How To Reach Every Household In Your Neighborhood!

Whether you call it a postcard campaign, direct mail, neighborhood mailers, or something else, church staff members around the country find value in strategically sending snail-mail to their surrounding neighborhood communities. We put together a quick guide to help you make the best use of this fantastic outreach tool.

What Services to Use
We suggest going with the trusty ol’ Postal Service. Their direct mail service, Every Door Direct Mail, has an online tool that is economical and uncomplicated. You simply search your parish’s address in their route search tool and select the area you’d like to target. Once selected, the tool automatically gives you the number of houses in a given mail route and the approximate cost so you know how many postcards to print and how much the campaign will cost you. You can choose which day to drop the mailers off at your local post office and there are options to pay via credit card on your computer right away or in-person when you drop off your mail! Now that you know how to distribute to your neighborhood, let’s talk about design.

Design Your Mailer
Before you design and print your mailers, make sure you are following the USPS’s Every Door Direct Mail Quick Reference Guide for mailing requirements. This guide will help you understand the different sizing and labeling requirements.

Not great at graphic design, or don’t have the time to spend creating the imagery needed to make your mailer stand out? Our library of professionally designed Catholic content, WeCreate, is the perfect solution. Just search a keyword for the type of imagery that you want to include in your design, find one or two designs that you like, download them, and drop them into your design for a fresh, professional look! WeCreate even has a growing number of pre-designed postcard/mailer templates for parish special occasions under our Templates-Flyers section.

You can use the WeCreate images that you download with any design program out there! Drop them into Canva, Photoshop, Publisher, or any printer’s online design tool!

What about printing?
There are three ways that we’d suggest printing your mailers:

1. Search for local printers who might already be supporting your parish, or one nearby, by using the Parishes Online tool! This online directory shows you the businesses that purchase adds in church bulletins so you can choose to support a company that is already supporting you! You can choose, on the top right side of the website, to search for Parishes or Supporters.
   
   When searching via the parishes page, simply click the parish name and then, on the right-hand side next to their profile page, you will see a list of the companies who have purchased ads to support that parish. Is there a printer in the list?
   
   When searching via the supporters page, choose the Printing/Copy/Advertising/Marketing choice from the drop-down Supporter Category menu, type in your zip code, and search! If there is a printing company who supports any of the Catholic parishes in your area, their company information will pop up!
   
   
2. If there isn’t a printer already supporting your parish, you can search for other local printers on the USPS printer directory website. Under the Find a Printer headline, use the search bar to type in your zip code. This will show you results of any local printers in the area who can print your direct mail for you. If you use a local printer, you might also ask them to consider taking out an ad in the bulletin so that they are searchable via Parishes Online for other church staff members in the area who might be looking for a local printer.
   
   
3. Use an online printer. The USPS offers suggestions of online printing experts that specialize in direct mailers here. You can also order online via your local Staples, Office Max, or Costco.
   
   

Content Ideas:

Need some help brainstorming what topics or events your parish should be advertising with neighborhood mailers? Here are a few outreach ideas:

• Is your parish having an event that non-Catholics would feel comfortable attending like a picnic, rummage sale, health fair, or food festival?
  
  
• Are there summer youth programs like VBS, camps, or service opportunities happening that local parents might want to enroll their children in?
  
  
• What ministries do you have that might directly impact your neighbors? Does your parish have a food pantry, a grief group, parenting classes, AA, or offer special prayer services for people? Advertise the ministries that could directly benefit your neighbors with an invitation to participate.
  
  
• Invite neighbors to send in prayer requests. Add a QR code to the mailer that guides them to a landing page on your website where they can submit a prayer request. Don’t forget to follow up with them!
  
  
• Share special Mass times. Is your parish celebrating an anniversary or milestone? Are you having a special holiday Mass for Easter or Christmas? Invite your neighbors!

• Announce major staffing changes. If you are welcoming a new pastor, send out invites to the welcome-picnic or celebration you are hosting to introduce them to the community.

However you decide to design, print, and send your mailers, we hope they serve as a considerable tool to build community and share the love of Christ!

“May every church and Christian community be a

place of mercy amid so much indifference.”
                                                                             -Pope Francis

Looking for more articles like this to inspire your parish staff? Check out the "Parish Life" section of our blog!

Updated on 03-18-2024