Direct mail marketing is an extremely effective way of getting your message in front of your target audience, even in today’s digital world. With the impressive response rates of direct mail (increased even further using innovative variable data printing techniques) as part of your multi-channel marketing campaigns, you can drive leads to your website or straight to your inbound sales funnel. SunDance proudly provides direct mailing services with expert direct mail printing and campaign strategy advice. We are the leader in producing business collateral that gets attention and ultimately results. We produce these materials in-house, which means we oversee every step of the production from quality control, timelines, and cost. We can also manage your mailing lists for you, taking the burden and liability off you or your employees.
How do I know what mail class to choose?
Mailing class can be chosen based on a number of criteria. Based on which mailing class you choose, an indicia or stamp may be printed or affixed to your mail piece.
First, determine when you want your piece to arrive in mailboxes. From there, you can determine if your piece physically qualifies for the speed you like, and what your budget would be for mailing.
Refer to the list below for a quick reference:
Presorted Marketing Mail (permit imprint): Minimum 200 pieces. Delivers in an estimated 5-7 USPS business days (local) and 2-3 weeks nationwide. Usually the most cost effective option.
Presorted First Class (permit imprint): Minimum 500 pieces. Delivers in 1-3 USPS business days.
Precanceled Stamps (stamps): Some mailers believe that envelopes with stamps get noticed and opened before other pieces of mail. You can use that to your advantage by using precanceled stamps to send your promotional messages. Minimum 500 pieces. Delivers in 1-3 USPS business days. Please note: precanceled stamps must be ordered in advanced and can take up to a week to purchase.
First Class (stamps): No minimum. Delivers in 1-3 USPS business days.
Non Profit (permit imprint): Minimum 200 pieces. Delivers in an estimated 5-7 USPS business days (local) and 2-3 weeks nationwide. This is the most cost effective option if you have a USPS non-profit authorization number.
What happens to my data before my piece is mailed?
SunDance adheres to the data integrity standards as required by the USPS. We run each list through CASS Certification, National Change of Address (NCOALink) and Deduping. The list below is our standard mail cleansing process.
CASS Certification: CASS-certified address validation will standardize your mailing list, update outdated addresses, and verify that addresses are valid and complete.
NCOALink: Once addresses are corrected with CASS, each customer record is matched against the USPS 48- month NCOALink database containing the most recent 160 million moves. When a match is made, there will be an update to the address file with the most current address information.
Deceased Suppression: The Social Security Death Index (SSDI) is a database of people whose deaths were reported to the Social Security Administration (SSA). Our software will look at the SSDI database to remove any matching names from the list.
Deduping: A standard deduping mechanism is applied to your list to ensure multiple pieces do not get mailed to the same recipient. See the next question for more information.
How to choose deduping:
Deduplication (deduping) is a mechanism to ensure your pieces reach the intended parties only once. We can reduce the amount of wasted mailers with this process. There are three types of deduping methods you can choose from, depending on what your needs are.
By household: This method ensures one piece goes to a household, regardless of the First and Last name listed. For example, your list contains these addresses:
Barry Allen, 51 Flash Drive, Central City, PA 01543
Iris West, 51 Flash Drive, Central City, PA 01543
Deduping by Household only would remove “Iris West” from the list, and one mailer would be mailed to:
Barry Allen, 51 Flash Drive, Central City, PA 01543
By name: This method ensures someone with the same first and last name only receives one mailer. If they exist in the list with different addresses, the first one in the list is chosen.
For example:
Barry Allen, 51 Flash Drive, Central City, PA 01543
Barry Allen, 51 Flash Drive, Central City, PA 01543
The only mailer would go to:
Barry Allen, 51 Flash Drive, Central City, PA 01543
By household and name*:
Deduping by this method removes duplicate names AND addresses, providing removal of records that are EXACT duplicates.
Barry Allen, 51 Flash Drive, Central City, PA 01543
Barry Allen, 51 Flash Drive, Central City, PA 01543
Iris West, 51 Flash Drive, Central City, PA 01543
Barry Allen, 660 Reverse Flash Drive, Central City, PA 01543
These get mailed:
Barry Allen, 51 Flash Drive, Central City, PA 01543
Iris West, 51 Flash Drive, Central City, PA 01543
Barry Allen, 660 Reverse Flash Drive, Central City, PA 01543
*SUNDANCE DEFAULT: If there is no deduping method specified, SunDance will default to deduping “By household and name”.
Form request:
To facilitate expediency with processing mail, please refer to the form below to ensure you’re specifying the options on you’d like your list to be handled. Please fill out this form, save as a new PDF and email it to your sales rep or account manager.
Mailing Processing Guidelines and FAQ
For more information on mail processing guidelines visit the link below:
