What is Direct Mail Marketing?

Direct mail marketing uses a mail service (Cornerstone Services, Inc.) to deliver promotional, informative or fundraising mail pieces to your target audience. Direct mail marketing encompasses a wide variety of marketing materials, including brochures, catalogs, postcards, newsletters and appeal letters.

How can direct mail marketing help?

Direct mail marketing can be used to achieve a specific goal in mind. When done correctly using strategy, targeted data lists and creative mail pieces, the results can exceed expectations. Below are a few direct mail marketing examples and what can be accomplished:

Grow your business.

Sending out promotional mail pieces such as offers, events or new items and services can bring in potential clients and customers.

Raise the funds you need.

Non Profit Organizations can use personalized appeal mailings to inform the recipient about your organization and what you plan to do with the money received.

Spread awareness.

Mailing educational pieces is a great way to widely distribute knowledge about a certain topic with the aim of reaching the largest number of people.

Our Direct Mail Marketing Services

With high quality printing, street-smart graphic design and detailed data strategies our experienced and USPS® certified team can help you get the results you are looking for. We make sure your mailing goes out on-time, under budget and uneventfully.

More information on our direct mail services

Data Lists

Select from our data filters such as Board of Elections, Real Property and Occupant Resident.  Send us a list and we can clean it up to ensure you get the best results from your mailing.

Graphic Design

Our USPS Mail Design Professionals can help with branding, marketing and creating direct mail pieces. We are highly experienced in postal regulations and design practices.

Printing

Choose from a variety of paper stock, sizes and finishing options to make your next mailing project stand out. We offer full color, high quality on-demand printing.

Mailing

Our trained production staff makes sure your direct mail project gets assembled correctly, turned around quickly and sent to the Post Office on time.

Cornerstone at work

Want to work with us?

Our staff is 100% USPS® Certified Mail Design Professionals with extensive training and experience in direct mail marketing. We ensure you will get the best possible service by working with a dedicated Project Manager who will see your job from start to finish.

A bit about us.

We are a true one-stop-shop for direct mail.

Cornerstone Services, Inc., located in New Paltz, has been serving the Hudson Valley region since 1998. We are dedicated to helping our clients and providing the best possible service we can with direct mail marketing, graphic design, high quality printing as well as robust data list services. We offer a unique, USPS® trained project management team, fast turnaround rates, expert in-house postal knowledge, and highly discounted postage rates.

CRST Direct Mail company in New York

Direct Mail Marketing Tools

Some of our popular tools to help with your next direct mail marketing project.

All of Cornerstone Services direct mail tools

Permits

Indicia used on direct mail marketing pieces when working with CRST.

Postage Rates

The most up to date postage rates by the USPS Notice 123.  Updated January 2018.

Envelope Sizes

Common envelope sizes and their corresponding inserts.

Mail Forwarding

How to properly use and understand Ancillary Endorsements.

Postal Dictionary

Popular terms, acronyms and their definitions for direct mail.

Mail Automation

Mailing a letter at automation rates and using the USPS Notice 67.

Portfolio

Check out a few of our projects which include postcards, envelopes, business cards and other direct mail marketing designs.

Envelopes

Equinox Technologies

Business Card

Randazzo’s Landscaping

Stationary

Hyde Park PBA

Newsletter

Kimlin Energy

Brochure

Marbletown First Aid Unit

Card

Boys & Girls Harbor

Case Studies

Cornerstone Services Case Studies about our unforgettable projects and experiences in direct mailing, website design, printing, even fixing our competition’s mistakes!

