Direct mail for retail & local business
Retail postcards: grand openings, sales events and loyalty cards
Direct mail postcards for retail stores, salons, gyms, auto services and local businesses: grand opening saturation mail, sale event cards, and loyalty and win-back cards to your POS customer list, printed and mailed for up to 60% less.
Local retail lives on the households within a few miles who need a reason to come in this week. Mail gives them one: a grand opening, a seasonal sale, a coupon with a date on it, a loyalty reward from the register. Unlike a social post, it reaches every household on the route, and unlike an email, it is not filtered.
Saturation mail to the routes around the store is the base for openings and sales; postcards to your customer file from the POS or loyalty system bring existing customers back; and because a saturation drop reaches every household on the route, it also finds the ones that just moved in and have not picked a gym, a salon, a hardware store or a mechanic yet.
What retail & local business businesses mail
- Grand opening 6×11 saturation mail, two drops, to every route within 3 miles
- Seasonal sale postcards to the customer file and nearby routes
- Loyalty rewards and win-back 5×8.25 cards mailed from a POS export
- Quarterly saturation drops with a coupon and a deadline
- Gym and studio membership offers in January and September
- Auto service reminders and state inspection cards
Coupons and codes
A postcard offer needs a code, a deadline and a reason. The code, printed per piece or per drop, tells you which mailing the customer came from, and a deadline four to six weeks out creates the visit. Percent-off offers under 20% rarely move a household; a dollar amount, a free item with purchase, or a two-for-one does.
Using your own customer data
The customer file is the best list a retailer has and the one most never mail. A loyalty or win-back card to customers who have not visited in 60 or 90 days, pulled from the POS each quarter, costs a fraction of a new-customer acquisition and brings back a measurable share of them. A seasonal thank-you card and a VIP offer to the top tenth of the file run the same way, batched into one drop.
What a grand opening mailing costs, line by line, is in the direct mail cost guide.
Request a free quote
Quote a retail & local business mailing for your city
Send the postcard size, the quantity and the city it is going to. Pricing is set for your city and your job, so you get a written quote — printing, mail processing and postage — with no obligation. No finished design or mailing list needed.
Answers
Retail & Local Business direct mail questions
How much does a grand opening mailing cost?
It is quoted for the routes around the store, typically 5,000 to 10,000 homes within about three miles, on a 6×11 saturation postcard. Two drops, before and after opening, are recommended and quoted together, on mail dates booked with whichever of our three print partners covers your area. Send the address and the radius through the quote form for a written quote.
Does direct mail work for small retail businesses?
Yes, particularly saturation mail, because a store's customers live nearby and a coupon with a deadline gives them a reason to come in. A retailer mailing the routes around the store every quarter, and its own customers in between, is running one of the most cost-effective local programs available.
What makes a retail postcard offer work?
A code, a deadline and a reason to come in. The code, printed per piece or per drop, tells you which mailing sent the customer. A deadline four to six weeks out gets the visit. Percent-off offers under 20% rarely move a household; a dollar amount, a free item with purchase or a two-for-one does.
Should a store mail its own customers?
Yes, and most stores never do. A win-back card to customers who haven't been in for 60 or 90 days, exported from the POS, costs a fraction of finding a new customer and brings back a share you can count. A VIP card to your best customers runs from the same file.