Format
Postcards
Focused offers, announcements, reminders, and location messages that should be visible without opening anything.
Typical objectives
Full-service direct mail marketing
Direct Mail Marketing
Services
MBI plans, targets, prints, personalizes, and mails complete direct mail campaigns. One organization takes the campaign from the audience definition to the mailbox — strategy, mailing data, graphic design, printing, personalization, postal preparation, and USPS entry.
Services
Why mailers move to MBI
Audience, design, print and postal entry under one roof.
Most mailers move for one of three reasons: what it costs, whether the dates hold, or a mail house that was never quite straight about either. Unlike broadcast, every piece lands at a household you chose — and here every step behind it belongs to one organization.
Talk through your mailing plan-
Specifications
The plan is written before anything is made, so the number you approve is the job that runs. Format, paper, mail class and the in-home date are settled together, because changing one of them later is what moves a price.
What this includes
- Campaign and message planning
- Multi-location coordination
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Audience data
MBI builds the audience — from your own customer file, from a developed prospect audience, or from the geography that actually describes your market. The count you approve is the count that mails.
What this includes
- Consumer or business audience planning
- Geographic targeting
- Customer and house-list preparation
- Mailing-list acquisition or development
- Standardization, deduplication, and suppression
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Graphic design
Our graphic designers work to the specification and the postal rules at once, so the piece that comes back can mail at the rate it was quoted at. Send finished artwork, an older piece to rebuild, or a rough concept.
What this includes
- Direct mail design
- Campaign-specific response methods
- Coordination with digital marketing
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Variable records
Personalization is set up as a data job rather than a printing trick, so a name, a location, an assigned rep or a unique response code can change piece to piece without becoming a second mailing to manage.
What this includes
- Variable data printing
- Record-level personalization
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Proofing
You approve the piece with real records in it rather than placeholder text, so nothing reaches a press on an assumption.
What this includes
- Dedicated project support
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Printing
The press is ours, so quantity, versions and turnaround are decisions MBI makes rather than negotiates with an outside printer. That is usually what decides whether a date survives a change.
What this includes
- Commercial printing
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Finishing
Folding, tabbing, inserting and die-cutting happen in the same building as the press, so a job never leaves the floor to become mailable and come back.
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Addressing
Every version is addressed inside one job instead of running as separate mailings, which is what keeps a multi-market campaign on one schedule and one invoice.
What this includes
- Addressing, finishing, and multiple versions
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Postal preparation & USPS entry
Presorting, barcoding and address quality are what earn the rate, and MBI does that work rather than reselling someone else's. You see what the mailing qualified for and where it entered, not a postage line that arrives without workings.
What this includes
- Local, regional, and nationwide distribution
Targeting
Reach the right households, not the most households.
MBI builds the mailing audience around the objective — from your own customer file, from a developed prospect audience, or from the geography that actually describes your market. Quantity follows the audience; it is not the goal.
Each geography means something different
- City limits
- A legal municipal boundary — not a USPS delivery area.
- Radius
- A fixed distance around a chosen point.
- Drive time
- The area reachable from a point within a selected travel time.
- ZIP Code
- Postal addressing and routing — not a precise trade area.
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Prospect audiences
A consumer or business audience developed around an appropriate geography and relevant selection criteria, with the usable count confirmed before anything is produced.
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House lists
Authorized customer, member, donor, prospect, or account data, prepared for addressing, segmentation, and approved personalization.
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Geographic markets
City limits, a radius, a modeled drive-time area, or a ZIP Code — recognizing that each one describes a different geography.
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Data preparation
Records standardized and de-duplicated, suppression files applied, and the selected audience organized for production and postal preparation.
Direct Mail Market Explorer
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City limits
— people
- Households
- —
- Owner-occupied
- —
- Median income
- —
- Density
- —
Define the area
City limits show a legal municipal boundary. They are not the same as a ZIP Code or a USPS delivery area.
