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  • You Don’t Have to Figure Out Direct Mail. We Handle All of It.

    You Don’t Have to Figure Out Direct Mail. We Handle All of It.

    Most businesses know direct mail works. They’ve seen the response rates. They’ve heard from customers who kept a postcard on their fridge for three months before calling. What stops them isn’t interest. It’s the feeling that it’s too complicated to pull off.

    Who do you mail to? How do you get a list? What size piece? How do you know if it worked?

    Those are fair questions. Here’s the short answer: you don’t have to answer any of them alone. We handle the entire process from identifying your audience to getting your piece in the mailbox.

    Two Ways to Reach People

    The first decision in any direct mail campaign is whether you’re targeting everyone in an area or specific individuals.

    Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) is built for saturation. You pick carrier routes by ZIP code, and your piece goes to every address on those routes. No list needed. No individual names. Just blanket coverage of the neighborhoods you want to reach. It’s cost-effective and simple, and it works well for businesses that want local visibility fast.

    Traditional Direct Mail goes further. Instead of blanketing a route, you’re mailing to specific people filtered by criteria that matter to your business. Credit score. Household income. Life events like a recent move or a new business opening. Purchase behavior. If you want to reach new homeowners in a specific ZIP code or businesses that opened in the last 90 days, traditional direct mail gets you there.

    Both approaches are available through us, and we can help you decide which fits your goal.

    We Build Your List

    One of the biggest barriers to direct mail is the list. Where do you get one? How do you know it’s accurate? How do you avoid mailing to your existing customers if you’re running an acquisition campaign?

    We handle all of it through our data acquisition services. We build targeted mailing lists based on whatever criteria fits your campaign. Property analytics, ownership duration, equity status, income filters, life-event triggers. If you want to reach new movers the week they arrive in your ZIP code, we can build that list. If you want to suppress your existing customers so you’re only spending on new prospects, we handle that too.

    Design Handled for $30

    A direct mail piece that doesn’t look professional wastes the print and postage budget. We work with Umbrella Graphics, a design partner with over 40 years of experience. Custom postcard design starts at $30 and comes back print-ready. You approve the file, and it goes straight to press. No back-and-forth with freelancers, no template hacks.

    Track What Happens After It Lands

    Direct mail used to be hard to measure. You’d send a batch and hope the phone rang. That’s not the case anymore.

    We add trackable QR codes to your mailpieces that give you real-time data on exactly when and where people are engaging. You get scan alerts the moment someone responds. You can see which carrier routes performed, which designs drove more traffic, and what your actual return on investment looks like. That data makes the next campaign sharper.

    The Postcard Special Running Now

    Through May 15th, 5.5 x 8.5 postcards printed 2-sided on 120lb gloss cover stock start at $0.30 per card plus postage. That’s a sharp entry point if you’ve been thinking about direct mail and want to test it with your existing customers first.

    Add design through Umbrella Graphics for $30 and you have a complete, professional campaign ready to mail for less than most businesses spend on a single digital ad.

    Reach out before May 15th and we’ll walk you through the full process from list to mailbox.

  • How to Prepare Your Artwork Files for Print (And Avoid Costly Mistakes)

    How to Prepare Your Artwork Files for Print (And Avoid Costly Mistakes)

    Most print problems start before anything hits the press — they start on your computer. We see it all the time at YN Print Shop: a customer sends over a great looking design, and we have to be the ones to say it isn’t ready to print. Wrong color mode, low resolution, missing bleed these things delay your job and add to your cost.

    The fix is usually simple. Here’s what to check before you send us your files.

    Resolution: The 300 DPI Rule

    Print needs 300 DPI (dots per inch) at the size it’s going to print. Your screen runs at 72–96 DPI, so images that look sharp on-screen can still print blurry.

    Before you wrap up your design, check the resolution on every image. In Photoshop: Image → Image Size. If you’re working with web graphics, swap them out for high-res version scaling up a low-res image won’t fix it.

    Bleed and Safe Zone: Don’t Cut Off Your Design

    Bleed is extra design space — 1/8″ beyond the edge of your finished piece. Paper shifts a little when it’s cut, and without bleed you can end up with a thin white border where there shouldn’t be one.

    Keep anything important — text, logos, key graphics — at least 1/8″ away from the trim edge. This is called the safe zone. Set up bleed from the start in your design program. InDesign, Illustrator, and Canva Pro all have a bleed setting when you create a new document.

    Color Mode: CMYK, Not RGB

    Screens use RGB — a color system based on light. Printers use CMYK — a color system based on ink. The two don’t match perfectly, and some colors (bright blues, neons, vivid purples) can shift a lot in the conversion.

    Design in CMYK from the start so what you see on screen is closer to what prints. In Illustrator or InDesign, set this when you create the document. In Photoshop: Image → Mode → CMYK.

    Fonts: Outline Them or Embed Them

    If you send a file with live text and we don’t have that font, the design breaks. Text shifts, spacing changes, and the layout falls apart.

    Two fixes: convert your text to outlines before you send (in Illustrator: Type → Create Outlines), or embed your fonts when you export to PDF. Either way, keep an editable copy for yourself.

    The Easiest Format to Send

    Export as a print-ready PDF with bleeds included and fonts embedded. It’s the format most print shops prefer, and it travels well.

    Not sure if your file is ready? Send us a message before you place your order. Five minutes of back-and-forth beats a delayed job. Contact YN Print Shop and we’ll take a look.