The Complete Guide to Direct Mail Tools for Agencies

Digital marketing is slowly losing its cutting-edge appeal.

With more and more businesses understanding the benefits of email marketing and SEO, digital marketing tactics are growing exponentially. As a result, consumers are being inundated with more digital campaigns than ever. The downside for businesses and agencies is that your campaign can get lost in this clutter and fail to make an impact.

That’s why many businesses and agencies have switched to direct mail marketing. With direct mail response rates averaging 5.7% – opposed to email’s dropping response rates – there are many benefits to be gained by introducing direct mail for your clients and target audience.

Direct mail tools like Postalytics help you manage every part of these campaigns so you can automate all the manual work without hiring an expensive team of marketers.

Let’s go into more detail about these tools.

What Are Agency Direct Mail Tools?

Direct mail comes in many forms, such as postcards, brochures, catalogs, newsletters, event invites and other promotional material. Agency direct mail tools allow you to automate and simplify all the manual processes involved in developing your mail campaign, like creating, testing, and sending. Direct mail automation software also allows you to track your campaigns’ results to optimize your future campaigns.

Some direct mail tools allow agencies to customize the campaign with branding and logos. This way, you can provide a unique experience to your clients and boost brand associations with your agency. 

Why Should Agencies Use Direct Mail Tools?

As an agency, you will be working with multiple clients and projects. While you can easily manage their online marketing campaigns, managing direct mail campaigns is not as straightforward.

You need to manage direct mail activities like designing the campaign, personalizing it for each client’s target segment, testing it, printing, posting and tracking the delivery status. For example, if you work on three direct mail campaigns with 50 recipients each, you’re looking at printing, posting, and tracking about 150 letters or postcards.

Instead of doing it manually, you can easily check the status and response rates in direct mail tools. You can even personalize each automated direct mail with pURLs without additional cost. The best part? Tools like Postalytics offer a client-facing portal where clients can log in and keep track of their campaigns.

Postalytics Direct Mail Tools for Agencies

Postalytics offers a variety of features and tools for agencies to manage efficiently different client accounts from one platform and apply marketing automation. 

1. Dedicated Agency Edition

Postalytics agency edition allows you to add unlimited client accounts. These clients can log in to their Postalytics accounts, where they are directed to a white-label interface.

You also get access to these different features and functions:

• Customize your agency branding
• Get full access to all Postalytics features
• Get the lowest per-piece costs
• Margin and payouts on per-piece fees

Various customizations are available, including introducing your logo, adjusting the application’s colors to match your agency’s brand and personality, and adding custom CSS styles.

If you don’t want your clients to access all the features, Postalytics offers “Client Account Feature Exposure,” where you can hide certain functionalities.

2. Unlimited Client/Subaccounts

You can manage multiple clients or subaccounts through the Postalytics platform. 

You can navigate to these accounts from the “Agency Home” button on the top of each page.

If you want to access a different client account or change some details for a particular client, click “Manage client” on the Agency home page. The page will look like this:

You can view all your clients on this page for easy access. If you want to modify any settings, click the Agency account settings on the Agency home page.

3. Payouts – Earn Commissions Per Piece Mailed

With Postalytics, you no longer have to manage multiple Excel sheets to track your payouts or commissions on each piece. Instead, you can keep track of these for all your client campaigns in one place.

To navigate to this page, go to the Account drop-down and choose Payouts at the Agency Account Level.

Click on the Transactions tab, and you’ll see a chronological listing of each of the client transactions that have been completed.

To see the chronological listing of the payouts, click on the Payouts tab. You can even export this list for your reference or record.

4. White Label Branding – Logo

To provide a unique and branded experience to your clients, you can use Postalytics’ White label functionalities.

One of the features of white-label branding is that you can showcase your agency’s logo on the platform. This means that whenever your client signs up on Postalytics, their pages will feature your brand.

Select the Logo link in the Branding options under Settings to add your logo. Go through the requirements and upload your image. Once done, this logo will appear wherever you see a Postalytics logo in your version of the screen.

5. White Label Branding – In-App Colors

Have you ever seen Netflix’s marketing media? They prominently use red and black colors because they are associated with their brand.

You can do the same by showcasing your brand personality through colors on Postalytics. This helps you create brand association in the minds of your clients and influence other metrics like brand recall.

To implement this, select the Colors link in the Branding options under Settings to adjust your colors. Let your design team go through all the options. Once done, you can save your changes, or if you want to opt for the default color scheme, just click on the Reset button.

6. White Label Credit Card Statement Descriptor

You can enable your agency’s or client’s credit card for each client’s account. This will determine who gets billed for the campaigns you run through the platform.

You can change this anytime by entering the Client account, selecting the Account drop-down menu, and then the Payment method.

