Marketers everywhere often work on their budgets this time of year.  There are typically two certainties when it comes to budgeting: you will want more money than you had this year and you might get a smaller budget next year.

What makes budgeting more difficult is the year over year increased costs of necessary products and services. Virtually all items will cost more next year than they did this year.  The US Postal Services has recently released a proposed pricing increase of just under 2% for marketing mail (bulk mail).  Of course, there are many ways to slice and dice this announcement; it is simply the cost of doing business.

While this is a blog about postage rates increasing, I hope you see it as a blog that reinforces the need for smarter direct mail.  If you currently use direct mail, you know that if carefully planned and precisely targeted, direct mail is a great return on investment.

Here is your chance to use that 2% budget increase to better focus on your direct mail efforts.  Here are 4 ways to ensure your mail has value:

• Careful targeting (who you mail to)
• Great creative (what you mail)
• Compelling offer (how are you getting them to respond)
• Integrate offline and online efforts (how you tie your direct mail to online activity)

As you continue to focus on that direct mail budget, you can rest easy that the increase in postage rates is right in line with the expected increase in food costs for 2018 of 2%. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-price-outlook/summary-findings/