An economical and effective way to acquire customers

What is Acquisition Mail?

How much will it cost?

Why use Acquisition Mail?

Is it suitable for me?

How do I access the service?

What is Acquisition Mail?

Acquisition Mail is a bulk mail delivery service that allows you to send non-personalised addressed (‘To the Resident’) mail to households in specific postcodes, suburbs or Census Collection Districts (CCDs) for the purpose of acquiring them as customers.

When you use Acquisition Mail, Australia Post supplies you with residential street addresses for your nominated target regions to enable delivery of your mailing. These addresses exclude addresses with ‘No Advertising Material’ or similar signage and those on The Australian Direct Marketing Associations ‘Do Not Mail’ file. However, because this is an addressed mail service you have the option to include these addresses in your mailing.

How much will it cost?

Acquisition Mail is priced from just 28.0¢ an item for Small size articles (240mm x 130mm) and 39.0¢ an item for Small Plus articles (240 x 162mm). This price includes delivery of articles and supply of residential street addresses.

For a full breakdown of pricing, refer to the Acquisition Mail Service Guide (pdf, 1.1mb).

Why use Acquisition Mail?

One of Acquisition Mail’s unique benefits is that you can exclude your current customer addresses from your campaign, ensuring it only reaches your prospects. This helps to ensure your existing customers are not offended or devalued by receiving an acquisition offer.

Other benefits include:

• Better reach, higher readership:  Because Acquisition Mail is addressed, it is more likely to be opened than unaddressed mail. This means your message has a far better chance of being read.
  
• Ability to target: Acquisition Mail allows you to target prospective customers within specific geographic areas. This can be at a broad level such as postcode or suburb, or at a more precise level, such as Census Collection District (CCD).
  
• Improved cost efficiency: Acquisition Mail provides you with a low cost postage rate.  Plus, by only mailing prospects in your target areas, your print volumes are reduced and your return on investment is increased.
  
• Protection of brand integrity: The ability to reach prospects by their address can help maintain the integrity of your brand by value association with addressed mail.

Is it suitable for me?

Acquisition Mail is suitable if:

• you want to reach at least 30,000 residential addresses in specific geographic areas for the purpose of acquiring them as customers;
• you either don’t or can’t use unaddressed mail;
• you want to exclude existing customers from your mailing.

To qualify for Acquisition Mail, specific mailing conditions must be met:

• A minimum of 30,000 articles must be mailed in a single campaign.  This can be made in up to three individual lodgements over a six week period.  All lodgements must be completed within three months of receiving your address file.
• A minimum of 60% of the addresses Australia Post supply you with must be mailed in your campaign.
• The content of the article must be acquisition in nature, i.e. trying to generate a sale, donation or membership. You must supply a PDF or physical sample of the article to Australia Post prior to lodgement.
• Other addressing conditions apply. For more information, please refer to the Acquisition Mail Service Guide (pdf, 1.1mb).

How do I access the service?

To access the Acquisition Mail service you or your mailhouse need to:

1. Register your campaign – this is done using the online registration system. Within two business days of submitting the registration Australia Post will email you your address file, lodgement document/s and instructions for preparing your Acquisition Mail campaign.
   
2. Submit a copy of your article – prior to lodgement you must submit a copy (PDF or physical) of your intended mail piece to the Acquisition Mail Administrator for a content compliance check.
   
3. Prepare the mailing – according to the ‘Preparation’ section of the Acquisition Mail service guide. There are particular addressing requirements to follow when using Acquisition Mail, e.g. you must print the Australia Post return address on all your articles. Before addressing your articles you may choose to exclude your existing customer database from the address file provided.
   
4. Lodge the mailing – using the lodgement document/s provided or by transferring this information into the Electronic Lodgement Mailing Statement (eLMS), your campaign needs to be lodged according to the ‘Lodgement’ section of the Acquisition Mail Service Guide (pdf, 1.1mb).

After your final lodgement is made, Australia Post will check the details of your lodgement/s to ensure your campaign has met the terms and conditions of the service. All returned articles received within two weeks of your final lodgement date will be counted and a postage rebate provided for all articles in excess of 10% of the total lodgement volume.