At Suttle-Straus we mailed more than 37 million mailpieces last year, and our team members have an average of 14 years of print and mail experience, so we get a lot of questions about direct mail. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions we get each day from brands considering direct mail marketing campaigns:
Question: Does direct mail still work today?
Answer: "The average direct mail response rates are 4 to 9%. Compare that to other marketing channels. Yes, in fact, direct mail marketing still works. In 2026, there's going to be 73 billion dollars invested in direct mail. Marketers are not moving away from it. They're embracing it, with 95% of them saying that they will continue to invest in direct mail in 2026. So I think it's still a viable marketing channel."
Question: Why would you choose direct mail over digital?
Answer: "I actually wouldn't. I wouldn't choose direct mail over digital. Direct mail and digital work really well together. Digital is really what attracts a person and the direct mail when combined with a digital provides that credibility piece. So, I wouldn't do one or the other."
Question: What performs better: a postcard or a letter?
Answer: "I think what you need to do is weigh the piece against the cost. So when you have an envelope and a letter that inserts inside, you're having two different pieces of material that you're printing and then inserting one into the other. That's the exact same postage as it would be to send an 11.5 by 6.125 oversized postcard. The difference is in the mailbox, that oversized postcard is going to have immediate visibility, right? You're going to see an image right away and perhaps have your attention caught. Where we see the letter and envelope being the most effective are when the envelope is very nondescript. Although I can't definitively say that we've seen one perform exponentially better over another. It really depends on the market."
Question: What is the best postcard size to send?
Answer: "Here's the thing. It depends on who you're working with, the equipment that they have in-house, and many times the quantity that you have. So depending on the quantity, it could go on a smaller digital press or a larger digital press based on the sheet size. In a perfect situation, you want to get as many postcards up on one sheet to maximize the efficiency. If you're working with Suttle-Straus, there's a couple of standard-sized postcards that seem to work the best, which can provide efficiencies which we can pass along to our customers."
Question: How long does it take to print and mail a postcard campaign?
Answer: "A postcard mailing can take anywhere between five business days and 10 business days, depending on the type of mailing. If we're looking at a traditional direct mail piece that's being ordered through an online portal, the end users can customize that, choose their mailing area, and that is going to drop in the mail in five business days. If we're talking about a Connected Mail campaign where we're setting up the back end with the social and digital from the time that we receive the file, as well as all of the assets, and we are clear on the prospect list that we're ordering, it will take 10 business days to get that dropped in the mail."
Question: How do I determine the return on investment (ROI) of my direct mail campaign?
Answer: "Understanding the ROI of your direct mail campaign has become much easier, especially with incorporating new technology - like when we put a QR code on a direct mail piece, or when we're doing a digital and social campaign in combination and we can track that on an online dashboard. Ultimately, what we're looking for is the conversions and how many times we can touch that recipient, moving them through the customer journey more quickly. So when we're doing a Connected Mail campaign or really any direct mail campaign, if we are suppressing the current customers from the mailing list, after we complete the mailing, we can then get the current customer mailing list and compare that back to the original mailing list that was purchased to see how many people are on that mailing list that were converted or became new customers. Once we take that number and we know what the lifetime value of a customer is, we can take the lifetime value and multiply that out by the number of conversions (the number of new customers), and then we can determine the ROI."
Question: What is considered a "good" return on investment (ROI) for a direct mail campaign?
Answer: "ROI is going to be really different depending on the type of business you are. If we're talking about childcare, for example, childcare is very expensive. It's a longer buying cycle. It takes Mrs. Consumer a lot longer to make sure that she's got the trust in that facility and to sign her child up. But the tuition might be $15,000 to $17,000 a year. So if you make one conversion on a direct mail campaign, you've certainly seen the ROI on that campaign. But we're also adding to that trust factor as Mrs. Consumer gets multiple touches and is walked through that customer journey through the direct mail piece. With other brands, think of a service brand. It might be what you're marketing is a loss leader or it's not a huge margin job. So you're getting conversions, but it's really hard to show the effectiveness, right? Because if you only did three tree trimmings and those were low cost services, you're looking at that compared to what you spent on the direct mail. But what you have to keep in mind is: what is that customer worth over time? How many more times are they going to come back to you? What other services are they going to buy from you in the future? That relationship is going to be most important. Even brands that come in and redo your cabinets. They say, "Well, we are only going to work with that client one time. They're never going to call us again because once they've redone their kitchen it's perfect. They don't need our services again. They're going to move to another house." Okay, they're going to move to another house and they're going to tell their neighbors when they come over who they used. So there's a lifetime value to that relationship as well."
