How to Choose a Mailing House

I’ve been looking at websites for mailing houses in the North West of England and I have been somewhat surprised by one feature that is common to almost all of them. There is little or nothing on the main landing page to tell the visitor what sets this mailing house apart from all the others. There is nothing to say, “Here’s why you should use us. Here’s what we offer that makes us better than the rest.”

I’m a great believer in the strength of the main landing page or the “home” page. All web designers worth their salt will tell you that the “home” page needs to have a strong, persuasive message and an inviting look. Google gives some brilliant tips on the subject – but I digress. The main thing that I want to talk about is how should you go about choosing a mailing house for your regular B2B mail promotions.

If your promotions are predominantly flat mail, containing nothing more than a letter and a leaflet and you mail out in hunderds of thousands then obviously you need a fully automated mailing house with full print facilities. Companies such as this deal with your mail in almost “production line” fashion. However, most B2B mailings are targetted at much smaller audiences with a need to get results. The trend is very much in favour of “dimensional mail” for its record of producing high response rates. An automated line for envelope filling is of little use if your mail is going into a custom made box or something similar. You will need a hand-fill specialist. You will find that most large companies with big, automated lines will also offer hand-fill services.

As we are B2B mail specialists, we don’t have an automated line. Everything that we do is done by hand and we’ve been doing it that way for about 20 years.  However, choosing a mailing house is not just a simple choice between automated and hand-fill operations. You need to feel comfortable with a mailing house as you put a lot of trust in your chosen supplier to get your promotion right, do it in a clean and professional environment, do it with accurate and thorough ckecks and to do it on time.

We have offer 10 vital tips on how to choose a mailing house on our Mail by Hand website that should help make the process easier for you. Good luck!