What source or solution do you recommend for printing a low volume of custom postcards?

I have two postcards I've designed and need to mail off. Just 100 of each to start. They are reminders following a direct mail sales letter. In all, there are three sales letters and two postcards all sent in a sequence. For now, I just need to test the effectiveness of this sequence to 100 owners of specific niche companies.

The commercial printers I spoke with deal in 10's of thousands, not hundreds. So aside from using my own very slow, very expensive photo printer I'm curious if there is a realistic source for printing such a low volume of high quality color postcards? Preferably cards that won't smear in the mail.

What have you found to be a good source?

Thanks.

Andre

The US postal service has this now:

USPS - Send Premium Postcards to Promote Your Business

I received one of these last week. It looked very, very snazzy.

Marcia Yudkin

Andre,

I don't know if you need glossy finish or not, but I've used Staples extensively in the past for non-glossy postcard printing. They have a nice rebate program on their printing and it's perfect for low volume mailings where you are testing a message/headline/etc.

Good luck,

Mike

Hi Andre,

I've done thousands of postcard mailings recently, so I've done a ton of research on printers.

If you ever want complete, everything done for you mailings, then I'd go with Postcardmania.

PostcardMania - Bulk & Direct Mail Postcards - The Bulk & Direct Mail Postcard Marketing Experts

I just used them to send out 15,000, they designed the postcard, which was excellent, then they found my target mailing list and sent them out. I do know they do orders of 500 or so, but they are the most expensive, because they do it all for you and also have the best quality.

For smaller orders in the hundreds, and more for the do it yourselfer, I've used each of these with pretty good results:

Color Printing: Business Card, Postcard, Poster, Calendar, Flyers, Brochure Online Printing
Business Cards, Postcards, Flyers, Brochures, Letterhead , Greeting Cards & Envelopes Overnight ~ by OvernightPrints.com
www.VistaPrint.com

I've used all three recently and they all are pretty similar as far as quality of card, pricing, turnaround, etc.

And they allow smaller lots and let you pick and choose what you want done (you mail, they mail, you design, they design, etc)

Vistaprint I believe came out the least expensive.

Hope this helped,

Shawn
Hope this helped.

Hey Andre,

I just used QuantumPrint.com - Your Online Print Center and Digital Warehouse for Direct Marketing to print and mail a small test of 800 oversize postcards (8.5 x 5.5) and I think the quality and their service is great. With first class postage i think they worked out to about $.80 a piece and they had the job completed and in the mail in about 3 days.

Cheers,

Steve