A radius is a fixed distance from the pin. Drag the pin to place the center on a branch, location, or other point.
Drive time is a modeled travel area based on the pin and selected duration; it is not a postal boundary.
Loading market data
Requesting boundary and census information. This may take a few seconds.
Process
From objective to mailbox
Four steps.
- 01
Define the goal
What outcome the campaign is for, what you want recipients to do, and when it needs to be in the mailbox. The response path is decided here, not later, because the piece has to carry it.
- 02
Select the audience
Your house file, a developed prospect audience, or the geography that describes your market. The data is standardized, deduplicated, and suppressed, and the usable count is confirmed before anything is produced.
- 03
Produce the campaign
Format, creative, specifications, and personalization rules are approved together; then printing, variable data, finishing, and addressing. You review representative proofs, including variable records, before the run.
- 04
Deliver the mailing
Postal preparation, documentation, and USPS entry — then the response data the campaign was designed to produce.
Share the objective, audience, quantity, artwork status, and desired in-home date. MBI reviews the requirements and recommends the mailing approach, specifications, schedule, and next steps.
Discuss your specificationsCampaign Types
Campaigns MBI runs
Most direct mail work resolves to one of a handful of objectives. Naming the objective first is what decides the audience, the format, the personalization, and the response path — in that order.
The format has to support the amount of information, the audience, the personalization, the response path, the production requirements, and the postal plan. MBI produces all of the following in-house.
Direct mail solutions by objective.
Mailing to businesses rather than households? See B2B direct mail →
Objective
Customer acquisition
Reach households or businesses that have not bought from you yet — built on a developed prospect audience or on the geography that describes your market.
- Audience
- A prospect file selected to your criteria, or addressed records across the area you actually serve.
- The piece
- One offer and one action, legible in the few seconds it is held on the walk in from the mailbox.
- Response path
- Campaign URL, QR code, tracked phone number, or offer code — decided before production, because the piece has to carry it.
Explore targeted direct mail →
Typical formats
Objective
Lead generation
Mail to a defined audience with a response path that captures the lead and routes it to the team that works it.
- Audience
- Named prospects, or businesses selected by industry, size, role, or location.
- The piece
- Enough information to justify a reply, and one obvious way to make it.
- Response path
- Campaign URL, QR code, tracked number, reply device, or appointment request routed to your sales or intake team.
How direct mail response is measured →
Typical formats
Objective
Retention and loyalty
Mail to your own file: renewals, reminders, statements, program updates, member communications, and thank-you pieces.
- Audience
- Your authorized customer or member file, segmented by product, tenure, or value.
- The piece
- Personalized from approved account data, with a defined fallback for every variable on it.
- Response path
- An account portal, a renewal URL, or a reply device that returns the record to you.
Explore personalized direct mail and variable data printing →
Typical formats
Objective
Reactivation and win-back
Select the lapsed part of your customer file by recency, value, or product, and mail it a message that acknowledges the gap rather than repeating the acquisition offer.
- Audience
- Lapsed records isolated from the active file by a rule you set — last order date, expired term, dormant account.
- The piece
- Says what has changed and what is waiting, rather than introducing the company again.
- Response path
- A personalized URL or offer code tied to the record, so a return can be matched back to the mailing.
Audience targeting and mailing lists →
Typical formats
Objective
Event and seminar promotion
Invitations, save-the-dates, and reminder waves timed against a fixed date, with the in-home window planned backwards from the day the room has to fill.
- Audience
- An invitation list, a radius around the venue, or both — usually mailed in more than one wave.
- The piece
- Date, time, place, and the RSVP, in that order, on something worth keeping until the day.
- Response path
- An RSVP URL, phone line, or reply card, with a seat count you can watch as each wave lands.
Typical formats
Objective
Openings and announcements
Announce a new location, a move, a new service, or an expanded footprint to the neighborhoods it actually serves.
- Audience
- The households and businesses around the new address, defined by the geography the location will serve.
