Tuesday Marketing Notes (Number 47—August 22nd , 2006)

A B2B Marketing Newsletter for BMA Members
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Executing Your Company’s Direct Mail Projects (Part 3: Production, Printing, and Direct Mail Lettershop Execution)

by Eric Gagnon

Last week, we covered the steps involved in defining, developing and producing direct mail pieces for your business-to-business direct mail projects. Once your piece is designed and produced, then it’s off to the printer and then on to the lettershop, who prepares the mailing piece for final delivery to the Post Office.

Once you’ve finalized and approved your direct mail piece, the final layout files for your mailing piece are sent by your ad agency or marketing consultant to the printer. At the printer, the artwork files of your direct mail piece go through the printer’s pre-press department, where the layouts are checked and prepared for printing.

Depending on the number, quantity, and complexity (such as four-color printing) of the pieces to be printed, your printer will generally require 1-2 weeks to produce, print, trim and fold the pieces that comprise the direct mail package for your mailing. If you’re using a one-piece self-mailer, preparation time will be closer to one week, since this type of mailing piece take less time to print.

Pre-press and proofing: At the printing pre-press stage, you have one final opportunity to check the layouts for your company’s direct mail piece. For large, expensive, full-color mailings, it’s a good idea to get a color “matchprint,” a hard-copy, color proof that gives you an exact preview of how your printed materials will look in their final form. When checking a color matchprint or proof, you should only check for obvious printing problems, such as color match, dropped text, missing fonts, or other production glitches.

You most definitely do not—except in extreme circumstances—want to be making copy changes on production proofs once your materials are at the printer. These changes should have been made prior to this final stage, and making them now only needlessly delays your mailing and increases production expense.

On smaller mailing projects, save time by going all-digital: On smaller or less expensive mailings, or if you are very experienced in working with your ad agency and its printer, you may forego the steps of reviewing a hard-copy color matchprint proof. If your ad agency’s printer is running a digital pre-press operation, they can e-mail you an Adobe Acrobat .PDF proof of your final layouts straight from their “direct-to-plate” digital pre-press system.

These digital .PDF proofs give you an accurate representation of your direct mail package’s final printed pieces, and, like any other .PDF, can be viewed, on-screen, and printed from your laser printer. Reviewing final proofs in this way saves at least two days on any direct mail project.

Printing quantities: As you (or your ad agency or marketing consultant) place your print order for your direct mail pieces, give some careful thought to the quantities you’ll need for your project. Since you must have sufficient quantities of mailing packages to mail to every name on your mailing list, you don’t want to run short of printed material for your mailing. This is especially important for multiple-piece direct mail packages, consisting of envelopes, cover letters, brochures, coupons, etc. Running short of any one of these pieces will mean that all or part of your mailing will be delayed until the additional quantities of these pieces are printed and delivered to your lettershop.

Printers have their own standard policies regarding final quantities for print jobs, and usually give themselves an allowance to run up to 5% over  the print quantities you specify in your order. However, printers will sometimes under-run a job, which means the lettershop may end up a few hundred printed pieces short on your mailing.

You can avoid this problem by making it clear to the printer that your mailing requires the exact quantities you have specified for your mailing. You, your printer, and your lettershop manager will appreciate not having to go through the fire drill of having to go back to the press to print a few hundred additional copies of a mailing piece, while the rest of your mailing is held back at the lettershop.

When deciding on final print quantities for your mailing, consider the other possible applications and projects for which you may have use for this package, apart from your current mailing.

For example, you may want to print a few hundred extra pieces to send to your field dealers and distributors, or to be used by your company’s field sales reps as handouts on their sales presentations. You’ll never know when you might need a few hundred (or even a few thousand) extra pieces of that direct mail package you’re working on now. Smart marketing managers always keep an extra stock of their key mailing pieces handy, and having some extra copies printed on top of a large print run is always less expensive than having to run a smaller additional quantity at a later date.

Final packaging and delivery to the lettershop: If your direct mail package consists of two or more individual, printed pieces, ask your printer to clearly label and organize the individual printed pieces of your mailing as they are packed and made ready for delivery to your lettershop. This will help your lettershop to quickly and efficiently organize the individual pieces of your mailing on their production floor, once they receive the printed materials for your mailing.

Working with a Lettershop on Your Direct Mail Projects

Concurrently with the development of your direct mail package, and no later than the day your ad agency or marketing consultant sends their original layout files to the printer to begin the production and printing process for your mailing packages, you (or your ad agency) must contact your lettershop, who will be responsible for the final preparation, production, and physical delivery of your mailing to the Post Office.

Lettershops (also known as mailing houses) handle all of the final tasks involved in the actual mailing of your direct mail project, including:

• Personalization and high-speed printing of sales cover letters and other personalized materials;
• Addressing of outer envelopes;
• Folding and insertion of individual direct mail package elements, such as sales letter, brochure, reply card, etc.;
• Delivery of mailing pieces to the USPS postal facility

Generally, lettershops require 1-2 weeks’ advance notice to execute a mailing, so they can schedule the processing of your mailing in their production pipeline. If your mailing project is especially complicated—for example, if it has many thousands of cover letters that must be individually personalized, or special imprinting requirements, your lettershop will need additional time. Your lettershop will also need about one week extra if your mailing lists require additional computer processing.

Create a “nesting sample” of your mailing piece for your lettershop: If your direct mail package consists of individual, printed elements that are to be inserted in an envelope, the order, or the “nesting,” of these printed pieces—that is, how they are to be inserted into your outer envelope, is an important consideration.

