New Direct Mailing Company??

[royster13]

Seems like such a process…In Canada we have unaddressed admail (now called neighbourhood mail) that we can send to as few or as many as required…Bundle sizes can be whatever we think works best…I do flyers mostly in 50s and calendar magnets in 20s…Current cost is C$0.12 each for local and C$0.13 if they are being sent to a distant office…For up to 50 grams (just under 2 oz.)…And if you want, you can also mail pens, jar grippers, rulers, etc. “As is” without an envelope…

PS…For those in Canada interested in the C$0.12/C$0.13 rate, please get in touch and I will point you to where you can get this rate…

 

[jokergerm]

I will definitely check them out. We mail for about 32 cents a piece for menus, 10,000 over 10 weeks. Comparable with KPG?

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KPG charges 29 cents a house for 10k mailers. Dropped all at once in a saturation mailing

thats the total cost including tax, art work everything. i prefer the saturation vs the little by little every week. i try to drop 10k per shop each month

 

[paul7979]

Lol well compaired to what it was like years ago still way better. There are print houses that give great printing rates and shil you your print in bundles of 100 already just for that reason.

The EDDM postage rate is now over 17 cents from what I saw on the USPS website. Last year I mailed a total of 25,000 pieces through EDDM and was absolutely miserable every single time I mailed. Counting out bundles of 100 was the easy part. Waiting at the post office for an hour each and every time, being passed from one clerk to another who didn’t know a thing about EDDM made me finally decide to boxtop the remaining 25,000 menus I had instead of mailing. My time and sanity were well worth the added price I pay Mailshark. Now I mail my whole delivery area of 28,000 addresses 5 times a year with Mailshark. Even in what is supposed to be my slowest time of the year my monthly sales are higher than I’ve ever had previously. I don’t think that Mailshark is so much better than other options when it comes to print or design quality, I think it’s better for me because 2800+/- pieces get mailed every week no matter if I feel like doing it or not. The consistency of getting these pieces out week in and week out is pushing my sales to levels I never thought I would see.

 

[jokergerm]

i should have added KPG does everything, its not EDDM. You pick the routes and where you want them to go, i never touch the mailers or goto the post office

that sounds like a major pain in the ass!

Mailshark sounds tempting i just fear change and commitment lol

 

[durbancic]

For those that use mailshark. How does it work for arriving at the post office and what day do they mail out on? We do EDDM and sometimes we forget to get it to the post office until Thursday, then it might not go out until Fri or Sat! Does it arrive and go out through the post office the same day every weeek?

 

[durbancic]

I’ve done USPS and it’s a lot of extra work. You have to separate those 1200 into 100 stacks and round to the nearest number on the route. For instance if there are 370 addresses on a route, they require you to give them 400 and if there are 320 addresses on a route, they only want 300. You still have to design and print everything yourself too plus pay for postage. It’s quite the hassle and MailShark was extremely easy to work with and on top of every detail thus far. USPS is prehistoric comparatively speaking.

I don’t think its too much work - it’s easy to throw the print piece on a scale to weight out 100 pieces. My post office has never had me round the number of pieces. We put the exact amount of pieces in the box for the carrier route. Not sure why your post office does that. I am also under the impression MailShark is EDDM, they just do all the printing and bundling work, is it not?

 

[Joe]

The EDDM postage rate is now over 17 cents from what I saw on the USPS website. Last year I mailed a total of 25,000 pieces through EDDM and was absolutely miserable every single time I mailed. Counting out bundles of 100 was the easy part. Waiting at the post office for an hour each and every time, being passed from one clerk to another who didn’t know a thing about EDDM made me finally decide to boxtop the remaining 25,000 menus I had instead of mailing. My time and sanity were well worth the added price I pay Mailshark. Now I mail my whole delivery area of 28,000 addresses 5 times a year with Mailshark. Even in what is supposed to be my slowest time of the year my monthly sales are higher than I’ve ever had previously. I don’t think that Mailshark is so much better than other options when it comes to print or design quality, I think it’s better for me because 2800+/- pieces get mailed every week no matter if I feel like doing it or not. The consistency of getting these pieces out week in and week out is pushing my sales to levels I never thought I would see.