Question: How do I calculate a Lifetime Value (LTV) for my customers?
Answer: "Calculating lifetime value is going to be different for every brand. Some of them are certainly going to be easier than others. If you know how long a customer typically stays, you're looking at the average number of months that they stay with you. (This is much easier to track in a membership-based business.) Then you can take that average length of stay, and you can multiply it out by the number and amount of purchases. In some brands, it's more difficult. Think about a restoration company that comes in to do a carpet cleaning first. It's hard to know what the lifetime value of that customer is going to be, especially if you're an emerging brand. But that carpet cleaning could lead to a restoration job, which is an exponentially more expensive service. So it's definitely difficult in some vertical markets to understand or to figure out what that lifetime value is. It really comes down to the data that you're keeping and how you're measuring that data and following the results."
Question: What demographics are available for a targeted consumer mailing?
Answer: "For a consumer mailing, you are going to want to know the very specific demographics of the consumer that you want to target. For instance: females in the household in this age range, with this income, and they might have other criteria or specifications that we're looking for, such as they need to have a child in the home if it's for childcare, they need to have children under a certain age. Maybe we want people that are in an age range that have a healthy lifestyle. We want people that have a home that's over a certain age, in which case all of these different criteria would require us to use a specialty mailing list. So depending on what the demographic is that we're trying to target is going to determine what type of mailing list that we purchase for prospecting."
Question: Why would you get a mailing list for a single use versus multiple use?
Answer: "When we're procuring a mailing list, we're typically getting it for one-time use, which means that we're going to do one mailing. It's going to be a seeded mailing list. And once we use it, we're not going to use it again. And the reason why is because 17% of the population moves annually. We want to make sure that we're using a fresh, clean list every time that we do a mailing. However, there are instances where you may want to do multiple drops to the same mailing list, in which case we would then purchase that list for multiple use, which is more expensive, and then we can drop it any number of times for up to one year."
Question: How do I get removed from a consumer mailing list?
Answer: "As a consumer, you can get removed from a mailing list by contacting the compiler directly online and filling out their forms. If you call the place of business that you receive the mailing from, they're not going to be able to take you off their mailing list. If you call the company that did the mailing, they're not going to be able to take you off the mailing list. You have to go back to the source and fill out the proper paperwork as a consumer. Once you do that, you will be removed from the mailing list. Additionally, if you're a business and you want to be removed from a mailing list, that is more difficult because business information is not private. So you can't really be removed from a business mailing list if you are in fact a business. If you have consumers that have asked to be removed from a mailing list and we're going to do an additional mailing, the print company that you're working with can suppress those people from the mailing list, but they won't be removed from the original compiler's list."
Question: When should a company use Every Door Direct Mail?
Answer: "Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) is typically used when you want to saturate an area or a carrier route. As an individual location, if you're selling pizza, that might make a lot of sense. EDDM would hit every door, every apartment, every household in a particular carrier route. You can mail on your own and drop up to 5,000 pieces at the United States Post Office. If you have a print and mail provider, we can do drops of more than 5000 pieces of Every Door Direct Mail."
Question: Is direct mail dead?
Answer: "Direct mail is seeing a resurgence, I'll say. Ever since COVID, direct mail has started to come back. Last year in 2025, the United States Postal Service (USPS) reported 40 billion direct mail pieces sent. We have seen an increase at Suttle-Straus in the amount of marketing mail or direct mail that we produce here as well."
What questions do you have about direct mail? Send them to info@suttle-straus.com and we'll include them in a future blog!