There are several parts to the process of creating a direct mail campaign and sending out your mail. Direct mail fulfilment plays an important role in the process, helping you to get your direct mail campaign rolled out. When you’re planning a direct mail campaign, the fulfillment needs to be one of your main points of concern.
What Is Direct Mail Fulfilment?
Direct mail fulfilment is the process of preparing printed materials so that they are ready to send. It involves taking the printed stationery and creating mailable items, which might mean wrapping a magazine in plastic wrap or putting a letter or flyer into an envelope. This can be a time-consuming part of any direct mail campaign. You can have hundreds or even thousands of printed materials that you want to send out to customers. It’s important to consider this aspect of a direct mail campaign because it can take up a significant amount of time.
What’s Involved in Direct Mail Fulfilment?
Direct mail fulfilment can involve multiple tasks that help to prepare printed materials to be mailed. Once the materials have been printed, how they might need to be prepared often depends on what they are. There are various types of printed material that might be sent as part of a direct mail campaign, including brochures, leaflets, catalogues, letters, magazines, flyers, and more. Each of these types of printed materials might need to be processed in different ways. Additionally, the steps required for direct mail fulfilment can vary depending on the project, with requirements for materials, volumes, time, and budget changing from project to project.
Here are some of the steps that might need to be taken in direct mail fulfilment:
- Collation – Collating together different materials to insert into envelopes, with materials including brochures, free samples, forms, or other elements.
- Folding – Folding materials in the correct places so that they have neat creases or are formatted in the right way. Materials can be folded using different methods, some of which are more time-consuming and expensive than others.
- Envelope closing – Closing up envelopes once they have had the required materials inserted and ensuring they are sealed securely so that they arrive intact.
- Polywrapping – Magazines and other larger materials such as catalogues or brochures can benefit from being wrapped in polywrap to protect them when they are mailed.
- Bundling and packing – Once all of the materials are individually prepared, they then need to be bundled and packed into boxes or other carriers to get them ready to be dispatched.
- Postal collection – The final stage is to ensure the direct mail materials are mailed, which requires arranging collection with the postal carrier.
Can You Automate Direct Mail Fulfilment?
Automating direct mail fulfilment is possible and it will save you a lot of time. A mailing house can automate specific parts of the process for you so that you don’t have to do it yourself. Using a mailing house rather than manually carrying out direct mail fulfilment is the smart choice.
All of the tasks required for direct mail fulfilment can be automated, saving huge amounts of time. Many of the tasks involved are very labour-intensive if done by hand, which could mean you have to have staff tied up in preparing your direct mail. This means you either have your full-time staff working on fulfilment when they could be doing something else or you might need to take on temporary workers to complete the extra work. A mailing house saves you this time and can save you money too by automating your direct mail fulfilment instead.
At Snapmail we can take care of collation, envelope closing, polywrapping, folding, packing, and postal collection. As experts in fulfilling large campaigns, we can provide fast turnarounds and ensure your campaign materials are prepared and collected for mailing. By using automation, we keep costs low to help you stay within budget and reduce the expense of fulfilment.
Automated, machine-based fulfilment makes much more sense when dealing with large numbers of direct mail materials. It’s usually the cheaper option and the fastest option in all but a few cases. While manual fulfilment might make sense for small volumes of printed materials, automation is the better choice for direct mail fulfilment when dealing with larger volumes.
Take a look at our services to find out more about automated direct mail fulfilment and how we can help. We’re experts in direct mail fulfilment and always make sure to make the right decisions to help keep costs down and provide an efficient service.