In 2013 the U.S. Postal Service spent $1.5 billion to process over 158 billion mail pieces that were marked as Undelivered Mail.
If the USPS spent $1.5 billion, how much did undelivered or return mail pieces cost your company?
Direct mailing of marketing materials to potential customers is a great way to spread awareness, but is your company using it effectively?
Let’s do some quick math.
Cost to mail marketing material with a 1% return rate:
– 15,000 mailed | – 1,000 mailed |
– 1% returned = 1,500 returned mail | – 1% returned = 100 returned mail |
– 1,500 * $0.50 = $750.00 | – 100 * $0.50 = $50.00 |
– Annually wasted = $750.00 * 12 = $9000 | – Annually wasted = $50.00* 12 = $600 |
Don’t forget that there are other costs such as marketing or printing for each mail piece, making it easy to snowball in cost. Even if you only mailed 1,000 pieces a month you easily lose over $600 a year.
Not only are you throwing away money, you are also throwing away your potential customers.
With So Many Costs, Why Spend on Direct Mailing?
Having the right data is key to success; utilizing undelivered or return mail helps reduce wasting your precious resources.
The benefits of direct mailing to market a product or service revolves around increasing awareness, and keeping an organized and updated data list of current customers, as well as prospects.
According to Chad Brooks of Business News Daily, direct mail has a higher response rate compared to emails. Direct mail gives a more one-on-one connection, and allows you to add different pieces of incentives such as coupons or an option to sign up for newsletters.
In addition, according to a study by Nielsen, 77% of global respondents say word-of-mouth from family and friends is the largest deciding factor towards purchasing a service or product. Keeping consumers aware and collecting information makes a big difference in increasing sales.
ARDEM’s Solution: Put Your Undelivered Mail to Use!
To effectively optimize a direct mailing service, start with having accurate and up-to-date mailing lists. Whether they are from customer loyalty programs, subscription forms, or sign-up cards, accurate data is crucial to reduce undelivered mail.
Have stacks of returned or undelivered mail? Not a problem! Put your undelivered mail to use!
ARDEM provides customized solutions to create mailing lists from scratch, or to collect data and keep your mailing lists up-to-date! Data is double keyed and run through multiple validation tests to ensure accuracy for data entry.
With an effective mailing list, ARDEM can provide mail fulfillment services around a schedule of your choice. In addition, we provide reports to show how many people responded and their responses.
Contact ARDEM to see how we can help you cut costs, and find success!