Reply #5: I've done a lot of direct mail in the past...still do. [View All]

[stopbush]

Yep, it's expensive. You've got to figure 60¢ - $1 per piece to mail, and that's only if you do a large quantity that spreads out your creative costs and gets you to critical mass at the printer. If you have non-profit status, you'll save on postage...as long as you follow the guidelines pretty strictly.

If you were looking to do a 60,000-piece drop, figure at least $30-40,000 in expenses.

Your response rate?

Well, 50% of those things go in the trash, unopened. Overall, you'll be lucky to pull a 1-2% response from the mailing, which translates into 600 responses from your mailing of 60,000. I assume you're looking to raise money through donations with this piece. If you're sending it out strictly as an informational device, then you can assume more than 2% of the people getting it will read at least part of the package, but without any kind of response device, you have no way of knowing. And you'll want to know, because the whole thing is a worthless exercise in burning money if you have no way of judging its effectiveness.

The best way to cut production costs is to develop a profile of your target audience (this could be achieved through a survey of DU members, for example) and then take that profile to a list broker who can match your "selects" (that's another expense). One of the rules of DM is to *dominate the mailbox.* That simply means that with all the junk mail a person gets every day, they are more likely to open the things that catch their eye. That might mean bigger or flashier...or a more-substantial "presence" to the piece...which costs more to produce. Or, you can hope that some Dem-oriented logo catches their eye.

It's tricky. The biggest mistake people make with DM is that they only do it once, usually over-spending in the process. That puts them off future attempts which are really necessary if you want to confirm results and not make decisions based on possible abberations. Or, they get results that didn't meet their pre-conceived ideas and they don't know what to do next.