Visual Portfolio, Posts & Image Gallery for WordPress

Niche Insurance & General Insurance Direct Mail Marketing

Project Overview: Identification & Targeted Marketing of Specialized Insurance Products

Location: Hicksville, NY

Industry: Commercial, Financial, Insurance
Website: https://www.tangotangotango.com/

Every insurance company has certain coverage service specialties which allow such agencies to differentiate their coverages from other providers. Cornerstone Services has historically worked with many independent Nationwide Insurance agencies and found even among this group, there are some agencies with keen understanding into select niche markets. Tango, Tango & Tango Insurance is one of these firms that understands (a) unique markets where businesses may have trouble getting competitive or custom insurance coverage, and (b) general markets where regardless of the industry, nothing substitutes “just having a conversation” with a seasoned insurance rep. Here’s how they do it:
General Example: Allowing some basic filtering qualifications (e.g. how many years in business), Tango, Tango & Tango would send out a “checklist” card so that any business receiving the card would know that, potentially, there was reason to review coverage. This is a very broad stroke approach, but it does ensure that as long as a business is incorporated (or at least a registered sole proprietor), there is room to have a discussion and a due diligence review of basic liability coverage (esp. in New York State).
Niche Example: Tango, Tango & Tango has many areas of insurance expertise, but one of the more unusual areas is in food processing manufacturers. Here, we used Nationwide information but tailored it to the Tango, Tango & Tango branding. Simply put, if you can have a personalized letter that actually speaks to you and your business, you garner more attention and awareness, making the conversation easier to have.

Republican Town Committee Caucus & Electoral Cards

Project Overview: Design, Copy, Print & Mail for Pre-Caucus and General Election Cards

Location: Modena, NY

Industry: Political, Political Town Party, Republican
Website: https://www.facebook.com/PlattekillRepublicanCommittee

The Town of Plattekill Republican Committee has a history of solid caretaking of the town citizens, regardless of party, with strong leadership and fiscal responsibility. The committee members exemplify true public service and still keep an open mind to new ideas. Our job at Cornerstone Services, every two years or sometimes each year, is to provide “360” full service campaign support with the following:

(a) messaging content [filling out content with additional copyediting wordsmith contribution from keywords or partially provided content;

(b) re-touching cell phone-generated pictures [these are both individual candidate and event-related photos, and are edited using Adobe PhotoShop; selected images may then be cropped and used for postcard, banner, billboard or even newspaper display ads];

(c) designing and printing oversized postcards or flyers for the general election [here we take what we call the “same-by-different” approach were we preserver the client “brand” and logo(s) throughout each design, but we use different mailpiece designs and sizes to ensure that each mailpiece is both novel and relevant for the voter household];

(d) profiling intended voter households [using the CRST BOE (Board of Election) internally constructed software, we are able to run multiple voter scenarios based upon past voting history among other statistical and demographic indicators.]
One important point about profiling voters for this client and others: at the least, and perhaps most importantly, we don’t reward voters who are registered and then don’t show up at the polls! If a voter or voter household hasn’t show up in at least 4 years, then such address is statistically unlikely to represent a future voter based upon the current occupants. When resources are limited and time is of the essence, we run probability-to-vote scenarios. Each race is different and each candidate needs to do things that we cannot do (e.g. knocking on doors, or, meeting voters in front of the post office). Nonetheless, we’ve won at least three elections with fewer than five votes. Thankfully, given the strength and solidity of the Plattekill Republican Committee, their races were less eventful!

Chinese Menu Misprint Fix

Project Overview: Labeling, Permit & Saturation Data for Printer Mistake in Menu Printing

Location: New City, NY

Industry: Chinese Restaurant, Food Service, Hospitality
Website: http://www.newcitychinesefood.net/

The original printer here in Queens or Brooklyn forgot to put an address panel on the menu, and of course, a postal permit. Therefore, CRST had to receive several thousand menus and come up with a way to mail these at either EDDM or automation letter rates. The folded menu size was not going to qualify for EDDM, and insertion into addressed envelopes seemed needless. Ultimately, we double-tabbed the brochure menus and put thin 1” x 4” labels with an embedded bulk mail permit on the address label, therefore rendering the menu as a qualified self-mailer automation-friendly mailpiece. Fortunately, we were able to put the label in a place where the address information didn’t cover up essential phone or menu items. It might be noted that other such menus that we’ve seen in the past have not been so lucky!

