Partners
The one format a mail house cannot machine
You can already print, insert, sort, barcode and lodge better than almost anyone your clients could hire. The one format that resists all of it is the one where a pen has to physically touch the paper - so rather than sell you something you have, this is about the gap.
The job you currently have to decline or subcontract
A client asks for two thousand envelopes that do not look machine-addressed. There are three answers available: talk them out of it, buy equipment against a job that may not repeat, or send it out. This page is about the third, on terms that do not cost you the account.
- Nothing of ours is visible. No branding, no insert, no return address but the one you specify.
- Trade pricing, below the published rates on this site, banded on the volume you put through rather than the size of any single job.
- Finished work comes back to you for insertion, sortation and lodgement. Your process, your Australia Post relationship, your margin.
- We stay in our lane. No printing, no lists, no lodgement, no design. A supplier who wants to do all of it eventually competes with you, and we would rather not be that.
Making the case to your client
You will know these figures. They are here so you can point a client at a page rather than retyping them, and so the caveats travel with them.
- Direct mail - average response rate
- 4.4%
- Social media - engagement rate
- 0.6%
- Paid search - click-through rate
- 0.58%
- Email - average response rate
- 0.12%
- Display advertising - click-through rate
- 0.04%
- House list - people who have already bought from you or given you their details
- 5–9%
- Prospect list - cold names who have no relationship with you
- 2.0–4.4%
These are United States figures, self-reported by the marketers who ran the campaigns, and there is no equivalent Australian series. Treat them as the shape of the thing rather than a forecast of your result - the honest use is to compare channels and list types against each other, not to predict a number for your campaign.
The list gap is the number worth putting in front of a client who wants to buy cold names. It is also the number that argues for spending on data hygiene, which is work you can do and a cold list purchase is not.
On handwriting specifically we will not overclaim, and you would catch us if we did: the published evidence is for the channel, not the pen. The defensible claim is about open rates on an envelope that does not look like bulk mail, not a percentage lift on the campaign.
When you should buy rather than subcontract
Worth saying plainly, because the honest version makes the rest of this page more credible. If handwritten work becomes a standing weekly line for you, the machines pay for themselves and you should own the capability. Subcontracting is right while the demand is lumpy, while you are testing whether clients will pay for it, and when a run would blow out a schedule you have already committed.
If you get to the point where buying makes sense, that is a good outcome and we will tell you so rather than talk you out of it.
Trade questions
Are you competing with us?
No, and the shape of what we do is the evidence rather than the promise. We do not print, insert, sort, barcode, lodge or manage lists. We hold pens. Everything either side of the writing is the part you already do better than we would.
Will you approach our clients?
No. The accounts you bring us stay yours, during the job and after it.
Why would we not just buy a writing machine?
Some mail houses should. The arithmetic turns on utilisation: machines, pens, consumables, the floor space and someone to babysit the queue only pay back if handwriting is a standing line rather than an occasional one. Subcontracting makes sense while the work is lumpy, and stops making sense once it is not - at which point buying is the right answer and we will say so.
What volumes can you take?
From 100 pieces. We are a young operation and we would rather agree a volume against a date than quote a capacity figure we have not yet had to meet at scale. Tell us the run and the deadline and you will get a straight answer, including no.
Do you lodge with Australia Post?
Not usually, and for you specifically almost never - lodgement is your relationship and your rates. Finished work comes back to you for the rest of the process.
What about data security?
Lists arrive as a spreadsheet, are used for the job, and are destroyed on request. We are happy to sign your standard agreement rather than asking you to accept ours - you have been through this more often than we have.
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Talk to us about overflow work
Tell us the kind of run you would send out and roughly how often. We will come back with a trade schedule and an honest view on whether we can hold the dates.