You do not want your carefully-written, designed, and printed pieces inserted, helter-skelter, into the outer envelope by your lettershop. What you do want are the individual printed pieces of your mailing package inserted in the envelope in such a way that when your prospect opens the envelope, they will see the individual pieces presented in a rational, organized fashion.

In most cases, this means the first thing you want your prospects to see is your package’s sales cover letter, then your color brochure, then your coupon, and then any other printed element of your direct mail package.

How to make a nesting sample: While your pieces are being printed, prepare a “nesting sample,” a stapled-together mockup of your mailing piece that shows how the individual, printed pieces are to be inserted into the outer envelope.

Generally, the nesting order of a conventional, envelope-inserted direct mail package is prepared as follows:

1.) Fold up and stack the individual, printed pieces of your mailing package from bottom to top, in the following order:

• reply card (on the bottom of the stack);
• color brochure;
• cover letter (this should be at the top of this “stack,” with address and salutation facing you);

2.) Next, staple this stack of individual pieces together. The folded face of your package’s sales cover letter should be facing UP on the top of this stack;

3.) Finally, staple the nested stack of the individual pieces you just stapled in step 2.) onto the back (reverse) side of your outer envelope. Now, looking at the pieces stapled to the back of this envelope the final, nested stack should now contain the following pieces, from top to bottom:

Folded sales cover letter facing UP, brochure facing UP, reply card facing UP; all stapled onto the back of the outer envelope, that faces Front Side DOWN.

This nesting sample shows your lettershop exactly how your pieces should be inserted. Now, when prospects open your direct mail piece, the first thing they’ll see is your cover letter, then your brochure, and then your reply coupon (and then, other pieces if there are more to be inserted into your mailing). This puts the pieces of your direct mail package into the hands of your prospects in the order they should be seen, and gives them the best possible presentation in your mailing.

Mailing List Processing

If you are renting mailing lists from outside list brokers or other third-party list owners for your mailing, and you’ve already selected and ordered these mailing lists as the very first step in your mailing project, your lettershop should have received these mailing lists well before the time your direct mail pieces have been printed.

In some cases, the mailing list as it has been delivered to your lettershop will require your lettershop to perform additional computer processing steps prior to the physical steps of folding, inserting, bundling, and “dropping” your mailing at the Post Office, such as:

Merge/purge: On large mailings (50,000 or more pieces) consisting of several mailing lists rented from different sources, but all within the same industry, there is a high probability that some of names on these lists will be duplicated across any two or more lists. To save the extra, unnecessary costs of mailing the same piece two or more times to the same individual, a lettershop can perform what is known as a “merge/purge” on your mailing lists, combining the several, different mailing lists they receive from list owners into a single computer file, then removing the duplicate names from this unified, larger mailing list file;

Personalization and custom imprinting: Many business-to-business direct mail projects use a personalized sales cover letter, where the date, recipient’s name, company and address, and a personalized “Dear Mr. [Last Name]:” salutation, along with the body of the letter, are printed on the lettershop’s high-speed laser printers, using your company’s blank business letterhead stock. Quality options for custom letter imprinting range from fast, lower-quality inkjet printers, to best-quality (but slower) laser printers that produce the same high-quality letters as the ones you would print from your office laser printer;

Your lettershop will require at least a few extra days’ lead time to execute any custom imprinting and personalization for direct mail sales letters, and may require up to a week for imprinting on large mailings of several thousand pieces;

Graphic signature file: Since the “Yours truly” or “Sincerely” close of your mailing’s computer-generated letter will also require a signature, your lettershop will need a scanned-in graphics file of the signature of the person who will be “signing” this letter. Your lettershop can then place this signature file at the close of your sales letters as they’re printed;

National Change of Address (NCOA) processing: According to the Small Business Administration, about 10% of all small companies go out of business each year. Even in larger companies, executives change jobs, and entire corporate divisions move to different locations. If your company has very large customer or prospect lists, containing many records that have been on the list for a year or more without being updated, you should strongly consider asking your lettershop to run your mailing list against the National Change of Address (NCOA) database. The NCOA database, maintained by the United States Postal Service (USPS), is a database of all individual and business addressees who have relocated in the past 48 months. Your lettershop can match your company’s customer and prospect lists to the NCOA database to “clean” your own company’s mailing list, providing updated addresses for most of the individuals and companies who have relocated over the past year or longer;

Mailing list salutations database: While working on mailings that have personalized, computer-generated cover letters, you may find that the “Mr./Ms.” salutation fields may be missing from one or more of your mailing lists. This makes it impossible to send a cover letter using the proper “Dear Mr./Ms. Jones:” business letter salutation form. Most lettershops can process your mailing lists against “name gender database” software programs that automatically select the proper salutation field, based on the gender identification of the first name field;

Postage for your mailings: Last—but certainly not least—your lettershop will require a check for the full amount of your mailing’s estimated postage expense, prior to their delivery of your mailing to the Post Office. Your lettershop can provide you with a very accurate postage estimate as soon as you know the size and type of mailing piece you’ll be using, the number of names to be mailed, and the postage rate of the mailing. To prevent delays in your mailings, make sure your lettershop has your postage check no later than the day they receive the printed materials for your mailing.

Comments? Questions? Send them to me at: eric@realmarkets.net

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Eric Gagnon (eric@realmarkets.net), is president of GAA (www.realmarkets.net), a sales and business development consulting firm, and is the author of The Marketing Manager’s Handbook, the master study guide for the Business Marketing Association’s Marketing Skills Assessment, Skill Builder, and Certification (MSA/B/C) programs.

For more information on The Marketing Manager’s Handbook, available to BMA members at a special discount, link to:

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