3 Things to Know About Direct Mail

At the recent PRINTING United Expo in Orlando, there was no shortage of educational sessions that focused on direct mail. It is still an incredibly effective tool for brands of every shape and size — and the speakers brought the tips and tricks to help printers maximize this segment. Here are the top three highlights from a few of those sessions.

1. Omnichannel integration is critical for today’s direct mail.

The days of mail-only campaigns are over. We live in a very digital world, so mail campaigns today need to integrate seamlessly into the overall whole to maximize ROI and ensure every target consumer gets the right communication on the right platform at the right time.

“If you’re only utilizing one channel, or you’re using digital without direct mail or direct mail without digital, you are missing the boat... they work together in tandem to drive results,” said Morgan DiGiorgio, chief revenue officer at DirectMail2.0.

German Sacristan, group director, Digital Printing Production Services at Keypoint Intelligence further noted, “All the communication channels are here for a reason. They are all relevant and powerful. They all have strengths and weaknesses. For every time that you tell me where direct mail is better than email, I'll give you another reason when email was better than direct mail. I think that the issue here is that marketers — and this has been my experience, obviously — often lead with the channel first. The first thing that they [do is] pick a channel — I'm going to do a display, I'm going to do an email, I'm going to do a direct mail — without really thinking thorough the strategy. Who am I talking to? What am I going to say? How often do I have to say it? And I think for me, that's kind of backwards.”

2. Mingling mail will drive savings and improve productivity.

Whether it’s co-mail, co-mingle, co-palletization, and co-transportation, the name of the game is mingling the mail. This is the process of combining and pre-sorting two or more mail campaigns into a single stream, with a goal of taking advantage of bigger postage discounts which can either be passed on to customers or help to increase the often slim margins on direct mail campaigns.

Jamie Freeman, vice president at TC Delivers, noted, “[Co-minging and coding] are opportunities for mailers — large, medium, and small — to have some strategy into controlling the ever increasing cost of postage, while improving predictability on in-home delivery so that your firm's adjacent marketing folks at the call centers, or those customer service folks that are receiving the call to action can do so in a very efficient manner. And what's happening in general is that mailers are becoming much, much more strategic, and these tools … will help you play in a sandbox with some of the largest marketers and mailers in the United States without having to have that breadth of volume.”

3. Optimizing is also about taking a hard look at postal incentives and promotions.

Beyond co-mail strategies, another way to bring down the costs of individual mail pieces and overall campaigns is to design around the current USPS promotions and incentives. But to do that, you first need to have a deep understanding of what those are, and you need to be able to have in-depth conversations with your clients before the planning even starts to ensure each campaign is optimized.

A few of t he current promotions to keep an eye on are around things like using tactile elements, incorporating interactive elements into the piece, or even using AI as part of the creation process. Ultimately, the USPS is looking to reward those who are willing to push mail forward.

“The reason why you're getting these incentives is because they're trying to give a little carrot for you to try new things,” said Glenn Swyers, director of Marketing Integration at Imagine Group.

Further, Swyers noted, “what people don't realize, if you don't take these promotion dollars, you pay for them anyway. So last price increase — price change, we don't call them increases at the Post Office —  there was an extra 3% surcharge on top of the regular increase to pay for the promotions that you may or may not have taken. If you qualify for a promotion and you don't take it, it's a double whammy. Not only did you not get the dollars, but eventually your price, your rates, are going to go up to pay for all of the other people that did take that money.”

All three of these panels had a ton of great tips and information — if you want to level up your direct mail game, mark your calendar for Sept 23-25, 2026 for PRINTING United Expo, returning to Las Vegas, where there will be even more great in-depth sessions and speakers to learn from.