When preparing your Mail Plan there are a few key decisions that you must determine before you start.

Transcription

1 Pre-Production Setting up Your Mailing Plans: When preparing your Mail Plan there are a few key decisions that you must determine before you start. Determine Source of Data. For example, are you using an in house client list, purchased list, direct mail response cards, etc. What are your program time constraints, targeted audience size, and number of mail drops Will you use a test & control package to determine creative packages success levels Always try to produce mock-ups for all components in advance to save time & money Understand the creative, production and cost values for each type of Postage: standard, presort, meter, indicia Data Base Design & Management: When selecting your target list Consider your target--commercial versus residential, age requirements, spending habits, specific purchasing history, specific zip codes. Mail lists are available in almost every demographics, interests and buying habits. You want to make sure your lists are recent and clean. Scrub often! Once you have identified your data/ target list you can now decide how to arrive at your desired mail size. Consider merge/purge of various lists, cleanse with (national change of address (NCOA) run, utilize suppressions, gender coding, dedupes, nth selects/household/individual before you finalize your list(s). All of these same considerations should be part of your own data modeling tests and targets in designing your targets from in house lists.

2 You will save time and cost when you ensure that your data is in good shape or obtained from a reliable source before you submit the data to your database manager or lettershop for production. A merge/purge of your own in-house lists or numerous list purchases will eliminate duplicate postage costs. This is a must for all large direct mail campaigns, follow-up drops, and fulfillment programs. Always review and approve data layout prior to data application and production. In personalization of your direct mail pieces, you should always assign logical key codes for error free personalization and better back-end response analysis When update your database on a timely basis you can control drop, batch, and interim NCOA costs. If you add seeds prior to data submission to your lettershop you can maintain better review of your quality and production controls. Understanding Mail Options: Typically, it s timing or cost savings that drives the selection of what mail option your campaign will use. First Class Mail is the most expensive, but always has the fastest delivery. Expect to pay 30-40% more depending on weight, thickness and destination. An added plus to using First Class Mail will be that all undelivered mail will be returned to you, or at your option your fulfillment house. This will allow the database to be consistently updated for all of your mail campaigns Standard Class Mail is cost effective, but there is no absolute way to really say when your mail will arrive. You can guessitmate an arrival between 3-days to 2 weeks from the date of drop. If you have a mail campaign with staggered drops you should keep the drops at a minimum of a week apart; otherwise all drops could end up in the mail stream at the same time. Also, like first class mail the greater your numbers the higher your opportunities for postage cost savings. However, unlike first class mail, there is no return mail service. Non-Profit Class is the cheapest way, but only available for nonprofit entities registered with the USPS. If you need to have your entity registered, apply for the registration well in advance to avoid the risk of missing your mail date. Your lettershop or mailing agent should be able to assist you with the paperwork.

3 Bulk Mail Center (BMC)/ Sectional Center Facility (SCF) Class: Such postal sortations should only be used with large saturation drops. Ask your Data Manager to provide a BMC cost analysis to ensure the freight charges to ship your mail to specific centers across are less than the postal savings. If you are doing large lead generation mail campaigns of half million pieces or more your mail should generally be shipped coast to coast to manage response flow (e.g. east to west, starting with the furthest from your mailing zip). You will also need to stagger your mail drops to ensure adequate coverage. Designing your postcards with postal rates in mind will save you postal costs. If you design your postcards at letter rates, instead of flat rates, you will save money. Get your Lettershop/Mailing Agent involved early in production design. They will not only understand the cost savings of the various postcard sizes but other mail shapes and sizes as well. You should expect additional costs if you design your piece to mail with postal meter strips or stamps versus an indicia mark. Larger mail campaigns often utilize a business reply mailbox in conjunction with their database manager or lettershop. The Post Office maintains a count of your responses by date. Ordering Inventory: Direct Mail Production like any other type of manufacturing requires the proper lead time for all components of your program and your mail piece; including data selection, necessary forms, business reply envelopes (BREs,) outside envelopes (OSEs/OEs,) Business Reply Cards (BRCs), Business Reply Mail (BRM) accounts, Mail Permits etc. Order everything as soon as possible. Treat your creative team as your advance team, late inventory delivery will delay production exponentially and rushed production jeopardizes quality control and your planned mail date. You should request to your printer assign component codes to each printed piece. This will be especially important if your package has version changes, to prevent unnecessary costly confusion in production. To ensure your package meets the required postal standards and rates, clear your package with the post officer where the piece will be mailed.

