if you don’t get it into the hands of the people who are likely to be interested in it.
Poor quality materials. Many print and mail companies use the thinnest paper they can and don’t use quality inks or quality printers. Many of the ads come out looking amateurish or even worse, smudged from the printer.
Double-sided printing. To cut costs and make a bigger profit, many print and mail companies will use double-sided printing, with two ads on one piece of paper. This makes the consumer have to choose between the two ads if there are coupons on each side: which one will the consumer give up? There’s a good chance it’ll be yours unless your product or service appeals to everyone, which is pretty hard to do.
Dishonesty in number delivered. There is no way of knowing if the company actually sends out as many ad packets as they say they do. If the company says it’ll charge only $3 per 100 ads sent out, how do you know that they are actually sending out 100 ads? Many companies cut costs and pocket profit by sending out a smaller number of ads than promised.
With all of these negatives associated with print and mail services, it’s smart to research the company before you hand over any of your hard earned money. Your best bet is to look for complaints on forums and Web sites and to compare the price of the print and mail service with the separate prices of using an online printing company (which is generally cheaper than an offline printing company) and mailing the ads yourself. It might take some time, but time is money and you don’t want to waste either element.
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