Collaborative Mailings
Lutheran College Fairs - Fall 2009 and Spring 2010
Over the last several years, LECNA implemented a collaborative mailing process to ensure that all area students are notified of our plans to host a regional Lutheran college fair. The marketing Committee agreed that a central mailhouse capable of merging student databases from several colleges and the church bodies (ELCA and LCMS) would best serve our needs.
This process enables us to merge and purge duplicates so that one postcard is mailed to each family. This system saves both money and time for the colleges and the church body offices. Please understand that we are not promoting any "shared lists." Once the mailing has taken place, the records will be destroyed and we will start over the next year.
We will again be utilizing the expertise and services of On Target in Faribault, MN in order to merge your student databases with other college and university databases as well as the church body databases.
The cost for postage (Standard A, nonprofit with bar codes) will be 14 cents for each 6 x 11 postcard. In addition, you will incur a $35 fee per thousand postcards you send for the presorting, barcoding, and inkjetting. For example, if you send postcards to 4000 students on your prospect list (4000 x .14) you will pay $560 in postage. You will also pay $140($35 x 4) for the presorting, barcoding, and inkjetting, for a total of $700.
LECNA will bill you for these postage costs in October (for Fall events) and April (for Spring events). Please remember that you will not be billed for costs associated with the postcard printing. Postcard printing costs are covered by the annual publicity fee. Only postage and sorting costs will be passed on to you in the billing.
After paying On Target for the computer processing fee, the remainder of the savings we incur due to throwing out the duplicates will be passed back to you on a percentage basis before we send the Fall and Spring postage bills.
In addition to representing a substantial savings on mailing costs (sending out your postcards first class-41 cents each, or bulk without bar coding-17-23 cents each), this process will also save personnel time for you.
Since the duplicates will be thrown out, students will no longer receive 10 invitations to the college fair. This method will save everyone time and money. In some locations, you may only have 150 students on your database. Thus, you would not have enough to qualify for a bulk mailing. Therefore, you were likely paying $61.50 (150 x .41) to notify 150 students. With the collaborative service, you can notify those 150 students for only $21. Collaborative mailing efforts will enable you to send notices at a lower cost, regardless of the number of prospects.
I hope that you will seriously consider participating in this joint effort. You may have names of students that are not included in the LCMS and ELCA church body lists. So, please send us your prospect names! It will make a difference in the attendance at the college fair locations.
Notify Your Student Prospects
You can decide which students you would like to notify (Lutheran and/or non-Lutheran) by selecting all or a few of the following graduation years in your database for the zip code regions listed below.
- 2009 graduates: current seniors
- 2010 graduates: current juniors
- 2011 graduates: current sophomores
- 2012 graduates: current freshmen
Fall Events 2008
College Fair Location Zip Code Range
Please submit the names of your student prospects (and e-mail addresses) to On Target as soon as possible for the events in which you are registering. This will give us the time needed to merge and purge the college and church body databases to determine the number of postcards to be printed so that the postcards are mailed in a timely fashion.
Milwaukee, WI 530-532, 534,
Appleton, WI 541-544, 549
Madison, WI 535, 537-539
Chicago and Naperville, IL 463-464, 600-607, 609
Orange County, CA 900-908, 910-931
Seattle, WA 980-985
Portland, OR 986, 970-973
Denver, CO 800-809
Eden Prairie 550-551, 553-555, 560
Detroit, MI 480-489, 492
Rockford, IL 610-611, 613
Bloomington, IL 614-619, 625-627
Des Moines, IA 500-503, 505, 508-509, 506-507, 522-524
Omaha, NE 514-516, 680-681, 683-687
St. Louis, MO 620, 622, 628-629, 630-631, 633, 636
Kansas City, KS 640-641, 644-647, 653, 660-662, 664-666
Fields Needed:
Last name,
first name,
address,
city,
state,
zip,
e-mail address,
graduation year
Note: Please do not forget to include the students’ e-mail addresses!
1. Please send your files for our fall events to Dan Rasmussen.
Files can be e-mailed to lecna@ontargetmailing.com or mailed to:
On Target A & M
PO Box 617
Faribault, MN 55021.
Feel free to e-mail Dan with specific questions or call 1-800-356-0439.
2. Please submit your name/phone number/e-mail address/college or university and respective city when you send the files to On Target. We must be able to identify the college sending the files and a contact person to reach in case there are problems with reading the files.
3. Please export files in one of the following formats:
fixed length, Microsoft Excel, comma delimited text,
tab delimited text,
or dbase.
If you need to send files in a different format, please contact On Target for instructions. Files over 5 megabytes in size should be compressed using a utility such as WinZip or PK-Zip.
