The following is a guest post by Holly Goff, production manager at d2design, which specializes in direct mail solutions tailored to churches and their goals.

Chances are, you’re planning to use direct mail at some point in your church’s marketing plan. It’s cost-effective and maintains great response rates:

Once again, direct mail response rates rank stronger than digital channels, sometimes exponentially: at 5.1% for house lists and 2.9% for prospect lists, mail response rates consistently exceed the 2% response rate of all digital channels combined.” – IWCO Direct

The fact is, a significant percentage of millennials like mail. It has a built-in emotional response factor. Gallup reported that 36% of people under the age of 30 look forward to checking their mailboxes every day. What’s more, 95% of 18-to-29-year-olds have a positive response to receiving personal cards and letters.” – Forbes

But while direct mail is relatively inexpensive for anyone, churches can file online for USPS nonprofit pricing and lower postage costs even more.

Church Nonprofit Authorization Number

A nonprofit authorization number (NPA) allows an organization to send standard bulk mail (a large quantity of identical pieces, such as a direct mail postcard) at a lower postage price. NPA numbers are FREE, applied for through the post office, and kept on file in a national USPS database. But while useful, it’s sometimes hard to get consistent information about these numbers even at the post office, depending on the branch’s size or the particular clerk you encounter.

Most importantly, an NPA number is NOT the same as a tax ID or a bulk mail permit number. An NPA number proves that your organization is a nonprofit entity and can mail at a lower postage rate. (Note that if you’re mailing on your own, you’ll also need a bulk mail permit, for which you’ll pay an annual fee. However, marketing firms such as d2design typically use their own bulk permit number for your mailings.)

Established Churches: How to Find Your Church’s NPA

If you are an established church that might have done mailings in years past, you may or may not have an NPA number. It depends on whether any of your predecessors applied for one. Call the post office to check. If you are a brand new church plant, you don’t automatically have an NPA number.

Verify Your Information on File

If your post office confirms that you do have an NPA number, verify the church name and address associated with it. This is important because the name and return address on your postcard MUST match exactly what’s on file with the post office.

For example, did you brand yourself as “XYZ Church” in your community, but your legal corporate name is “XYZ Church of the Presumptuous Assumption”? The post office will only use your church’s full legal name as it appears on your Articles of Incorporation that you submit to them.

If you’ve changed your church’s name, you’ll need to complete a 6015 form to update the national nonprofit database, even if you’ve already told the rest of the USPS about your name change.

A Warning

Church plants sometimes try to use their sending church’s NPA number. This works sometimes, but it’s risky. First, your card’s return address will be the other church’s information. And let’s say your sending church is in Wisconsin, planting your new church in Arizona. That’s confusing.

Second, this discrepancy could cause your cards to be rejected. That’s money down the drain to reprint thousands of postcards. And since your cards are time sensitive, you may not have enough time for the reprint, so you risk missing the window of opportunity altogether.

Get your own number to use when you need it.

Church Plants: Now You Can File Online for Your Church NPA

If you’ve determined that you need an NPA number, file your application and expect to receive it back in 2 to 6 weeks. You can take a completed hard copy of the 3624 application form to your local post office or file online for USPS nonprofit pricing by taking the following steps:

Register for a free Business Customer Gateway account
Once you’re registered and logged in, select Mailing Services from the left nav bar
Select Postal Wizard
Select 3624 under Complete Customer Service Forms
Complete the application

You just saved a trip to the post office!

More on Church Plant Postal Permits

How Much Money CAN Church Plant Postal Permits Save You?
How to save $450 by not applying for a bulk mail permit but still getting all the benefits
If you’re going old school, Which USPS paper forms to file, plus filing tips

The post How to Get a Church Nonprofit Authorization Number and Save Thousands appeared first on Church Planting Tactics.

Source: How to Get a Church Nonprofit Authorization Number and Save Thousands

The post How to Get a Church Nonprofit Authorization Number and Save Thousands appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Patrick Bradley: If you’re sending out direct mail to announce the launch of your weekly services, save $450 and don’t open a church bulk mail permit (but still get all the benefits using this secret).

There are two permits required to get the lowest postage rate for your church plant’s mailing:

the church bulk mail permit
the nonprofit pricing classification

Any business or organization can open their own bulk mail permit (account), but it costs $225 to apply and another $225 each year (find current pricing here).

The secret trick is that the bulk mail permit doesn’t have to belong to you.

Pros of Not Having a Church Bulk Mail Permit

There are several direct mail vendors that specialize in helping churches. They each have their own bulk mail permit, so you just piggyback on theirs. You still need your own nonprofit pricing classification, but they’re already paying their own $225 a year so you don’t have to.

This is a no-brainer. You don’t want to print and prepare your own direct mail anyway. It requires way too much work and industry knowledge that you don’t have time to learn. The only thing the $450 really gets you is your own indicia (keep reading).

Let a vendor that specializes in church mailings do all the work. You’re already $450 ahead if you do, not to mention all the meetings you can have with people because you weren’t spending your ministry time preparing the mailing yourself. You have way more important things to be doing!

Cons of Not Having a Church Bulk Mail Permit

There is only one minor drawback that I’m aware of: the indicia (that non-stamp stamp thingy) has to be the vendor’s.

So instead of:

[your town] permit ##

…it would read:

[vendor’s town] permit ##

If you’re planting in Wisconsin but the vendor is in Hawaii, some recipients might get confused, but probably only the few detail-oriented people who will actually notice.

The good news is that the return address on the cards will be your church’s. In fact, it has to be.

If you can live with using their indicia to save $450, go this route. But remember, you still need to file for own nonprofit pricing classification.

More on Church Plant Postal Permits

How Much Money CAN Church Plant Postal Permits Save You?
How to Get a Church Nonprofit Authorization Number, including how to apply online (coming soon!)
If you’re going old school, Which USPS paper forms to file, plus filing tips

The post How to Save $450 by NOT Getting a Church Bulk Mail Permit appeared first on Church Planting Tactics.

Source: How to Save $450 by NOT Getting a Church Bulk Mail Permit

The post How to Save $450 by NOT Getting a Church Bulk Mail Permit appeared first on Passion for Planting.