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

Lions Club Community Appeal

Project Overview: Non-Profit, Consumer Data, Graphic Design & Appeal Mailing

Location: Millerton, NY

Industry: Non-Profit; Philanthropic/Charitable/Community Service Association
Website: https://e-clubhouse.org/sites/millerton/

Our job here was to help the local Lions Club with an annual fundraiser. It is important to note that service organizations such as Lions Clubs, Kiwanis, Toastmasters, Jaycees, etc. are technically not allowed to avail USPS not-for-profit mailing privileges; to get around this, organizations such as Kiwanis Clubs incorporate a foundation branch of their groups to serve as the fundraising arm of the central organization, a practice that is akin to the “Friends of” groups that are part of many libraries. For the Millerton Lions Club, we had to design the letter, #6 ¾ remittance envelope and source data. The data was a combination of real property owners, cherry-picked businesses as well as other sources. The Master List was put into our DataConsulate application (a precursor application to DonorJet.com) so that donations could be tracked online by any of the member volunteers. Even though the mailing had to be sent at commercial bulk rates, the postage difference was not dramatic given local 5-digit ZIP Code concentration and SCF-entry discount postage rates. Overall, a standard and conventional graphic design, printing, data & software approach from the Cornerstone Services, Inc. side.

Retail Furniture Store

Project Overview: Marketing Flyers to Existing Customers, New Customers in Regional ZIP Codes and “New Moves” (new residents who moved into the service area)

Location: Freehold, NY

Industry: Commercial, Retail, Furniture
Website: https://tiptopfurniture.com/

CRST was asked to take over the mailing of flyers for Tip Top Furniture by Kathode Ray Media, a New York based Public Relations Firm that was handling marketing on behalf of the client. Our approach was to undertake a more disciplined review of the MasterList database of existing customers to repair non-CASS addresses (addresses not recognized by the USPS), remove duplicates and “near duplicates” (we take four rounds of duplicate and potential duplicate verification), identify and remove invalid addresses as well as make a statistical assessment of where the customer concentrations are (and, where they are not) for additional marketing. The “additional marketing” comes in our review of neighborhoods in which customers “between homes” could be contacted and approached with a monthly or periodic flyer. Since this is a brick/mortar store location, we have a limited radius within which to work; therefore, we want to maximize the highest net worth neighborhoods by undertaking simple statistical analysis of the existing customer base. Here, we focused on certain ZIP Codes and carrier routes across the river from Greene County into Columbia County, to help pad the marketing effort. For reference, this was a double-tabbed flyer on 100 lb. gloss text paper, full color (4/4) with bleeds.

Large Painting Contracting Firm Homeowner via EDDM Cards

Project Overview: Diligence Notifications; Newsletters; Data work

Location: Wallkill, NY

Industry: Commercial, Contractor/Construction
Website: https://www.orpaintinginc.net/

Orange and Rockland Painting wanted to try reaching homeowners well before the Spring season (when everyone starts looking at their homes once the temperatures rise). Therefore, in January, we designed and sent out an unusual EDDM mailing sized 3 ½” x 11” with a 2” x 3 ½” tear-off coupon that the recipient could help in their wallets or purses. The idea was to have a novel approach and create something that made the residential recipient take notice. Here, we had fun with this project and even hid the words “Local Postal Customer” into the woodwork of a home image. Ultimately, our job is to get people to take notice, and this approach worked. Please note, further, that it was not necessary to provide a coupon here – the most important thing was to show professionalism and accessibility, and O & R’s well-thought-through plan was very effective.

Financial Investment Firm

Project Overview: Diligence Notifications; Newsletters; Data work

Location: Woodstock, NY

Industry: Commercial, Finance, Private Bank
Website: https://www.mhinvest.com/

The directors of Miller Howard Investments are exceptional at delivering investment excellent to their clients. Our job, with assistance of printing through The Copy Hut in Kingston NY [link: https://thecopyhut.com/thecopyhut/Home.html] is to render the direct mail communications to be uneventful, swift and seamless as possible. Here, we’re not allowed to discuss data handling procedures, but there are rehearsed and documented protocols, including post-processing data review, to ensure both data and mailpiece integrity. Miller Howard updates its clients with both Newsletters and due diligence notifications. Such communications denote the commitment that the financial services firm has towards its clients and the investment community.

EMS/EMT Ambulance & Rescue

Project Overview: Website with Donation Page, Non-Profit Certification & Appeal mailing; DonorJet.com fundraising software

Location: Montgomery, NY

Industry: Non-Profit, EMS/EMT, Ambulance
Website: https://montgomeryambulance.org/

The old website – and we wish we saved pictures – provided no value to the community and did not demonstrate the quality of services that the Town of Montgomery Ambulance actually provided to its Orange County NY service area. Before we do an appeal mailing for any Ambulance, Fire, EMS/EMT, Rescue or Police Benevolent Association, we check out the client’s “web presence”. Here, there wasn’t even a donation page, and that of course had to be part of the new build. CRST doesn’t recommend PayPal and partners with Stripe.com, largely because we can integrate it into our DonorJet.com software so that clients may be able to have received donations or contributions go directly into our software seamlessly. Along with developing a new website, we needed to help the Town of Montgomery Ambulance get non-profit approved with the U.S. Postal Service, and this was unfortunately a longer term process due to unforeseen finicky requirements made by the PCSC division of the USPS; we don’t charge for the service of assisting clients with non-profit approval, but ultimately, the relationship is between the client and the Postal Service, but we do help buttress the process through a “Letter of Guidance” as well as an online blog that we developed to assist qualified IRS 501(c) class organizations [link: https://crst.net/non-profit-mailing-application/]. After getting not-for-profit mailing privileges in place, the task with any EMS/EMT mailing is to get great images, and this is actually hard to do. When professional team members are in the field helping save lives, they don’t always have time (no surprise) to take pictures of what they’re doing. Here, then, sometimes training exercises can provide similar and appropriate images to use. It is important that the overall mailing be thematically in line with the branding of the website, and, that everything works together. Even the DonorJet.com application needs to be set-up in advance to ensure that volunteers at the Rescue Squad are ready to accept contributions both via mail and via web. To save costs further here, we opted to use a full saturation mailing for both residents (occupant-residents) including all business owners. However, since there is often considerable wealth via secondary homeowners, we also sourced a list of real property owners using our proprietary CRST-RP datafilter to maximize the appeal. If the message is common sense, and the appeal is heartfelt, the community usually responds appropriately, as was the case for the Walden-Montgomery Orange County populace.

National Organic Growers Association

Project Overview: Membership/Association personalized letter outreach to Canadian & American organic farmers; design, printing & mailing; data hygiene

Location: Temple, NH

Industry: Non-Profit, Association/Cooperative, Organic Farming
Website: https://www.cngfarming.org/

CRST helped Certified Naturally Grown continue its growth outreach via direct mail communications. Since the organization qualified for non-profit mailing privileges, the first requirement was to ensure that the lowest letter-rate postage rates were obtained. From there, it was a matter of verifying provided data (as always, to ensure deliverability) for both Canadian and American organic farms. Many farms rely on PO Boxes and not street addresses, so data hygiene was essential here. This is a simply process after that: full color merge letter design (multi-page letter here) along with a needed reply “instrument” such as a #9 CRE (courtesy reply envelope) or direction to online sign-up, or, re-registration. Cornerstone Services can also source new prospect data for project like this, although for at least several of these mailings, that was not needed for this client.

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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