Direct Mail Services are still popular due to direct mail campaigns which remain an effective marketing strategy for many businesses. It opens up the possibility of engaging new and existing users, driving sales, generating leads, and targeting a local audience.
However, you need a dedicated direct mail service to succeed in this direct mail marketing market. Moreover, you need to create, design, and deliver marketing content directly to your prospect’s inbox.
Since the direct mail service has up to 90% open rate which is higher than traditional email marketing services the demand is high. Therefore, choosing the best direct mail service is crucial to improve business margins and scale influence.
In this guide, I have ranked and reviewed the best direct mail services based on their pricing, support, marketing features, ease of use, integrations, and more.
So let’s get started.
What Are the Best Direct Mail Services?
Here are the best direct mail services that you can you use this year for your business.
1. Mailshark
Mailshark is more than just a direct mail service. Their full-service mailing along with their best customer service and unbeatable pricing can help you reach all your marketing goals. Furthermore, if you plan to do mailing by yourself and just need the promotional materials they got your back.
They provide a DIY option called EDDM service where they design and print the emails for you and you’ll get your printed materials delivered to your doorsteps. Every Door to Door Mail(EDDM) is a service offered by the United States Postal Service.
Mailshark provides two types of EDDM. One is EDDM Ready-to-go where Mailshark helps you with carrier route selection, planning, and paperwork. You then need to deliver your pieces to the respective post offices. The other is EDDM Print only service where they can print your pieces in accordance with the USPS compliances. You need to do all the rest tasks.
They provide 2 types of mailing lists called Targeted Mailing Lists and Saturation Mailing Lists. With the Targeted Mailing Lists, you can target specific people and reach out to your desired audience. Moreover, if you feel that your product can be used by anyone down the street then the Saturation Mailing list would work for you.
Key Features
- Direct Mail Products: They deal in a variety of direct mail products like postcards, scratch-off postcards, menu mailers, brochures, flyers, door hangers, and many more.
- Mailing Lists: They provide Saturated and Targeted mailing lists. These mailing services help you to choose the desired audience for your business.
- EDDM services: You can take advantage of their low rates printing costs with their print-only and ready-to-go EDDM services.
- Design: Mailshark designs your mail at no extra cost. You get the design you want with unlimited revisions with their Full-service, EDDM ready-to-go, and print-only options.
Pros
- You don’t need to make any advance payments until they pay to the post office for your first week’s mailing. And for the direct mail campaign, you can pay a small amount each week.
- Mails are designed just the way you want without any hidden charges for the extra revisions you make. Mails only go for printing when you are 100% satisfied.
- You can use your own design for printing. You just need to get their templates and make sure it fits their product specifications.
- No advance payments are required until the mailing campaign starts.
Pricing Plan
Mailshark’s quotation is available on request. They provide a variety of services and therefore their pricing depends on what you choose. You can estimate the pricing for each service by filling in some details like quantity, mail size, type of service, and others.
2. Vistaprint
As the name suggests, Vistaprint is a Dutch-based e-commerce company producing physical and digital marketing products for small businesses. Moreover, they just don’t design & print it but also help mail these products. Basically, they also provide a great direct mail marketing campaign.
They have experts in their design team and also provide plenty of ready templates to choose from for your postcards. Though their forte is design and printing they provide a great mailing service as well. Just present your ideas and business and then they will come up with the best design for your emails. After that, you just need to provide your mailing list to them.
In case you don’t have a mailing list, you can even buy it from Vistaprint. They have a targeted mailing list that is based on demographics, regular consumers, and businesses as well.
Key Features
- Design: They have an in-house team of experts who will design the best cards for your company.
- Ready templates: If you want to try your hands at designing, then they provide over 4000 free templates to use.
- Targeted Mailing list: You can get a targeted mailing list from Vistaprint in case you don’t have one.
- Printing: This is what they are the best know for and therefore their printing prices are unbeatable.
Pros
- You can design your own cards by using their ready templates.
- Their mailing list is targeted which helps you to reach out to the best audience for your direct mail campaign.
- They have an expert team of designers to design the best card for your mailing campaign.
- Since they are best at printing, their printing costs are low and best for small to micro-businesses.
Pricing Plan
Vistaprint offers a Pro shop plan at $99 per year which includes free shipping, white label packaging, a custom product catalog, and many more features. They also provide a custom-priced plan based on the type of business. Apart from this, they provide a variety of services and therefore their pricing varies according to that.
3. Gunderson Direct
Being one of the oldest direct mail services in the United States, Gunderson Direct has over 1.5 decades of experience in building and improving direct mail programs. They serve direct mail for SAAS companies, B2B companies, telemedicine, and financial services. Basically, they work with large companies and well-funded start-ups to generate higher-quality leads for them.
Gunderson Direct solely focuses on mailing as a direct marketing strategy. They have an expert team that helps you to plan, launch and manage your direct mailing programs. Starting from strategic planning to providing insightful analytics from the mailing campaign, they have got you covered. This way you get the best customized direct mail campaign that is perfect for your brand.
