July 2003

The Lettershop Has Everything
Many printers today offer some of the same services that were once only available from lettershops. But, as Alicia Orr Suman cited in a recent Target Marketing article, printers are not lettershops and there are very good reasons to use both for your direct mail marketing.

Data Processing
Full service lettershops like CCI employ trained programmers and expensive software capable of merge/purging, presorting, address standardization, reporting, and other marketing information services.

Creative & Complex Packages
Lettershops are better suited to handle multiple versions and complex inserting. Because of their direct working relationship with the USPS, lettershops can also aid in the design of your package and help ensure adherence to postal regulations after printing.

Cost & Turnaround
Experienced lettershops can often get your direct mail package in the mail stream faster and at a lower cost then a one-stop print shop. Lettershops are more adept at attaining the lowest postage costs for your marketing, which sometimes is as complicated as arranging transportation to individual postal facilities across the nation.

Printing & Bindery Services
Most lettershops offer bindery services such as folding, gluing, cutting and slitting thus limiting the amount of transportation and handling for the package. And modern lettershops like CCI also offer printing-on-demand and variable data printing which offer cost and sales advantages of their own.

Your printer may be offering direct marketing mailing services that will only later be outsourced to a lettershop anyway and your price will most likely include a markup from the printer. When considering a printer for mailing services, remember you may not be getting all the service and quality available from a lettershop. In addition to paying higher costs, you may be risking quality and sales. 

News Poll
Send your vote to mailto:webmaster@mailCCI.com or vote online. Visit http://www.mailCCI.com and in the Interactive menu choose Today's Survey.

Have you ever used a one-stop print shop for mailing services?

____ Yes
____ No

We'll post the poll results here in next month's direct marketing e-newsletter.
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Results of last month's poll: 

Do you currently utilize variable data printing in your marketing efforts?

53% Yes
47% No

See the results of other surveys CCI has conducted online at http://www.mailCCI.com/data/surveys.asp.

www.mailCCI.com
Industry experts agree: VDP is, and will remain, the most important driving force in digital printing. If VDP is not part of your marketing strategy then your response is suffering, and so is your wallet. 

VDP marries the low cost, fast turnaround of On Demand Printing with the higher response rates of 1-to-1 marketing.

Each piece will look as if it was printed specifically for one person...BECAUSE IT WAS!  And you pay for only the exact number of desired copies. No overages, no inventory, and very fast turnaround.

Best of all, you can see an example of VDP online right now. No example of VDP could really communicate the vast possibilities of VDP if it weren't customizable. So we designed our VDP direct mail letter example so you can change it several different ways to make it truly variable. Experience VDP at http://www.mailcci.com/variable_data_printing/index.asp.