Direct Mail Costs Made Easy – How To Understand Direct Mail Pricing

Often, the first question we are asked by marketers considering direct mail is: How much does direct mail marketing cost?

Direct mail costs tend to vary tremendously. They also depend on many different factors, such as campaign size, campaign type, and provider costs. 

Even how direct mail advertising costs are presented can be highly variable.

Some quotes will include direct mail cost per 1000 (see how that works with triggered mail), while others will itemize charges down to the smallest detail. What’s often left out from proposals you receive are the true “hidden costs” associated with the mechanics of creating and managing modern direct mail campaigns.

We’ve seen thousands of customers build and launch campaigns in our software, and we’ve mailed millions of postcards and letters. Below are the things that we’ve learned along the way that can be helpful for you as you figure out the true costs of your direct mailing efforts.

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We’ve seen thousands of customers build and launch campaigns in our software, and we’ve mailed millions of postcards and letters. Below are the things that we’ve learned along the way that can be helpful for you as you figure out the true costs of your direct mailing efforts.

What we’ll Cover:

• Factors to Consider When Deciding on Direct Mail Costs
• How Much Does Direct Mail Cost Per 1000?
• Take Advantage of Direct Mail Savings Calculator
• Direct Mail Costs Are Offset By High ROI
• Direct Mail Fixed Costs
• Direct Mail Design Costs
• Direct Mail Copywriting Costs
• Direct Mail Lists Cost
• Direct Mail Postage Costs
• Direct Mail Format, Printing, and Shipping Costs
• Direct Mail Personalization Rates
• Remove Direct Mail Cost Variables from the Equation
• Direct Mail Advertising Costs: Direct Mail Vs. Digital Marketing
• How to Optimize Your Direct Mail Budget
• Stay Ahead With Cost-Effective Direct Marketing With Postalytics
  
  

Factors to Consider When Deciding on Direct Mail Costs

Several factors should be carefully considered when deciding on direct mail costs to ensure your campaign is effective.

• Target audience size: The number of recipients significantly influences costs. Larger lists require more printing, postage, and possibly data acquisition. All of this can drive up expenses.
• Design and creative services: Professional design and copywriting adds to the overall cost. Customization, such as personalized messaging or variable data printing, typically incurs additional fees. 
• Printing costs: The type of materials used—such as paper quality, size, and color—affects printing expenses. Special finishes or custom formats may also increase costs.
• Mailing costs: Postage is a major cost factor in direct mail. The size and weight of your mail pieces and type of postal service used (standard vs. first-class), will determine mailing costs. Discounts might be available for bulk mailing.
• Tracking and analytics: Incorporating tracking methods, like QR codes or personalized URLs (pURLs), adds to the cost but provides valuable data on campaign performance.
• Frequency and volume: Regular, ongoing campaigns may benefit from bulk pricing or long-term vendor agreements. This can potentially reduce per-unit costs.
• Response rate and ROI: Consider the expected response rate and potential return on investment. Higher upfront costs might be justified if the direct mail marketing campaign is expected to generate significant leads or sales.
• Direct mail integration costs: These costs can be massive if you’re trying to use the multi-channel marketing approach that marketers agree is most effective. If you’re using a CRM, Marketing Automation, or Ecommerce platform, your direct mail service should integrate seamlessly into them for each multi-channel campaign.
• Direct mail tracking and analytics costs: Most marketers don’t consider this when planning a direct mail campaign. The time and effort required to answer the question “What happened after I sent the mail?” can be a huge time sink. Your direct mail service provider should provide easy-to-read campaign dashboards that tell you exactly where your mail is, and exactly who has responded.

Check Out Postalytics Pricing

How Much Does Direct Mail Cost Per 1000?

Cost per thousand, or CPM, is a common way to measure direct mail advertising costs. It essentially boils down the price of an advertisement to a per-unit cost for 1,000 “impressions.”