If a campaign fails to be sent due to a credit card issue, a banner like this will appear on the Client’s home page.

You can resolve this by correcting the payment method. Three attempts will be made before the campaign goes into Draft mode.

7. White Label Client Login Portal

The client login portal will be the first screen your user sees when they start with the platform. You can add a new client from the Agency home dashboard in Postalytics.

Fill in the required client details to go to the next step.

You can then create a username and password for the account by going to the New Account Profile settings.

This will become the primary user of the account and will get all access privileges. If you’d like your client not to access the payment, order and other information, avoid sharing this username and password with them. Instead, create “Users” within the account by following this guide.

8. CSS Stylesheets Tool

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) describes the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as XML or HTML. In simpler terms, CSS indicates how different elements will be seen on your screen.

Postalytics allows you to add custom CSS styles that match your agency’s branding. You can find this option by clicking Settings under your Agency account user name. 

Next, go to the CSS Stylesheets tab and copy-paste the CSS into the displayed dialog screen.

You can then save or press reset to default CSS.

9. Account Level Activity Reporting

If you need account level activity reporting on account orders, payouts or transactions, you can review that in two places in Postalytics.

• At the Agency Account Level, navigate to the Payouts and Transactions tab. You’ll get a chronological listing of all the campaigns processed in all your client accounts.
• If you want to view the orders for a particular client account, navigate to that account, click on the account name, and then Billing Activity. 

You can click on the PDF icon to see the details. If you want to download/export the campaign orders, click “Export,” You’ll have a .CSV file.

10. Account Level Billing Activity

Tracking all the different invoices for your clients can be challenging, especially if you’re working on many direct mail campaigns.

To view all the invoices and billing activity on one screen, head to the Billing Activity under your Login dropdown in the Agency Account level.

Here, you can review all invoices or download them. If you want to download a particular invoice, click on that link, and a PDF will be generated.

This tool makes sharing PDFs with your clients or keeping them for your records easy.

11. Payout Commission Transaction and Payment Reporting

Postalytics lets you see your commission on each direct mail campaign and how the payment occurs.

For example, some clients may be paying directly for the campaign, whereas you might pay for other clients.

To ensure everything gets tracked thoroughly, you can view all these details on the Agency account level page. You may even choose to download these reports to share with your clients. This improves transparency, and you can get clarity on any payment detail with a click.

12. Client Spending Limit Tools

Agencies can set up a monthly spend limit for triggered drip campaigns for their client accounts, to ensure you adhere to the budget and don’t overspend.

You can set this spend limit under the UserName drop-down. You can either set a spend limit that remains the same for all sub-accounts or set different limits for different accounts.

When a client account reaches this limit, the direct mail credit renewal flips from auto to manual renewal for the triggered drip campaign. You will also receive notifications and email alerts.

13. Centralized Client Credit Purchasing & Distribution Tools

You can select different payment methods for different client accounts. This payment method will be used for all triggered drip and smart send direct mail campaigns.

You also have the option to use a client credit/debit card and use the Postalytics invoicing system or pay Postalytics with an agency card and get payment from the client outside the Postalytics platform.

Select “payment method” in the client account menu to set the payment method.

You can change or update this credit card at any time.

14. Centralized Creative Template Creation & Proofing Tools

Have you ever created an amazing design for your direct mail but found that it didn’t turn out great when it got printed?

We have created the Postalytics Template Proofer to save you from this problem. This tool creates a preliminary copy of your direct mail piece that ensures the designer and printer agree on the final design before it is sent into production.

It helps you:

• Reviews images, text, colors, fonts and other creative elements of the template
• Review the data inserts of the address area of your template using list or sample data
• View the pURLs and variable data personalization inserts using list or sample data
• Reduce your review and editing time from weeks to a few hours

15. Centralized Creative Template Distribution & Management Tools

You can create, proof, and generate custom prebuilt templates for your client’s direct mail campaigns with an agency account.

Select the Templates link from the account drop-down to access this template workflow.

Once you have created a new template with the steps in this guide, you can access it in the Client account by selecting “New template” from the Creative drop-down tab. Next, select the “Choose Prebuilt” option to see all the available templates.

This lets your team get a headstart on the campaigns without starting from scratch every time.

Final Thoughts on Direct Mail Tools for Agencies

Direct mail marketing campaigns are on the rise, and as an agency, you can get a headstart on them for your clients.

Instead of managing all these campaigns via multiple Excel sheets or different platforms, Postalytics allows you to handle everything from one platform, like creation, proofing and delivery. The comprehensive set of tools offered by Postalytics provides the means to automate direct mail from start to finish and offer your clients a unique experience with different white-label features. 

Get your free account today.