Has email cut out the need for paper mailing campaigns?  I don't think so.  First of all, not everyone has email or reads it frequently.  Even those people who have email don't always have the capability to receive formatted, color email.  Secondly, you need permission to email anyone with sales literature.  And most importantly, people are more likely to keep a piece of paper handy than to print out your email and keep it in sight.

I personally do a lot of email campaigns.  I have a monthly newsletter which I send out to those who have subscribed.  I also frequently receive business meeting notices from the BBB.  But as I said, email is limited and should not be the only leg of  your written marketing campaign.

If your task is short and sweet, you may want to pick up the telephone.  Reminding 20 people of an upcoming beading party may be done by phone.  It could also of course be done by mail.  Reminding 2000 people of an upcoming bead show is probably best left to the mail.  I would probably use a post card for a reminder.  Gone are the days when you have to print 2000 post cards and address labels to affix to the post cards.  Many services, including the US Post Office (usps.com) will print and mail your post card for you.  A two sided black and white post card sent via the post office would cost approximately .29 a person.  If you want to show off a particularly beautiful new piece of jewelry, two sided color costs .41 a flyer.  These costs include all materials, printing and mailing.  Of course, you can tie your post card into a promotion - allow children to make a free bracelet if accompanied by adult bearing card, e.g.  Free romance cards or free cleaning cloth, 5% off a purchase or  any show sale will help get people to keep their cards and get to your booth in the show.

Now, obviously post cards are not going to handle all your mail campaign needs.  You may want to send a one page letter or a 4 page brochure or even a full mail order catalog.  The more expensive your mailing campaign, the more you will want to prequalify candidates and follow up on the mailing.  Let's compare these two ad campaigns - one of which I have run:

1) The Bead Peddler® does an extensive business in rosary centers and crucifixes.  We noticed that many Catholic schools had the children make rosaries to give to their Mom's as Mother's Day gifts.  Our average sale to a Catholic school was 50.00.  There is little competition in the market of rosary making components.  Therefore, we decided to aggressively reach out to other Catholic schools.  First we designed a one page 8 x 10 black and white flyer.  We showed a picture of a rosary design that any child could make and gave them instructions for making the rosary.  We also  listed a few black and white pictures of some of our rosary components.  The prospective customer could order by phone or mail order.  Of course, we also directed the buyer to our website where  they could see our full selection of rosary components.  We decided to mail this flyer folded into a self mailing brochure.  On the address side of the label, we printed FREE Rosary Making Instructions Suitable for Children.  This mailer was relatively cheap - .34 cents a school.  We found Catholic schools by searching for them state by state on the internet.  We started with one state at random to test the campaign.  As we got a good response from this mailing, we then approached other states. We had the post office prepare and ship  the mailers to the schools and waited for the prospective client to call.  We were extremely happy with the results of this campaign.   We'll run it again next March and April.  This coming year we're adding a line of factory made rosaries for the schools to use as a fundraisers.   We are seriously considering buying a mailing list of Catholic schools for our next campaign.  Now that we know it's a profitable campaign, we're willing to invest in it.

Contract this simple, relatively inexpensive approach  with someone wanting to sell jewelry to a sorority house.  There is lots of competition for jewelry sales.  Still, a sorority is an easily identifiable  niche market.  Of course, the sisters would want to see pictures depicting their sorority colors.  You'd also want an envelope for your good color flier.  Even a one page flier sent by the post office would bring your costs to .89 a mailing.  At this point you may want to pre-qualify your leads.  You would do this by first calling the sorority house to see if they would be interested in receiving a brochure.  If they are, you would get the name of a good contact person at the sorority and send the mailer to her.  You may even want to follow up the mailing with a phone call to see if they received the mailer and ask for their comments. 

The post office would charge 4.37 a piece to print and mail a four page, full color brochure with envelope.  Of course, the more expensive a piece of mail and the more competitive the market, the more you would want to pre-qualify the candidates by having them request the catalog in some way.  Again, you can call them up and ask them to request the catalog<vbg>.

You may have noticed that I always used the post office rates for both printing and mailing the offerings.  There are several other companies that provide this service and may be cheaper than the post office.  You could also do it yourself.  But consider this: a stamp for an 8 x 10 flier costs .37.   Printing the flier costs around .02 to .03 for black and white.  This brings your material costs to at least .39 for a black and white self mailing flyer.  Our black and white Catholic school flyer cost .425 a piece and we had no labor - we just uploaded the flier to usps, uploaded our mailing list and let them do all the work.  For me, that was three and a half cents that was well spent.