To calculate direct mail cost per 1000, take the total cost of the campaign & divide it by 10.

Let’s take a sample 10,000-piece Postalytics 4 x 6 postcard campaign using the Pro Plan:

Costs: Printing, Paper, Postage, Tracking = $.66 per piece or $6,600 total. Pro Plan Subscription = $399. (See Postalytics Pricing Plans for more info). Mailing List (we can help you acquire one) = $300.

Total cost = $7,299.00. Cost per 1000 of a direct mail campaign (Postalytics) = $7,299.00/10 or $730.00.

While CPM is not typically used by pros in the direct marketing industry, it is a very common way to measure the cost of other mass media, like TV, radio, billboards, etc.

Direct mail cost per 1000 is sometimes used to compare direct mail costs to costs of other media that are highly scalable, reaching large audiences. You’ll find that direct mail is a very expensive channel when measured by CPM relative to some other channels.

For example:

• Cable TV Cost Per 1000 – $23.00
• Radio Cost Per 1000 – $5.22
• Static Billboard Cost Per 1000 – $3.47

So if it is 10-20 times more expensive per CPM, why do it? Because channels that are “cheap” by CPM standards aren’t:

• Targeted – you can’t get that billboard in some homes and not others
• Personalized – you can’t change the offer or call to action in your radio ad by the person viewing it
• Triggered – You can’t trigger a Cable TV ad to go to one specific target when something happens

Bottom line: Direct mail isn’t similar to “mass media” channels. It is much more like email or digital marketing.

Take Advantage of Direct Mail Savings Calculator

Postalytics has a powerful feature that saves you money with every direct mail campaign you send out.

You can avoid expenses associated with sending mail to invalid addresses.

The Mail Address Savings Analysis uses advanced address cleansing techniques to identify invalid addresses and block them from being sent.

You can easily access the Mail Address Savings Analysis in all subscription plans and download a detailed breakdown of savings by the campaign.

By taking advantage of this feature, you’ll save money on your mailing campaigns, and your budget will go further than ever before. With Postalytics, you’ll not only streamline your direct mail campaigns, but also save money while doing it!

Direct Mail Costs Are Offset By High ROI

Direct mail is one of the most reliable forms of advertising in the world. The cost of a direct mail campaign is typically a fraction of the return it brings.

While mail volumes peaked in 2008 in the U.S., direct mail is making a comeback in the marketing world, because it works.

Take a look at some of these stats that demonstrate just how valuable a contribution direct mail could make to your advertising efforts:

• 39% of customers say that they try a business for the first time because of direct mail advertising
• Direct mail speeds up the purchase timeframe. On average, any purchase decision takes longer than a week. And over a third takes more than a month. However, with direct mail, 73% of purchase decisions take only 1+ day.
• Direct mail outperforms digital channels in terms of response rates, with an impressive 4.4% rate compared to email’s 0.12%

Learn More About How Direct Mail Response Rates Are Calculated

Let’s dive into the typical direct mail cost categories and break down how much you can expect to spend on a single direct mail campaign.

Direct Mail Fixed Costs

There are some fixed costs involved in putting together a direct mail campaign. For example, one kind of fixed cost can be the printers you buy for direct mail pieces. Or the direct mail automation tool you subscribe to.

Those printers, people, and hours spent on the campaign look better when spread out over large numbers of targets.

Let’s say that it costs a printer $1,000 for the equipment and their team to spend 4 hours on a campaign, at a minimum:

• $1,000 divided by 10,000 pieces puts the fixed costs at $0.10 per piece.
• $1,000 divided by 500 pieces puts the fixed costs at $2.00 per piece.

That’s why you don’t see many “small batch” or “triggered direct mail” being produced by traditional printers/mailers and agencies.

Newer direct mail automation tools solve this problem by bundling the volume of multiple clients using the same creative formats together.

