Mailshots Online

Mailshots Online is Royal Mail's online portal. It’s designed to give small to medium businesses - who are new to direct mail or have limited marketing budgets - the ability to create professional direct marketing (DM) materials which Royal Mail print and dispatch at market competitive prices. Materials can be sent to mainland UK addresses only.

An A5, double-sided, full colour postcard costs just 63p per postcard. For an A4, enveloped, full colour, single- or double-sided letter the cost is 69p per unit. We also offer an A5 full colour greeting card, that costs just 93p per item. This price assumes that you have your own data list of recipients. If you need to buy data, you can do so through the Mailshots Online site for an additional fee. These prices include printing, Second Class postage and VAT. Prices inclusive of First Class postage are 76p per A5 postcard, 82p per A4, enveloped, letter; and £1.06 per greeting card.

You should be able to complete your Mailshots session in less than half an hour. We suggest that you consider the content and wording for your mail piece and prepare your logos, imagery and any data lists before beginning your session, as this will significantly reduce the amount of time it will take you to complete your online campaign.

For orders placed before 2pm we aim to print and dispatch on the same day. For orders placed after 2pm, we will print and dispatch the following day. Orders placed on Saturday or Sunday will be dispatched on Monday (except Bank Holidays when it will be the next working day). Products are sent by Royal Mail First or Second Class post.

Yes. We have created Blank templates that will allow you to upload a finished, print-ready PDF mail piece. With the letter you have to make sure that you do not have any text or images in the designated recipient address area. Most word processing pages now give you the option to save your work as a PDF and this should be suitable for upload to the Mailshots Online system.

You can purchase consumer/commercial data as an integral part of creating your mail piece. You can specify the profile for your target audience and your data list will be added to the purchase price for your campaign. You will then be able to add the list you have purchased to your mail piece.

Yes, all past orders can be viewed under the Order History tab at the top of the screen. Details of each order are displayed, including the address data used and a thumbnail of the final product. Select the thumbnail to enlarge the image.

The response rate can be affected by a wide range of factors. These include whether your data source is ‘in-house’ or from a bought list. A better targeted list (in terms of the criteria you specify) can also positively influence the response rate. If it’s your own list then you should also consider whether it is made up of lapsed or loyal customers.

Other influencing factors include the quality of the creative, the quality of any offer you use, the nature of the action requested (i.e. what you want your customers to do), how you want them to respond (i.e. via email, telephone etc.) and the use of any other media alongside the campaign.