Direct Mail In-house vs Outsourcing?

[Omari Brown]

I'm preparing to send my first wave of direct mail in the next couple days (planning to buy the list on Saturday [600/700 or so] and yellow letters on Sunday) and I've sort of been ignoring the idea of doing direct mail "in-house" because I don't fully know the details. I'm starting to believe that I could be saving some money by doing it that way. Also, please describe what "In-House" fully entails. In my head i picture a some empty room with a printer on the floor and stacks of paper everywhere, having to drive to the post office and handing them a list where they hand type every address one by one. 

Im hoping to hear from people on both sides. Outsourcing seems less time consuming and overall easier.. but more expensive. In-House seems cheaper but more of a hassle and time consuming. 

Please enlighten me fellow BP'ers! Costs, time, headache, printers, paper, postage, hoopla...

[Phil B.]

ok, where do I start?  Postal permit $220 per year.  This gets your yellow letters down to .309 per piece, standard mail. (not first class)  Leads in bulk .09 to .15 per lead.  Used decent envelope printer, $7,500 (lease for $250 per month for 39 months).  Envelopes, paper, ink, etc.

I planned on 6000 pieces per month.  I just completed sending 500 of the first 3000 and it took me forever.  I bought the wrong printer first $400 down the drain.  Then I bought another "cheap" $400 printer and although it was fast (70 pages per minute), the envelope feeder only held 8 envelopes at a time.  Try doing a 3000 piece mailer feeding envelopes 7 at a time.  You really need that $10,000 + specialty envelope printer if you plan on doing them in bulk.

Stuffing envelopes - I timed it.  I fold the letter, stuff it and place the precancelled stamp on it at a rate of 94 envelopes per hour.....takes forever.

Add in screw ups (see my post about 3000 yellow letters down the drain) and you have yourself a time consuming, repetitive, completely boring endeavor.

If you plan on sending a few hundred a month you can swing it on your own but if your time is worth anything you'll outsource.  Once I get these first 3000 out the door I will be outsourcing to YellowLetters.com.  I really tried.  I read everything I could.  I created my own handwriting fonts, bought special printers, etc.  it really is a major pain in the butt.....at least that's my experience.  I couldn't justify the extra cost by outsourcing until I tried a large mailing myself.  It's just not worth trying to do on your own in my opinion.....at least not at my volume.  If I was going to send 15,000 pieces per month forever and shelled out 30-40k in equipment, then it might be worthwhile.  It's painful man.  I just spent 2 days stuffing envelopes and I didn't even make a dent in my pile of letters.