Costs of direct mail advertising

What are the costs of direct mail advertising? This depends a great deal of how much of the printing and mailing you do yourself. The costs can vary with the amount of mail you print and ship out as well as if you hire out to have the advertising designed, and printed through a different company.

However, you often get what you pay for. If you want your direct mail advertising to look great, it is a good idea to get some help designing and printing the postcards or flyers.

Here are some of the costs that are involved with direct mail advertising. I will list the approximate prices of if you create and mail the advertisements yourself, or if you have them created, and mailed by a company.

Whichever way you mail your direct mail advertising, there is a need for names that you sent those advertisings out to. The names can be obtained in a couple different ways.

- First you can create your own database, by simply using an Excel spreadsheet, and collecting all the names of customers that you have met. Then using that list to send out sales, events, new openings etc.

- The second way to get names it through the phone book. However, that can be very time consuming.

- The third way is to obtain a list of names and phone numbers through a listing company. This company will either rent you several lists of names, or they will sell you that list of names.

These lists come with details like name, address, phone number, family size, etc. You can actually obtain a great deal of information through these lists. The price of a list will usually run your business around .03 cents to .07 cents depending on the quality and amount of names you obtain.

After you have gotten the names to mail your direct mail advertisings to, you need to decide who will design your postcard or flyers. The average cost for one postcard to be designed is around $350. This really is not bad. However, if you or someone you know is proficient in the program Paint, or one like it, you can design a card to look professional in the matter of a few hours.

After the design is complete, it will need to be saved to some form of media. Then you will want to take it to a print shop of some kind. You can print these yourself, however, it is not as cost effective to wear out printer after printer. If you have a high end printer that is made for this type of printing, then you may save money on the labor, however you will still have the paper and ink costs.

The printing companies charge around:

Brochures

1000 prints .52 cents per copy
2000 prints .34 cents per copy
4000 prints .24 cents per copy

This is for the 3-panel brochures. If you move up to the 4-panel brochures you are looking at a bit more.

Post cards

1000 prints .24 cents
2000 prints .19 cents
4000 prints .14 cents

There is also the cost of shipping after you have printed these direct mail advertisings. The cost for a standard mail for both the standard mail of brochures and postcards sent through the US postal service is around .25 cents per piece. The prices vary if you go first class, or if the weight is significantly more.

These are the basic costs of direct mail advertising. If you want a company to complete the entire process for you, it is around $100 more than what you would pay if you went through this process.