4 Ensure you provide sufficient stock levels. A general rule of thumb; 2% - 10% depending on volume and complexity. You should allow an even higher overage for image pieces. Always make sure your printer understands that you are ordering for production not bulk distribution to ensure the right quantity is printed and properly packed. Before ordering print production for continuous form 2 up print and match mail projects, determine direction of print (east-westnorth-south). Discuss the best options with your Lettershop. You should make sure you understand the production and quality hindrances based on the type of stock and the grain direction. Uncoated stock is the best in production for machine feeds and envelope sealing. If you use coated stock, expect increase in time and cost due to product slow down. If the design is worth the time and cost, plan accordingly. Ongoing fulfillment and lead generation projects should maintain a minimum of a monthly report to maintain proper stock levels at all times. If you do maintain an ongoing fulfillment program, you should maintain inventory to cover the print production lead time to replenish your fulfillment stock. Production Sheet fed vs. Continuous When relying on laser printers, it is always wise to us a stock between 60 to 70lb. Sheet Fed Print Pieces are more efficient for small runs and require less set up time, they have less waste, more versatility and less time in the bindery, and generally provide the best print quality. Continuous Form Packages can be cost efficient for large runs, provide production 3-5 times faster than sheet fed, however such printers are higher in time and cost in the bindery. You can also expect more stock waste due to set-ups and sign offs. However, the costs could be up to 70% less than sheet fed.

5 Bindery (folding and cutting) If your package design has to be cut and or folded, use 60 lb. or higher stock. If you are using self mailer card stock, have your printer score your card stock to prevent cracking on the fold If you need a close cut with continuous form print, have your printer bleed between forms and edges to ensure the final package looks as you designed it. Inserting For better production time and less waste allow ½ inch - 1 inch of clearance from left to right for all inserts into OSEs. Your creative team should design insert material to pull from folded edge to eliminate the need and cost of a Friction Feeder. A Friction Feeder adds up to 50% of time to your mail production schedule. Also, expect any reputable lettershop to add additional costs per thousand for all friction feed production. To ensure against inserting cost and time delays require your printer to pack all pieces face up and not on it s side, to eliminate paper curls, to insure compatibility with insertion production. Always, use standard size OSE envelope flaps (1 1/8 inch). Only in specialized settings or circumstances can you use V flaps for machine inserting. Inserting multiple sized pieces in odd sized envelops or packaging material will always require manual inserting handwork. If you have a handwork project, assume at least double the production time and cost. Inkjet Test all uncoated stock prior to production to ensure ink adheres to stock. All good Lettershops will give you ample time to pretest your stock prior to ordering from the printer. Ink jetting catalogs/ booklets are 50% -70% slower, depending on the thickness. Plan your campaigns accordingly.

6 Fulfillment Determine first your fulfillment time frame: daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly follow-ups. It is best also to understand piece weights and postal advantages for larger drops vs. rapid turn around. It s important to leave sufficient processing time between drops. This will differ depending on mail class used and campaign plans. It s important to understand your mail times. Determine your source of leads: web, telemarketing or response cards (data entry) as well as how lead will be processed, internally or externally, and how the data will be maintained. Understanding your response data and how it will be used, will improve any follow-up and future mail campaigns well before they start. You should require your Lettershop to provide daily batch counts and back-end analysis reports to understand your response results. Truly understanding your data and mail results will always be worth the additional data costs. You should always require deduping for each lead fulfillment drop for ongoing lead gen campaigns to save on postage, and provide valuable continual database updating. Lettershop Instructions Before you select your Lettershop understand the volume and capacity capabilities and specialties. Smaller shops may be challenged to put into the mail a million piece run in a short turn around frame. A larger shop will not be able to give smaller jobs the same required attention given to large runs. Lead generation and DRTV fulfillment comes with its own pitfalls in addition to standard production. When selecting your lettershop ensure there is sufficient programming and fulfillment expertise to handle the necessary phases of fulfillment. Give the Lettershop complete written instructions providing your required mail dates, all sorting and postal instructions, your insertion order, seed names, if not supplied by an outside vendor, any sample requirements and specific quality control instructions. You should also supply a mock up of the package prior to production.

7 POST PRODUCTION After your campaign is mailed, you should always confirm the mail date, amount of drops, etc. via postal 3602 and 3606 forms. Obtain and maintain at least the minimum of quality control pulls for your files. Follow up with successes and failures to all key team players: client, data services, and production to improve the next project. Involve the expertise of all suppliers in follow-up and the planning sages for your next mail campaign projects.