Direct mail ofttimes might be a part of a broader marketing campaign. In such cases, Gunderson Direct can synchronize with your in-house team or other agency to serve you with the best results. They understand your business and its needs and serve you with the best services in all the possible ways they can.
Key Features
- Full Direct Mail Service: They provide a complete Direct Mail Service without any missing pieces. Starting from strategic planning, production, mailing, data, and analytics, they know it all. They provide you best out of your budget.
- Customized: Any mail campaign that you think of having with Gunderson Direct is solely customized for you to generate more valuable leads. They plan the campaign according to your business, needs, goals, and target market.
- Insightful Analytics: Gunderson Direct not only just gives you the results of the direct mail campaigns but they give it in a very structured format. They transform the results into a graphical format to provide you with insightful analytics on it.
- Client Dashboard: These are very useful to view your direct mail performance. It displays current campaign stats and historical data. Plus, they display all these data and performances in a graphical format that is easy to grasp.
Pros
- Gunderson Direct has 18 years of experience in mailing and is an expert at it. They know all the highs and lows of direct mail campaigns.
- Along with the Campaign, they provide you with well-analyzed results in a graphical manner so that you can identify further actions.
- Going a step further, they even provide Email integrations.
- They know how to provide you best value out of your budget. For e.g. all the mailing formats suggested by them would offer you the most postage savings.
Pricing Plan
Gunderson Direct provides a custom quote for each business. But before signing up with them they can help you estimate a rough budget for your camping and determine your marketing impact. This can be done using their ROI calculator.
4. Cactus Mailing
Cactus Mailing is a mail marketing service provider like all the others listed above but with two decades of experience in this field. What sets them apart from the others is their experience in this industry, their service, and the results they offer at a very budget-friendly. They know what type of mail works for which type of business.
Unlike others, Cactus Mailing provides Smart marketing. Smart marketing is a combination of direct mailing with google display ads and landing pages that ensures that you reach the right audience. Additionally, they offer completely customized postcard mailing campaigns with the best suitable postcard design for your business. This also includes a promotional brochure.
Cactus Mailing knows what to mail, whom to mail, and when to mail. Plus as they are in this market for a long, they have a wide variety of mailing lists available that can ensure that your business generates quality leads. Therefore, you need not worry about anything if you choose Cactus for your direct mail services.
Key Features
- Smart Marketing: They provide smart marketing options that have the combined efficiency of direct mail and online reach of google display Ads.
- Customized designs: They provide completely customized designs specially designed according to your business without using any pre-designed templates.
- Mailing Lists: At Cactus mailing, you can get lots of comprehensive target mailing lists. Some of the are consumer, basic business, per owners, and new homeowner mailing list.
Pros
- Cactus Mailing has a wide variety of mailing lists to choose from. Each of those would definitely provide quality leads to your business.
- Smart marketing helps you to increase the response rates and branding of your business.
- Their experience in this field is certainly a thing that would yield good results for you.
- You can get a no-obligation direct mail marketing plan at no cost.
Pricing
Like others, Cactus Mailing also provides quotations on request. Roughly their service cost starts from $1000. On requesting quotations, you get a free marketing plan. Moreover, they provide an ROI calculator using which you can get a rough estimate.
So now let’s cover the basics.
What Should You Look for in the Best Direct Mail Services?
Here are some of the factors you should look for in direct mail marketing companies.
1. Turnaround Time
Response rate is a direct function of campaign turnaround time. If your mail reaches your customers when the offer or promotion is no longer valid then it’s no more a viable solution.
Therefore, always choose a service that delivers campaigns on time and provides a reimbursement guarantee if delayed.
2. Service Provider Experience
When selecting a service, make sure they have a lot of experience in the direct mail marketing industry. Moreover, it should be able to fulfill large volume orders and offer attractive postage rates.
3. Dedicated Mailing List
Without a targeted mailing list running a direct mail campaign can be very difficult. Therefore, you need to look for mailer companies that offer this service in their package.
Moreover, they should also streamline the marketing process by providing a targeted list on hand.
4. Customization Options
Most direct mail advertising services offer customization to ensure direct mail marketing success. They provide industry-specific templates and design services so that you do not have to figure out those things from start.
Also, if you have an in-house team for designing then look for services that accept these custom designs.
Best Direct Mail Services – Final Summary
This wraps up my list of the best direct mail services to use this year. I will keep updating the list with other good direct mail services available in the market.
Remember that direct mail marketing is one of the oldest and most reliable marketing methods out in the market. Direct mail marketing does perform better than many new digital marketing techniques in some cases.
Therefore, go through all the software in the list to see which one fits your business requirements and budget. Finally, I hope you will get the right software for direct mail service from the above list.
Which direct mail service are you planning to use? Let me know in the comment section below.
More from Smashitbuck: Do check out my other articles on the English grammar check, hyperlink shortner, and animation s to read this year.
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