This volume enables a printer who is part of the network to do a run of, say, 6×9 postcards that might include a single triggered postcard from one client, a small batch of 50 from another, and so on.

They can reach their 10,000-piece goal per run, by aggregating many small campaigns through software. It’s a win-win!

Direct Mail Design Costs

Direct mail design costs play a big factor in your overall direct mail cost. Depending on the approach and campaign you’re creating, it can cost anywhere from $10 to $1000. We see organizations take three different approaches.

Design It In-house

Many companies opt for a do-it-yourself design, sometimes enlisting someone with digital or print design skills within their company to build their postcard or letter creative. This is the least expensive strategy, at least in terms of upfront cost. If your internal resource isn’t familiar with print or direct mail design, it is important that they follow direct mail design best practices.

Use A Professionally Built Template

Professionally designed direct mail templates can be accessed using newer direct mail automation tools. These tools enable marketers without a ton of design experience to work within proven frameworks that will represent their brands well and produce results.

Postalytics makes creating and designing your postcard or letter simple and free. We offer high-quality templates that you can use when designing your mailers, free of cost. Want to give it a shot? Check out our drag-and-drop postcard editor (no login required) to see how it works.

Hire A Designer or Agency

Hiring a professional designer or an agency with designers can also vary quite a bit in pricing. On average, you can probably expect to spend between $150 and $250 for a standard postcard or letter from a mid-range designer. More experienced designers may charge as much as $1,000, and vice versa.

Learn More About Direct Mail Design – Watch A DM Creative Expert Break Down 3 Pieces, Before & After Video

Direct Mail Copywriting Costs

Your copy is going to decide whether the recipient takes the desired action or not. Thus, it directly impacts both your cost and the ROI. Bad copy will get you bad results. To avoid that, you should bring experienced copywriters to the team. 

 Experienced copywriters know how to deliver messages that convince customers to take action — whether that action is calling your company to set up an appointment, buying a product, or visiting a website to fill out a contact form.

The costs are similar to those of graphic design freelancers and agencies. Depending on the complexity of the piece and the experience of the copywriter, it can cost between $200 and $2,000.

You’ll probably have to handle the copywriting if you have a small budget.

To help you with that, here’s a guide on direct mail copywriting best practices. You can also take the help of Postalytics to add copy to your postcards and other collateral that you send through our system and monitor the results. Postalytics makes it easy to reuse or copy templates that perform well.

Learn Direct Mail Copywriting Fundamentals From A Chief Creative Officer

Direct Mail Lists Cost

The Golden Rule of Direct Marketing dictates that 40% of the success of your direct mail campaign will depend on the quality of your list. Mailing list quality and pricing can vary dramatically.

Interested in learning more about the types of direct mail lists, and how they’re built and priced? Check out the Postalytics Ultimate Guide To Mailing List Selection And Testing.

With the introduction of triggered direct mail and smart send lists pulled directly from CRM and Marketing Automation tools, not all direct mail campaign cost breakdowns involve mailing list pricing.

However, if you’re using direct mail for acquisition or lead generation, as many marketers do, you’ll need to factor the cost of mailing lists into your overall cost.

Most direct mailers will rent mailing lists rather than purchase them outright. The costs are considerably lower, and as they get responses, they can build up their own in-house list.

Mailing list rental can cost between $0.03 and $0.30 per record. The cost depends on several factors, with the quality of the data itself being the primary factor. Often, mailing list costs are listed on a per-1000 basis.

The primary types of lists are residential, occupant, and business lists. You can also rent specialty lists that are built from behavioral data (both offline and online). These lists are more expensive but can deliver better responses.

