Been looking into ways to send personalized letters and postcards through the mail system, old school style. Mail is the new email! The best option seems to be Postful in terms of pricing and API. Wondering if anyone has any experience doing custom mailings like this, and if so what tips and experience you have.
Some of the things I liked when looking at Postful are:
* Flat rates for color vs black and white.
* Cheaper rates the more you spend.
* International mailing.
* API looks great.
* Full control over the design and layout
For postcards I use sendoutcards.com
Tony
I’ve heard of a couple of people using sendoutcards.com with good results (haven’t looked at any details tho).
I use enthusem (www.enthusem.com) and for sales folks Jeffrey Gitomer recently launched Ace of Sales (www.aceofsales.com).
Ben
http://l-mail.com/ has been around for years and has the advantage of multiple sending locations around the world, so the letter looks like it is local. They also have an API I believe.
http://moonpig.com/ I have used for sending Christmas cards in the past.
Try Shoot It! if you have an iPhone. Postcards are $1/each I’m told they look great!
Was looking at Postful How It Works, it says: “We handle the printing, folding, inserting, and delivery to the post office.”
I fail to understand why would we want to forsake traditional letter-writing/communication privacy by letting someone else fold and stamp our mail?
If you want to send something physical to provide that “I got a letter” good feeling but you want it to take the same physical effort as an email, I think it will only achieve a risky middle tier between the everyday and the special. The risk is that while the recipient understands that you value a mailed letter more than an email, she also knows that you valued the convenience factor too much to take the time to write or mail the letter yourself.
Then again, maybe spending the time in a desktop publishing app turning your photo into a postcard makes up for it.
A friend of mine launched https://www.mailfinch.com/ a few months ago and it’s doing quite well!
-Erica
I have used Amazing Mail from that is affiliated in some way with the U.S Post Office.
http://www.usps.com/createmail/welcome.htm
Postful looks like it might be easier to use, however.
I regularly smoke cigars with the guy who runs http://www.astonishingcards.com. Must be a good business if it supports such bad habits.
Our enterprise does just that, personalized postal and email deliveries. Our customers are mostly Canadians, but we handle International deliveries as well. I personally programmed the entire solution and was about to train someone to help us push it further feature wise, until you snatched him from us last winter… but rest easy, we’re still strongly developing our solution,and it runs very smoothly. We’ve been doing this for 10 years now.
Tracking reports merge email, postal and customized forms.
Oops, forgot to mention, we´re located in Montreal… and I’m personally going to be there from the 28th of June, perhaps we can do a little get together ?
All I gotta say is nothing beats snail mail, and a personal signature.
@erica: thanks for the mention! 🙂
(Disclaimer: I’m the founder of http://www.mailfinch.com)
The tricky part with direct mail is knowing exactly what your goal is (…or at least having a strong idea of what you’re reaching for).
If possible, I’d recommend creating your letters in PDF format (use the highest resolution you can) so that you’re 100% sure of what’s getting mailed out on your behalf.
A typical MailFinch customer will have an admin (or even a virtual admin) that will actually create separate personalized PDFs, upload them into our system and send them out on some regular schedule.
Anyways, feel free to ping me directly if I can help!
Which of the following have any of you used and found to be the best and / or cheapest?
FYI:
I was looking at the options and I found that mailfinch.com is dead.
l-mail and enthusem both seems to be up and running.
We ended up not getting to the project, so haven’t used anything myself yet.