Guides to mail people actually open
Everything below is written to be useful whether or not you ever buy anything from us. Where we cite a figure, we link to where it came from; where the honest answer is “it depends”, we say so and explain what it depends on.
What to write
Wording for the letters and cards themselves, by scenario. Written to be copied and changed rather than read.
Does it work, and what does it cost?
The two questions everyone asks first, answered without a sales pitch attached.
Do handwritten letters actually improve response rates?
What the published direct-mail response data supports, what it does not, and how to design a test that tells you the answer for your own list.
Read →Handwritten versus printed direct mail
Cost, credibility, production time and the situations where printed mail is simply the better answer. A side-by-side comparison with the numbers attached.
Read →How much do handwritten letters cost?
What drives the price of a handwritten campaign - volume, length, envelopes, postage and setup - with worked examples at 100, 1,000 and 10,000 pieces.
Read →What direct mail actually costs in Australia
Postage, bulk lodgement, print, data and production, with current Australia Post rates and the volume thresholds that change what you pay.
Read →How the writing actually happens
What an autopen is, how a writing machine works, and whether the result counts as handwriting.
What is an autopen?
An autopen is a machine that holds an ordinary pen and reproduces handwriting on paper. What it is, where it came from, and how modern versions differ.
Read →How a handwriting machine works
Plotters, pen pressure, letterform variation and why a good machine-written page looks nothing like a handwriting font printed on an inkjet.
Read →Are machine-written letters really handwritten?
A straight answer to the question buyers actually ask: what a writing machine does, what it does not do, and how to describe it to your own customers.
Read →Wedding envelopes and invitations
Addressing is the one part of wedding stationery people readily pay a specialist for, and the price gap between the options is wide. What each costs, and how to word them.
What wedding calligraphy costs in Australia
What Australian calligraphers charge to address wedding envelopes, what drives the price, and the three ways to get a hundred envelopes addressed.
Read →Addressing wedding invitation envelopes
Titles, couples, families and plus-ones, plus the Australia Post address format - and the American conventions you can safely ignore here.
Read →After a funeral
Written for someone facing a pile of acknowledgement cards. Short is fine, late is fine, and you do not have to send one to everybody.
Wedding thank-you cards
Written for couples rather than for businesses. The pages that rank for these questions are American, so the etiquette, the postage and the phrasing are all slightly wrong for an Australian wedding.
What to write in a wedding thank-you card
Thirty wedding thank-you card wordings for Australian couples, grouped by what the guest actually did - cash, a gift, travel, or simply turning up.
Read →When wedding thank-you cards should go out
The real deadline for wedding thank-you cards, a schedule that survives a honeymoon, and what to do when you are already months late.
Read →Do wedding thank-you cards have to be handwritten?
Whether handwriting genuinely matters on a wedding thank-you card, the four ways couples get through a pile of them, and the honest cost of each.
Read →Running the campaign
Practical guidance on lists, personalisation, envelopes and the Australian rules.
How to send handwritten letters in bulk
A practical run-through: building the list, writing a message that survives personalisation, proofing, quality control and getting it lodged.
Read →How to personalise direct mail at scale
Which fields are worth merging, how to write a sentence that survives every row of your data, and the fallback rules that stop a campaign embarrassing you.
Read →Handwritten envelope marketing
The envelope decides whether anything inside gets read. What handwriting on the outside changes, when it is worth it, and when it backfires.
Read →Direct mail ideas that are worth the postage
Twelve campaign ideas Australian businesses run that justify the cost of a stamp - with the trigger, the list and the message for each.
Read →What the rules actually say about direct mail in Australia
Privacy Act obligations, the Spam Act boundary, the ADMA code and the Do Not Mail service - what applies to addressed post, in plain terms.
Read →Keep reading
Response rates
What the published direct-mail response data supports, what it does not, and how to design a …
What it costs
What drives the price of a handwritten campaign - volume, length, envelopes, postage and setu…
What is an autopen
An autopen is a machine that holds an ordinary pen and reproduces handwriting on paper. What …
Direct mail costs
Postage, bulk lodgement, print, data and production, with current Australia Post rates and th…
Use cases
Winning back lapsed customers, prospecting, thanking people properly and keeping the ones you…
Still deciding?
If you would rather just ask a person, that works too. Tell us roughly what you are considering and we will give you a straight answer, including if the answer is that this is not right for you.