Exactly. It’s easy for someone that doesn’t have his own place already open for business to say EDDM saves him money, but once you’re open and working 80-90 hours a week…let me know if saving a few sheckles by wasting hours and hours dealing with the clueless USPS is really the better route. MailShark does a great job and very professional, and most importantly is they do all the work while you keep doing your usual.

 

[Joe]

For those that use mailshark. How does it work for arriving at the post office and what day do they mail out on? We do EDDM and sometimes we forget to get it to the post office until Thursday, then it might not go out until Fri or Sat! Does it arrive and go out through the post office the same day every weeek?

Goes out Wed and Thurs every week. Ask USPS about the EDDM process. They have their own system. You might not know how many of your mailers aren’t getting delivered. If there is 325 addresses on a route, they only deliver 300. If there is 375 and you give them 400 as they request to do their systematic approach, you waste 25. When adding this in,you don’t save any money doing alllllll the extra work and even if you did save a few pennies, what’s your “spare time” worth?

 

[durbancic]

Goes out Wed and Thurs every week. Ask USPS about the EDDM process. They have their own system. You might not know how many of your mailers aren’t getting delivered. If there is 325 addresses on a route, they only deliver 300. If there is 375 and you give them 400 as they request to do their systematic approach, you waste 25. When adding this in,you don’t save any money doing alllllll the extra work and even if you did save a few pennies, what’s your “spare time” worth?

I will ask them about that.
I spend no time on it, besides preparing the mailer. A kitchen worker bundles the during downtime. A driver delivers to the post office.

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[Warren]

The post office can be very difficult to get figured out I have been doing direct mail of and on since 1995. Right now for the company i work at I mail about 4,000 pieces a month. They are not eddm pieces ,and it takes about 15 minutes at the post office. Tops. If you are working 80 to 90 hrs a week then its tough to find time to go to the post office. So someone like Mailshark is a good fix. I have seen their mail pieces and they definatly know how to make a good piece. Once I am open I will probably order my print from them for bulk mailings but I will mail it myself. I have a commercial printer that will do variable data printing for me for reg customers. Costs about 450 per thousand lock stock and barrel which is $52 a thousand more than mail shark the difference is every customer will have a unique offer based on their order history. To maxize dollars per customer. If you only order a medium 2 topping pizza you will get 2 or 3 variations on that. Any medium XX medium 2 item and wings XX buy any medium at menu price and get a free soda and bread sticks. Variable data printing is something everyone should do as soon as you have suffiecent data to do so. The shotgun approach is needed to build new customers variable data maximizes cutrent. We have gone from 5.5 million a year to 11.5 million a year and data base mailings are a huhe part. That and text marketing.

 

[paul7979]

The post office can be very difficult to get figured out I have been doing direct mail of and on since 1995. Right now for the company i work at I mail about 4,000 pieces a month. They are not eddm pieces ,and it takes about 15 minutes at the post office. Tops.

I have had a bulk permit in the past and mailed through our main post office’s bulk mail acceptance unit. These were easy drops, in and out in no time. The problem I had was in switching to EDDM was I now had to deal with the retail side of the post offices. Even at our main office, the only one here to accept bulk mail, the retail clerks were absolutely clueless with what to do with EDDM. The other post offices in town were even worse, and in sending EDDM you have to deal with whichever post office services that carrier route.

I agree that the variable data printing is very beneficial. That’s what I would like to do for my next step but will still do full carrier routes, offers will be based on customers most recent order being 30, 60, 90 days out or not a current customer.

 

[Warren]

Yeah like anything there is a learning curve i was sent to 3 post offices just to find out about eddm when it first started. Nobody knew squat. Now they have it down. That said our time has value. If your post office is still clueless your right. It aint worth it.

