It’s a question that comes up a lot. We’ve been mailing millions of pieces of mail a month for the last 15 years.
We at The Neighborhood Connection know postage. The big question is, “What’s the difference between first-class and third class?”
The latter is usually referred to as marketing mail. The former is significantly more expensive and guarantees the expedition of the mail piece.
If you’re local, usually you get it between one to two days. If you’re on the other side of the country, it can be all the way up to three days. That’s first class.
I wouldn’t want to say that it’s unreliable, but with marketing mail, you could get a day or three later. The post office prioritizes first class over the third class for marketing mail.
However, you get significant savings on marketing mail. This is why we typically use and recommend it.
Another question we get is, “What’s the difference between EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail) and just sending to a regular list?” Well, EDDM is about 16.01 cents and it’s full saturation to a carrier route.
You also don’t print the name or the address on the actual mailing piece itself. You do get a great rate, but you lose the flexibility of targeting. The more saturated you get into a carrier route, the more value or savings USPS gives to you, and the more you decrease marketing costs using direct mail.
It makes their jobs easier. We recommend saturation mailing versus EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail). Saturation means that as long as you reach certain thresholds, for example, 75% of the carrier route, you’re going to get significant savings.
It is close to EDDM pricing which is 17.5 cents versus the 16.01 cents. With the amount of waste you can cut out of your list versus EDDM, you really do save a lot of money.
We highly believe in saturation. Since you have the list, you can actually print the name of the homeowner, or the address. It’s a more personalized experience for not much more.
Since you’re cutting out the waste of who you don’t want to send the mail to, you also don’t have the expense of the product that you’re actually printing to reach the home. Overall, we’re fans of saturation when you’re trying to decrease marketing costs using direct mail.
We also have agents that ask, “What’s the most efficient size?” We found it’s best to really maximize the size of the marketing mail piece as long as we stay underneath 6″ x 11 ⅛”.
If you combine 6″ x 11″ postcards along with a saturation type of mailing where we can cut out some of the waste, you’re going to get a highly efficient piece.
We’ve taken it to another level and we know that you can mail all the way up to four ounces in your mail piece. We produce a 32-page, fully customed, branded, and personalized magazine for real estate agents that have the same postage rate as a postcard.
It’s really an efficient piece. You get a ton of real estate for your money and the postage itself isn’t much over EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail).
If you are going to mail a product, postcard, or anything for that matter across the country, you will pay more money because it’s not quite as efficient. It’s going to go through different post offices, which really increases the price.
If you call us at (866) 894-2912, we can explain all of this to you. We can get a very efficient list for you in your neighborhood, keep your postage really low, and get you a product that makes a lot of sense. Again, we do postcards, a 32-page customized magazine, a 16-page customized magazine, as well as a 16-page templated lifestyle magazine. If you need any help with any of your mailing needs, give us a call or visit our website to learn more.
