There was a time when sending out direct mail, meant that you needed to send your mailers to a large audience to keep the price of direct marketing within your budget. Nowadays, that simply isn’t the case. In fact, you can now send much smaller mailings multiple times to the same few individuals for a lower price than a large mailing sent once. Which also increases your messages exposer resulting in a higher return on investment compared to the one-time large mailing.

How is this even possible? Did the price of postage decrease? We wish, but actually it became possible as new direct mail opportunities developed, like Direct Mail Commingling. And many businesses have found that commingling is essential to their overall marketing success.

What is Commingled Direct Mail?

Direct Mail Commingling—also known as Commingled Direct Mail or commingling—is essentially where mailings from your company are combined with other companies to meet the minimum postage requirements set by the USPS. This saves your company on postage costs while allowing you to send out lower quantity mailings.

For example, say you have 75 addresses you need to reach, another company has 100, another has 25 and another company has 150. When combined to be mailed out together, each company including you, obtains the postage rates bulk mailing offers.

Benefits of Commingled Direct Mail

Saving money is one of businesses’ favorite benefits commingling provides. Direct mail commingling can save you a tremendous amount of money because the USPS offers extremely low postage rates for commingled mailing.

This is because your Commingled Direct Mail provider handles a lot of the work the post office would otherwise need to handle. Along with providing less work for the post office, by combining smaller separate mailings together, they create one large mailing that is sent as a “bulk mailing” which has reduced postage costs. So, by taking advantage of commingled mailings, you are able to send out smaller mailings with the cost benefits of larger mailings.

Another benefit that companies have come to love that Direct Mail Commingling has to offer, is the fact that lower quantity mailings can be sent to a targeted audience multiple times for a lower cost than one large mailing to an untargeted audience.

Why would that be something that you would want to take advantage of? Let’s put it this way, do you remember the two-word slogan for milk that was created in the early 90s? We don’t even have to say it and you know what we are talking about. That’s because it was everywhere! On posters, billboards, commercials, we have all seen those words so many times that it is engraved in our minds. It would be a different story if that advertisement was used only once. That’s why it’s so important to market your message multiple times to the same people, so they can become aware, trust and remember your brand for when they are ready to take advantage of your product or service.

That’s what Commingled Direct Mail allows you to do. For example, if you sent 25 mail pieces 3 times to the same audience you would get a better response rate compared to 1 mailing to 2,500 people.

What Guidelines are There for Direct Mail Commingling?

The guidelines for Direct Mail Commingling are designed to generate the quickest turnarounds and the lowest prices. With that being said, the following guidelines have proven to show the most success in delivering better responses and higher return on investments:

• Postcards at 6” x 9” using 14pt paper
• Postcard designs need to include a space for mailing info on the back, bottom right corner that is at least 4” x 2.25”
• Postcard designs need to follow “bleed” and margin guidelines
• At least 10 addresses for mailing postcards

What Direct Mail Options Take Advantage of Commingling?

There are many direct mail solutions and services that take advantage of commingling. Each one has specific benefits that can meet whatever your goal is. Whether you are looking to convert your web traffic, reach a local audience, use a small mailing list or looking to better your customer and prospect relationships, there is an option for you to take advantage of Direct Mail Commingling. Below are 4 of the most popular options that companies love.

Self-Service Commingled Postcard Mailing

If you have a mailing list ready to go or are looking to generate a mailing list that consists of as little as 10 addresses, you can order commingled postcards. All that is required is that your postcard art follows the 6” x 9” design requirements and is uploaded in PDF format and if you have a mailing list, upload your mail list, or choose to create one.

Because commingling is designed for quick and affordable short run mailings, turnaround time is same day, and they take advantage of bulk mailing discounts because they will be sent along with other companies' postcards.

If you are interested in gaining the benefits of commingling your direct mail postcards, click the button below to explore more or get started today.

CRM Direct Mail Integration

If your company uses a marketing automation or CRM platform, you know how easy it is to send emails. With CRM Direct Mail Integration, or Direct Mail Automation, you can send postcards just as easily.

With just a click of a button a postcard will be printed and sent to your contacts. You can even set up triggers to send event driven direct mail pieces. For example, you could send out happy birthday messages monthly to contacts with birthdays for each corresponding month. Or, have a specific postcard be sent to contacts 2 days after an email was sent to them to boost brand visibility and responses. Triggered direct mail through your CRM or marketing automation platform has endless possibilities, like having a postcard be sent automatically when a contact hasn’t been reached in a while or if a prospect just became a customer.

With CRM Direct Mail Integration your company can interact with your audience in a way that:

• Bypasses online clutter
• Increases responses and ROI
• Builds stronger customer relationships
• Helps you stand out from your competitors

When you utilize CRM Direct Mail Integration, you won’t typically have hundreds of postcards to send out with one mailing, so sending out just a few can be expensive. That’s why commingling your direct mail is the perfect way to gain the benefits of integration while saving a ton of money on mailing costs.

Proximity Mailing

The people who surround your customers are most likely interested in or need your product or service as well. For example, say you own a roofing company, the individuals who live around your customer, probably have the same age home and geographical/whether issues and need a new roof or roof repair as well. So why not mail to a handful of people who surround your ideal customer?

Proximity Mailing allows you to send to either a larger targeted audience or smaller targeted audience who surround your customers or business location.

When you target, say 25 addresses closest to your ideal customer, your mailing will be commingled to save you money. This can be extremely beneficial if you decide to utilize the benefits of Proximity Mailing with new customers. For instance, if you own a solar installation company, you could send 50 postcards to each new customers’ surrounding neighbors, to get the word out about your services.

Mailbox Retargeting

If you are familiar with digital retargeting strategies, you know that it involves online ads to pop up for individuals who visit a website or take a certain action on a website. With Mailbox Retargeting—also known as Direct Mail Retargeting—the same efforts are taken however it uses email and postcard retargeting.

For this marketing strategy to be as successful as possible it needs to send the direct mail piece as soon as possible to deliver a well-timed and relevant message for the individuals who receive it. This means that if day 1 of harnessing Mailbox Retargeting, 45 people hit your designated product page or abandon their “cart”, 45 postcards need to be sent right away. That’s when commingling comes into play. 45 mail pieces will be sent within as little as 48 hours to your website visitors houses and you reek the benefits of reduced postage rates by them being sent along with other companies' mailings.

Thanks to modern advancements, Commingled Direct Mail is taken advantage of with many direct mail services and solutions and there is no need to have to send to large audiences anymore. Instead, reach a smaller and more targeted audience while saving time and money and increasing your sales. At Conquest Graphics we have everything you need to get started on your Commingled Direct Mail Campaign Today!