Postalytics has integrated a wholesale provider of mailing lists right into our software. The wholesaler only sources from verified and accurate sources. We pass along these lists with transparent, clear pricing. Here’s a breakdown of the costs and cost per 1000 of a Postalytics mailing list:

• Consumer List – $0.03 per record or $30 per 1000 (single-use, premium selects additional)
• Occupant List – $0.008 per record or $8 per 1000 (single-use, available names additional)
• Business List – $0.046 per record or $46 per 1000 (1-year multiple-use, premium outputs additional)

Direct Mail Postage Costs

Postage is often the largest cost component for any direct mail campaign. Postage costs are drastically different for first-class and standard-class mailings. The three major factors to consider when determining the category of mail are; the different classes of mail, the timing of delivery, and how certain you want to be about delivery.

Find out when To Use First Class vs Standard Mail

First Class Postage Cost

First-class mail is the most expensive option offered by the USPS. With this price, comes their highest level of service. First-class letter postage costs $.58 retail, and a small postcard costs $.40. Direct mail service providers can often reduce postage costs through volume discounts. The first-class level of service provides:

• Fast delivery – usually within 3-5 business days after receiving the mailers from the printer
• Priority processing – during peak mailing periods, first-class mail is processed first
• Detailed Intelligent Mail Barcode data – marketers can track the mail all the way from the local post office to delivery on doorstep

Standard Mail Postage Cost

Standard class mail (or Marketing Mail) is used by many direct mailers to lower direct mail advertising costs. This is a class of mail open only to direct mail service providers like commercial printers. The pricing varies based on the format, starting at about $.31 per piece. The standard class direct mail level of service provides:

• Slower delivery – between 10-15 business days
• Lower priority processing – during peak seasons or regional slowdowns due to equipment issues, standard class mail is processed after other types of mail
• Limited Intelligent Mail Barcode data

Here at Postalytics, we offer a simple, flat-rate pricing system for both first-class and standard-class postage — even at low volumes. We do this by taking advantage of presorting, NCOA, and CASS by funneling mail from many customers through high-volume, sophisticated printers, and mailers. Presorted first-class mail costs the USPS less money to process and deliver. This results in a steep discount of about 20% on postage. At Postalytics, we then pass these benefits to all our customers through our fixed-rate pricing.

Direct Mail Format, Printing, and Shipping Costs

The format you choose has a huge impact on direct mail costs. A small postcard costs far less in paper, ink, production, and shipping than a multiple-page letter. Many marketers try to keep costs low by choosing smaller formats. However, response rates show that larger formats often deliver higher ROI. Choose your format based on the message you’re trying to communicate rather than the format cost. If your message is simple, a small format might work great. More complex ideas require more real estate.

The typical printing costs of a direct mail campaign can range from $0.05-$1.00 per piece. Lighter materials will typically cost less, while heavier materials will cost more. Many printers will also offer bulk discounts when you reach certain thresholds.

Your printing choices also affect your shipping costs. Shipping prices fluctuate depending on a number of factors including postage rate and the weight of each piece that you send. Heavier, more expensive stock results in a higher shipping cost.

At Postalytics, we simplify printing and shipping prices into a simple, easy-to-use pricing structure. These prices are all-inclusive and include the usage of our templates, editor, printing, and shipping services.

Keep in mind that further discounts are offered with our larger plans and larger orders.

By combining all standard costs into one simple-to-understand direct mail cost-per-piece, your team can choose the best option that fits the budget. 

If you’re interested in seeing what the final product will look like, you can request samples directly through your dashboard:

Direct Mail Personalization Rates

In a direct mail campaign, personalization works. A targeted direct mail campaign that uses data to speak to the audience on a one-to-one basis elevates response rates. Common direct mail personalization techniques include:

• Variable Data Printing – (VDP) using a commercial, digital printer, each mailpiece can be customized using data, similar to how email personalization works
• Personalized Landing Pages – pURLs (personalized URLs) are tools that can use the same data in VDP to personalize the landing page for each recipient

Traditional Direct Mail Campaign Personalization

Traditional direct mailers can include personalization in your campaign with Variable Data Printing and pURLs. The process involves a significant amount of back-and-forth. Skilled technicians called pre-press operators set up the VDP run and third-party landing page software for pURLs. The time involved in setting this up can shoot the overall cost of direct mail when working with traditional printers/mailers.

