Hello. My name is Valerie, and on behalf of USPS, I’d like to welcome you to Direct Mail 101, where we teach you how to get started marketing with mail. Now, if you’re new to mail, keep in mind that this is just a broad overview of our more in-depth series, “Getting Started with Direct Mail,” which you can check out any time at USPSDelivers.com. So what is direct mail? Well, it’s advertising mail, and it’s changed a lot over the years. Today’s direct mail has a ton of innovative ways to grab your customers’ attention. And once it does, it works great with your digital marketing to get them to act. But before getting started, you need to figure out which kind of mail you want to use: First-Class or USPS Marketing. If this is your first mail campaign, well, First-Class Mail® is a great place to start. It’s more personal than Marketing Mail, and there’s no minimum number of mailpieces. But when you’re ready to start doing larger volume, there’s USPS Marketing Mail®. It’s geared more towards advertising. with reduced pricing for a minimum of 200 pieces. Once you know what kind of mail you’re sending, you’ll need to get a game plan. So get your game face on. We’re talking objectives: the business kind. What is it you want to accomplish? Attract new customers? Promote a sale? You’ll need to keep this in mind in the next few videos. You also want to think about ways to drive your customers to your digital presence. Maybe it’s a personalized URL, a phone number or even a QR Code®. Now, for the purposes of this series, we’re going to use a trendy clothing shop called Milo & Mel to demonstrate some basic marketing principles. With Milo & Mel, we’re looking to reconnect with existing customers and invite them back to shop with us. So we’ll entice them with new looks for the season. And these looks are hot. So what better way than a Memorial Day summer sale? All right, so now that you’ve got your game plan, let’s put it into action. See you in the next video.