- The piece
- What opened, where it is, when it opens, and one reason to come the first time.
- Response path
- A map, the hours, and an opening offer with a date on it.
Typical formats
Format
Letters and envelopes
Messages that need more explanation, several components, or an enclosed way to reply.
Typical objectives
Format
Self-mailers
Folded formats that buy additional storytelling space in one integrated piece, with no envelope between the message and the reader.
Typical objectives
Format
Catalogs and newsletters
Multi-page formats for several products, programs, services, or stories in one mailing.
Typical objectives
Format
Invitations and notices
Purpose-built communications organized around one event, one notice, or one ask — including appeals.
Typical objectives
Format
Multi-component packages
Coordinated letters, inserts, reply devices, envelopes, and other campaign components mailed together as one piece.
Typical objectives
By industry
Why MBI
Why organizations partner with MBI
The record behind the work.
MBI has been producing and mailing direct mail since 1989. Data, print, and delivery are all in-house, which is why one team can answer for the whole campaign instead of coordinating three vendors on your behalf.
- Years in business
- 37+
- Mail pieces delivered
- 10.5B+
- Campaigns executed
- 550K+
- States served
- 50
Experience
Direct mail since 1989, through every change in postal rules, data practice, and print technology.
One partner, end to end
Audience, data, graphic design, print, finishing, and USPS entry handled by one organization, with no seams.
National reach
Campaigns mail into all 50 states and more than 3,000 U.S. cities on one program.
In-house production
Commercial and variable-data printing, finishing, addressing, and mail preparation, all under one roof.
Personalization
Record-level names, offers, images, nearest locations, and response URLs, proofed before the run.
Schedule ownership
The schedule is built back from your in-home date, and one team owns it.
Multi-location programs
One specification sets what stays consistent and what varies by market, across every location.
Coordination with digital
Mail aligned with landing pages, email, advertising, and CRM follow-up, planned as one campaign.
FAQs
Direct mail questions, answered.
Answers buyers ask for most.
MBI begins with the campaign objective, audience or geography, estimated quantity if known, desired format if known, personalization requirements, artwork status, response method, and target in-home window. It is fine if several of those are still undecided.
No answers match your search. Try a different word or phrase.
Explore further
Resources
Formats, audiences, and decisions — one guide at a time.
Direct Mail Cost
Format, quantity, data, and postal plan move the number more than anything else — see what shapes price before artwork is finalized.
Explore direct mail cost →Targeted Direct Mail
For a defined consumer or business audience, with address-level personalization and measurement.
Explore targeted direct mail →Audience Targeting & Mailing Lists
House file or built audience — hygiene, deduplication, and suppression decide who's actually mailable.
Explore audience and mailing lists →Postcard Mailing Services
Size, postal category, and address-block layout decide whether a postcard clears the mail stream cleanly.
Explore postcard mailing services →Personalized Direct Mail
Variable data ties each piece to one record — approved fields, fallbacks, and proofs keep it accurate at scale.
Explore personalized direct mail →B2B Direct Mail
Accounts and roles replace households — addressing, personalization, and sales follow-up all work differently here.
Explore B2B direct mail →Multi-Location & Nationwide Mail
One program specification, per-market versions, coordinated waves and reporting — run it as a single campaign.
Explore multi-location and nationwide mail →Direct Mail & Digital Marketing
Landing pages, email, paid ads, and sales follow-up all read off the same mailing under one campaign plan.
Explore direct mail and digital →Campaign Measurement
Response codes and matchback have to be built in before the drop, not added after results come in.
Explore campaign measurement →Choosing a Direct Mail Company
Print-only, mailing, and full-service vendors split up ownership differently — know who holds data and schedule before you sign.
Explore choosing a direct mail company →Get Started
Tell us about your direct mail campaign.
A focused campaign brief that responds to what you know and skips what you do not. Your answers go to a real direct mail specialist for review.