Targeted Direct Mail
Targeted direct mail: postcards to the households that match your buyer
Postcards addressed to specific households chosen by the demographics that predict your sale, or modeled on your own best customers, with the list sourced for your mailing and cleaned before it prints.
Saturation reaches everyone on a street. Targeted mail reaches the particular homes on it that look like your buyer: the households over 60, the families with young children, the incomes above a line you set, the homes worth more than a figure you name. Each card is addressed to a named person at a known address, which costs a little more per piece than saturation and wastes far fewer pieces.
You do not need a list to start. Tell us who buys from you and we source a list to those criteria for your mailing, count it, and quote the job. Or send your customer file and we build the list from it: a profile of the people already buying, then the households nearby who share it. Either way the names go through CASS and NCOA before they print, and the list is used for your mailing rather than sold to you on its own.
How is a targeted mailing list built?
From your description of the buyer, turned into selections. “Households in these ZIP codes with income over a set line and adults 45 to 70” is a list definition; so is “families with children within ten miles of the store”. We run the selections, return a count, and adjust them with you until the count and the budget meet. Narrow selections mail fewer pieces to likelier buyers; wide ones mail more pieces to fewer of them. The count shows where the balance sits before you spend anything.
Building the list from your own customers
A customer file usually holds a name and an address and little else. Reconstructing it adds what is missing, each household’s age, income, home value and family makeup, and then looks for the pattern: what your best customers have in common. That pattern becomes the selection for the next list, so the mailing goes to strangers who resemble the people already buying from you.
Why address each card to a person?
Because a named card reaches the household you chose even when its neighbors are not your market, and because a named card can say more. The address block is already personal, and the rest of the card can be too, with the recipient’s first name, their neighborhood or an offer chosen for their age group printed on that piece alone. Sent First-Class, named mail is also forwarded or returned when the address is wrong, which tells you which names to drop next time.
The list can also be modeled on your own customers through look-alike targeting, and each group can get its own offer on personalized postcards.
Request a free quote
Quote a targeted direct mail job 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
Targeted Direct Mail: questions people ask
Do you sell mailing lists?
Not on their own. We source a list to your criteria as part of a mailing we print and send, so the names come with the job and are used for it. If you only want a list to download, we are not the right place.
What is the difference between targeted and saturation direct mail?
Saturation mails every household on chosen carrier routes, needs no list and has the lowest postage. Targeted mail goes to named households picked by demographics; it costs more per piece once the list and postage are counted, and mails fewer pieces to likelier buyers.
How much does a targeted mailing list cost?
It is part of the quote for the mailing, priced by how many names the selections return and how many selections are used. Send the criteria and the area through the quote form; the count and the price come back together.
Can you build a mailing list from my existing customers?
Yes. Send the file and we profile it: the ages, incomes, home values and household makeup your customers share. Then we select households in your area that match the profile and quote a mailing to them.
What selections can I use to target consumers?
Household and individual income, home value, the age of the home, the age of the adults and whether children live there, alone or combined, plus other demographic data that matters to your sale. Tell us who buys and we turn it into selections.