 

[GotRocks]

I went a different route, all US post offices have the EDDM program, (Every Door Direct Mail) I had postcards printed with vista print when they run specials then go online to the USPS website, choose which neighborhoods that I want to bombard, take my postcards into the post office, and the neighborhoods that I chose (No business, no PO boxes" gets them next day.
So I can choose when I get my customers in, because with a coupon, they come running

 

[Steve]

Just wanted to thank everyone for their posts. I haven’t had time to read them all, but I’ve been able to pick up some good info so far. Thanks again!

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[Joe]

My first MailShark mailer goes out tomorrow and super geeked about it. Will let you guys know about the return. Summer months in SF are slower so this is the perfect time to do it. Less of the families are in town as the schools are out and we’re in a 30-somethings neighborhood. Excited to see how this unfolds woo!

 

[josh]

To confirm none of our prices increase during any contractual period. Furthermore, we have not had a price increase since 2013. If you are on one of our Annual Mailing programs where we take a blended cost of all of your mailers and divide that cost by 52 weeks to give you a consistent weekly payment, the only way your weekly payment can change either up or down is if you either increase or decrease the amount of pieces you are mailing or you decide to pick a new piece that is not part of your original agreement and that holds a different price than the piece in your original agreement. Eg. you don’t want to mail a 5.5"x10.5" postcard and instead you want to mail a 10.5x17 menu. Since menus have a higher cost than postcards your weekly payment would increase only in the amount of the difference in cost from the postcard to menu.

If anyone has questions about our pricing and or how any of our programs work please feel free to contact me at any time.

Josh Davis
Executive Vice President of Sales
Direct: 484.948.1611
Email: [email protected]
www.themailshark.com

 

[Warren]

To confirm none of our prices increase during any contractual period. Furthermore, we have not had a price increase since 2013. If you are on one of our Annual Mailing programs where we take a blended cost of all of your mailers and divide that cost by 52 weeks to give you a consistent weekly payment, the only way your weekly payment can change either up or down is if you either increase or decrease the amount of pieces you are mailing or you decide to pick a new piece that is not part of your original agreement and that holds a different price than the piece in your original agreement. Eg. you don’t want to mail a 5.5"x10.5" postcard and instead you want to mail a 10.5x17 menu. Since menus have a higher cost than postcards your weekly payment would increase only in the amount of the difference in cost from the postcard to menu.

If anyone has questions about our pricing and or how any of our programs work please feel free to contact me at any time.

Josh Davis
Executive Vice President of Sales
Direct: 484.948.1611
Email: [email protected]
www.themailshark.com

I have shopped a lot of places and I can tell you that your door hanger prices are as good or better than any I have found. When I get open you will defiantly get a call for those

 

[Steve]

To confirm none of our prices increase during any contractual period. Furthermore, we have not had a price increase since 2013. If you are on one of our Annual Mailing programs where we take a blended cost of all of your mailers and divide that cost by 52 weeks to give you a consistent weekly payment, the only way your weekly payment can change either up or down is if you either increase or decrease the amount of pieces you are mailing or you decide to pick a new piece that is not part of your original agreement and that holds a different price than the piece in your original agreement. Eg. you don’t want to mail a 5.5"x10.5" postcard and instead you want to mail a 10.5x17 menu. Since menus have a higher cost than postcards your weekly payment would increase only in the amount of the difference in cost from the postcard to menu.

If anyone has questions about our pricing and or how any of our programs work please feel free to contact me at any time.

Josh Davis
Executive Vice President of Sales
Direct: 484.948.1611
Email: [email protected]
www.themailshark.com

Thanks for the clarification. I apparently spoke too soon without doing enough research. We work with Janelle and she does a wonderful job for us!

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[Steve]

My first MailShark mailer goes out tomorrow and super geeked about it. Will let you guys know about the return. Summer months in SF are slower so this is the perfect time to do it. Less of the families are in town as the schools are out and we’re in a 30-somethings neighborhood. Excited to see how this unfolds woo!

How did your mailer go?

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