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Ad Mail
      Overview

Advertisers use Ad Mail for three basic marketing functions: advertising, sales promotion, and direct selling. Ad Mail comes in all classes: Customer Benefits
Targetability: Advertisers use Ad Mail to target the customers they want to reach to promote products and services. Efficiency: Ad Mail is directed at genuine prospects. TV, radio, newspapers, and other media may reach a larger audience than the advertiser needs to reach. Flexibility: Ad Mail can sell directly, put a sample in a customer's hand, bring back information needed to set up a database, or create an ongoing relationship with customers. Customers can read Ad Mail whenever they want-unlike ads on TV or radio. Measurability: With Ad Mail, advertisers can test many aspects of a campaign, including the creative work, price points, and response.
Accountability: The success of each Ad Mail campaign is obvious, based on the customer response. Special Features Ad Mail comes in many formats; postcards, self- mailers, business-size envelopes, large-size envelopes, catalogs, co-op programs, and dimensional mail.

Ad Mail delivers one-on-one, personalized communication to 120 million homes and businesses.

The rise of specialized, targeted mailing lists and the increase in database marketing are key to the success and value of Ad Mail. In recent years, mailing lists have become much more sophisticated and useful.

Other advertising media measure their effectiveness partly by "cost per thousand" (CPM), which is their cost to reach 1,000 people. But these other media are not as selective as mail; they reach many more people than prospects. To properly measure the effectiveness of advertising, the Postal Service uses the cost of getting a response from a customer-not the cost of reaching the customer. Ad Mail has a much lower "cost per response" than the other advertising media.

Ad Mail works very well as part of an overall media mix. For example, after running a TV ad promoting a product or company, an advertiser can complement the TV ad by mailing out an offer.

Since 1987, the Postal Service has conducted the Household Diary Study, which gathers data on what customers say about getting Ad Mail and what they do with Ad Mail. This useful resource gives advertisers insight into the effectiveness of Ad Mail.
 

 Most-asked Questions
  1. How does Ad Mail's cost per thousand (CPM) compare with other ad media? Other advertising media measure their effectiveness partly by "cost per thousand" (CPM), which is their cost to reach 1,000 people. But these other media are not as selective as mail; they reach many more people than prospects. To properly measure the effectiveness of advertising, the Postal Service uses the cost of getting a response from a customer-not the cost of reaching the customer. Ad Mail has much lower "cost per response" than the other ad media.
  1. Do consumers really read ad mail?

    2. Yes - 63% of recipients read First-Class Mail® Ad Mail, and 52% read Standard Mail (A) Ad Mail. See the Household Diary Study for more data.
     
  2. Is all Ad Mail Standard Mail?

    3. No. Although the largest percentage of Ad Mail is Standard Mail, advertisers also use First-Class Mail Periodicals, Priority Mail™, Express Mail™ and international mail.
     
  3. Isn't Ad Mail just "junk mail"?
Ad Mail that is targeted to the right audience is not perceived as "junk mail."

Where to Go Next for Details

If you're considering Ad Mail for the first time, talk to your postmaster or an account representative.

If you have already decided to use Ad Mail:

Talk to a Portland Business Center account representative about the support offered for Ad Mail campaigns at (503) 294-2306 or 1-(800) 285-1995.

See the postal publication, The Small Business Guide to Advertising with Direct Mail.

Write:

AD MAIL CORE BUSINESS

US POSTAL SERVICE
475 L'ENFANT PLZ SW
WASHINGTON DC 20260-2610

See the Domestic Mail Manual (DMM) decision trees for the kind of Ad Mail you are considering.