National Magazine at Periodical Mailing Rate Class

Project Overview: Addressing Magazines, Knowledge of Periodical Rates regulations, foreign issue handling & special handling of parcels

Location: New York, NY

Industry: Public Relations, Publishing, Communications
Website: https://www.odwyerpr.com/

Cornerstone’s job is to ensure that no one at the O’Dwyers Public Relations company need to deal with mailing regulations for periodical rate magazines. The CRST Project Management desk helps ensure that sample copies of marked-up issues are provide to the USPS BMEU at time of presentment (in accordance with DMM regulations) and that minor tasks, such as the handling of international destination issues, are done with foreign address verification in addition to proper envelope packaging. This sort of work plays well into our Project Management approach wherein a client, such as O’Dwyers, works directly with a dedicated project manager who does all the coordination with the Production/Operations team and manages communication. We also check for funds availability on permit for the client since the Periodicals mailing class requires a unique (non-Cornerstone) permit to be active and funded.

Broadhead Manufacturing & Distribution Website

Project Overview: Shopify.com website & Wholesale Distributor Mailings

Location: Lexington, NY

Industry: Manufacturing, Wholesale Distribution, Wholesale Vendor Mailing
Website: https://musacchiabroadhead.com/

This client needed to rebuild his business after the termination of an non-compete agreement, but needed an online presence to accomplish this. CRST was asked to help build an online shopping/shipping platform for the broadheads that were manufactured, and then set-up discount ordering tiers for sporting goods stores, and other distribution channels, to avail volume/relationship discounts. To do this, we deployed a Shopify.com website with some custom programming on the back-end. Thankfully, we have an on-site Shopify.com expert with strong internal programming support in-house, and were able to complete this quickly. As with all good websites, it helps to have a multi-marketing approach, and we further assisted with the set-up of a direct mailpiece to purchasing agents and distributors as well as to other VIP individuals and/or retail stores to help drive traffic to the website. Ultimately, such organic direct mailings also further assist with Google Analytics, and this invariably was the case here. Other marketing that the client did was magazine display ads and perhaps Facebook ads, although our role was limited to web/mailing set-up.

Historical Society Newsletters

Project Overview: Newsletter Mailings

Location: Haines Falls, NY

Industry: Non-Profit, Membership Association, Cultural/Historical/Preservation
Website: https://www.mths.org/

This is a great example of a small but effective non-profit direct mail means for a historical society – anywhere in the United States – to serve its membership with recurring newsletters and membership/appeal mailings. In this instance, these newsletters and envelopes were printed B/W on matching ivory color paperstock, which kept costs down but also branded in a way the historical aspect of the mailing (although in recent years, the editions have moved to include color pictures). Newsletters are mailed quarterly with an annual membership or donation appeal at calendar year-end. For such historical or preservation societies, CRST also offers free-of-charge entry-level versions of DonorJet.com [link here] software, our own proprietary-build software, so such groups may manage their membership via a secure web-based application; the newest version of DonorJet.com now includes email functionality (a paid feature).

Memberships

We belong to a variety of local chambers of commerce, college affilitations and direct mail marketing related organizations.

RVBA Logo

Recent Blog Posts

Interesting articles about direct mail marketing, how it can help you and what you need to know.

  • CRST ESSENTIAL GUIDE FOR SELF-MAILER (LETTER-RATE) TABBING REGULATIONS

  • How to Change Your Non-Profit Information Through the USPS

  • How to Complete the Non-Profit Mailing Application

Cold calling using direct mail

Contact us?

Want our help with your next direct mail marketing project? Fill out the form below and someone will get back to you as soon as possible.

    Your Direct Mail Marketing Experts!

    Do you need help growing your business? Let us help you get the results you’re looking for using direct mail marketing

    (845) 255-5722 | info@crst.net | 31 S Ohioville Rd | New Paltz, NY 12561

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