You have probably noticed that you do not get nearly so many pieces of direct mail through your door as you used to. Sure, you get a lot of hand-delivered leaflets and flyers selling everything from fresh eggs and cheese to estate agents offering to sell your home (even though you have no intention of moving) to the hairdresser's in the High Street offering you £10 off a cut and style (even though you are bald). However, what you DON'T get is anywhere near so much direct mail – mail in an envelope addressed to you by name.

Why? This is because direct mail costs money, and email doesn't. And if you run one of many types of business that sells to the general public, this is great news for you.

Why? First, because most, if not all, of your competitors are not using direct mail. Second, people actually do open and read material that is in an envelope specifically addressed to them – especially if it is a high-quality envelope – and they do still take action on the contents. Compared with the open rates on email the open rates on direct mail are way, way higher. Many companies that are sending out emails find that their open rates are now dismal, because people make a decision on reading the subject line and very often simply delete the email.

So by using direct mail you will get far better open rates and you will be the only one in your niche that is using direct mail – so no competition!

Of course, this does mean that you will need printing in Edinburgh, and you will need a list of names and addresses of potential customers. There is also the cost of postage, of course. The precise cost of a direct mail campaign will depend on the quantity being sent, what you are including in the envelope, the quality of the paper and envelope you use, and whether or not you require a mailing list.

For B2C mailings you can get all sorts of lists defined geographically, by age, by sex, by income bracket, and even by the type of hobbies and interests they pursue. Highly targeted mailing lists will cost approaching £200 per thousand names.

If you are looking at 1,000 mail shot the costs can be as follows: envelopes - £25, letterheads - £150, A5 leaflets - £80, brochures - £300. These rates can reduce for longer print runs, of course.

Adding it all up, a direct mail campaign can cost anywhere from around £300 per thousand up to as much as £700. Of course, whether or not you make a profit depends on the content of your mail campaign and the price that you are selling your product or service for. Most marketing experts will tell you that you should expect a 1% - 2% response rate from a cold list, which can increase to as much as 4% from a warm list – people who already know you or have bought from your previously.

Either way, if you are selling product which costs £10 you are not going to make a lot of money. Equally, if you are selling a bathroom or kitchen makeover, you don't even need 1% to make a profit: Just one order out of a thousand mail shots would be enough, and if you get two – or more – you will be a very happy bunny!

One way of cutting the costs of direct mail is to do what some expert marketers are doing now, and that is to send just a single page letter on high quality paper which directs recipients to log on to your web page. There you go into a lengthy "pitch" to sell your product, rather than having it all printed and sending the whole thing by post.

Of course, if you are, for example, T-shirt printers in Edinburgh yourself, you will already have some ideas about printing costs, but although you are selling T-shirts you don't possess the type of machinery necessary to print on paper. However, you will be aware of the sort of demographic that buys your T-shirts so you can rent an appropriate list of names and then use a one-page letter to direct people to your website where you can go into far more detail about your products and prices.