Direct Mail Automation Personalization

Newer direct mail automation tools like Postalytics enable personalization at no extra cost. This is because the production methods associated with an automated direct mail campaign are software-based rather than service-based.

Variable Data Printing

VDP is often a standard feature of automated direct mail tools. Because the production software builds postcards and letters electronically, a highly personalized mailpiece is no different than a batch and blast mailpiece. There are no meetings, calls, or people needed to coordinate the hand-offs associated with traditional direct mail VDP.

Personalized URLs

pURLs are often included in the cost of direct mail automation. Rather than requiring 3rd party software to generate data-driven personalized landing pages, direct mail automation vendors like Postalytics include pURLs that work with existing landing page systems at no extra cost.

Remove Direct Mail Cost Variables from the Equation

Direct mail is cheaper and more effective than many forms of digital advertising. This is especially true when comparing the cost per 1,000 pieces to other channels. Many companies want to try direct mail but think it will be too expensive or hard to manage. Postalytics solves both problems. It offers an all-in-one system. You can design, print, send, and track direct mail campaigns easily. This can be done through your CRM. The per-piece pricing also makes estimating costs simple.

Direct Mail Advertising Costs: Direct Mail Vs. Digital Marketing

When comparing the costs of direct mail and online marketing, direct mail often emerges as the more impactful choice, offering tangible benefits that digital methods can’t match.

Direct Mail Costs: While direct mail involves tangible expenses like printing, postage, and design, these costs are an investment in creating a lasting impression. The physical nature of direct mail means it can capture attention in ways that digital ads, often lost in the noise, simply cannot. Additionally, higher engagement rates with direct mail often translate into better recall and response, making it a cost-effective choice in the long run.

Digital Marketing Costs: Digital may appear more affordable upfront with lower costs for social media, email, and search engine marketing. However, the competition for attention is fierce, often requiring continuous investment in content creation and ad placements to maintain visibility. While digital campaigns can be effective, they lack the personal touch and memorability of a well-crafted direct mail piece.

How to Optimize Your Direct Mail Budget

To optimize your direct mail budget – and deliver stellar direct mail campaigns – consider the following strategies:

• Define clear goals: Align your budget with specific direct mail campaign objectives like brand awareness, lead generation, or sales growth.
• Target the right audience: Use data analytics to create precise mailing lists. This reduces waste and increases ROI.
• Optimize design and printing costs: Choose cost-effective formats, such as postcards, and standard sizes to lower expenses. Bulk discounts from reliable printers can also help.
• Leverage personalization: Use variable data printing to tailor messages to individual recipients. This boosts engagement and response rates.
• Refine future campaigns: Analyze campaign data to focus your budget on strategies that deliver the best results.
• Consider mailing frequency: Reduce the number of mailings without sacrificing impact by focusing on high-value recipients.
• Automate and streamline processes: Use automation tools like Postalytics to manage your direct mail campaigns efficiently, reducing labor costs.
• Choose the right postage: Evaluate different postage options like bulk or standard mail to balance cost with delivery speed.
• Test small before scaling: Run smaller test campaigns to identify the most effective strategies before committing to a larger budget.

Stay Ahead With Cost-Effective Direct Marketing With Postalytics

As we’ve explored in this guide, direct mail pricing can vary. 

One way to maximize your budget is to use cost-effective tools. Here at Postalytics, we help organizations automate, track, and integrate direct mail with online marketing channels. Our system makes it simple for companies to reap the benefits of direct mail, whether they’re seasoned veterans in direct mail advertising or this is the first time they’ve delivered advertisements through the channel.

Postalytics has simple plans that make the pricing of automated direct mail much simpler than the old traditional direct mail methods. To learn more, get started with a free account.

Check Out Postalytics Pricing