Many businesses successfully implement direct marketing campaigns internally. Many others attempt and pay additional fees for postage, or worse, have to reprint the entire mailing. Successfully implementing a direct marketing campaign requires adhering to the USPS regulations. Specific knowledge and equipment must be obtained to meet the regulations.

If you plan on doing your own direct marketing, research the regulations and determine the equipment needs to meet the regulations. The equipment may include specialized printers, preparations machines, and software. You'll also have to be sure to prepare your materials to conform to the regulations.

Once you’ve positioned yourself to create your own materials, you have to be diligent about doing it. Sending out a mailing of 250 mail pieces usually isn’t that hard. Sometimes, the hardest part is getting to the the right Post Office for delivery. When you magnify it to 1,000, 5,000, or even 10,000 mail pieces, the work can get overwhelming. Without the right experience and equipment, you can easily get overwhelmed. And, at these quantities, the extra fees for any mistakes add up quickly (even a basic 10¢ mistake, per piece, adds $100 to $1000).

Then, what most people overlook is the time factor. If you have employees with a lot of downtime, you may be able to have them do parts of the mailing tasks between productive work activities. If they’re online or on the phone a lot, you may as well make better use of their time. But when they get busy, who does the work? You’ll either need to pay them overtime, work overtime yourself, or hire someone to do it. Then, to meet your own deadlines, you’ll have to fiure out how long it takes to fold, stuff, and seal envelopes? How long to stamp them? How long to print the materials?

So, in the end, you can create, implement, and manage a direct mail campaign yourself. It comes down to how much knowledge, time, and sometimes capital for equipement you have. If your volumes are big enough, it may be work the investment and hiring a dedicated person. If you don’t want to manage another department, or have to do it yourself in your off-time, it may be work hiring a professional to do it for you.