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Show HN: PostalAgent – Send Postcards online by circling areas on a Google Map (postalagent.com)

45 points by AutoAPI ↗ HN
Hey HN, I just launched https://PostalAgent.com, a site that lets you easily send highly targeted postcards to specific neighborhoods.

I originally built this site 5 years ago but shut it down when my full time engineering job became too demanding, but recently I did a full rewrite with many new features.

To start you can select an area using a City, State, or even by circling specific areas on a Google Map. Then, you can refine your results and filter on specific demographics, like household income, home value, rental status, etc

You can also search for Businesses rather than consumers, and even filter by franchise type, presence of email, IRS tax code, Franchise Type, etc.

I was able to get a few clients signed up very quickly, mostly home services type businesses and real estate agents, but I think it could be used by many types of businesses. I have a few customers that are only using the mailing list feature without sending postcards, likely for cold email or other marketing outreach.

I'm looking for a bit of feedback from the community.

42 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 106 ms ] thread
tonyBran
that’s pretty awesome. I’m going to give a try. What did you build it in?
AutoAPI
Thank you. It's built using Laravel and I am using a Javascript canvas editor for the designer
barkerja
Are you using anything like Mapbox?
channingd
Love the simplicity of just selecting the area on the map.

Great stuff!

patcon
Really curious, but seems to be down. Internet archive showing white screen too though, so not sure: https://web.archive.org/web/20240904211947/https://postalage...
AutoAPI
Sorry about that, I had an issue with Cloudflare and had to purge the cache, does it work for you now?
tylermenezes
Still happening here.
AutoAPI
Are you outside North America and possibly getting a captcha from CF? Looking into it now, sorry
patcon
it's back for me! thanks!
connor11528
Very cool! I like that you can send small batch sizes to do small marketing bets. Going to build a campaign to promote my b2c saas in my city
joshmlewis
Are you willing to share what you are using for data sources? Particularly the renter, net worth, etc aspects as that is not in the publicly available data out there.
AutoAPI
I use MelissaData and a few other similar APIs that are available
muttantt
MelissaData has quite a hefty API set up and minimum commit - how did you get them to give you API access to the direct mail leadgen API?
AutoAPI
I paid a hefty setup fee
toomuchtodo
I have a use case immediately for this. Thank you for sharing this!
Y_Y
I hate getting unsolicited junk mail. It's got all the attention theft of online advertising with the litter of shoving flyers in the mailbox.

Also some national postal services sell this "feature".

fsckboy
in the US, this type of junkmail pays for the postal service to keep it in the black, so that non-profitable one-off mail of personal interest can be delivered quickly and affordably.
Y_Y
The postal service is established the constitution and provides essential infrastructure. The fact that it can balance its books shouldn't matter.
simple10
It's fairly easy to opt out of unsolicited ("junk") mail in the US [1]. I'm not sure what happens if you try to send bulk postcards to people who opted-out. I think either the post office doesn't deliver them (but you still pay) or you open yourself up to fines if people complain.

Postal Agent might want to auto exclude people who have opted-out on the DMAchoice list [2] if it doesn't already do it.

[1] https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Refuse-unwanted-mail-and-remo...

[2] https://www.dmachoice.org/register.php

AStonesThrow
This service will not eliminate all promotional mail. It does not apply to promotional mail from companies or organizations that consumers have an existing business relationship. It also does not apply to local retailers, restaurants, and political organizations. You should expect to see a major reduction in the overall volume of prospect promotional offers received. Please note that ANA is not the source of consumer names for marketing purposes. This opt-in mail suppression service is a tool to assist consumers in managing their marketing offers.
toomuchtodo
The fact of the matter is postal marketing is return positive from a marketing perspective, and it will continue so long as marketers spend, consumers respond, and mail delivery agencies need the revenue.
muttantt
How are you able to get all addresses within a polygon?
AutoAPI
There are several occupant APIs that let you do this
clay_the_ripper
Hey this is cool - our application helps real estate investors select locations. Our users would get a lot of value from this. Be happy to feature you!
AutoAPI
I'd love that, shoot me a message from the contact page and let's get in touch
dennisy
This is very neat, well executed! So congratulations to you!

Do you use a 3rd party for the "physical" parts of the business such as printing and mailing?

AutoAPI
Yes, I use an API to print and mail. There are a few of them available
thedigitalone
Many years ago I had a take out and delivery pizza shop, this would have been a very handy tool to have! Add in the ability to set a drive time radius 'During regular traffic you can reach these addresses within 15 minutes from this location" would have been gold.
AutoAPI
Yes, exactly! I am hoping some restaurants will signup because they can really control their marketing spend by only mailing to people they deliver to. Although with Uber Eats does anybody order direct anymore?
rafram
This is an interesting idea, but the advertising is a little misleading. Your pricing page claims that "A USPS Postcard Stamp is now 56 cents!", but nobody who's mass-mailing direct marketing materials is paying retail for a postcard stamp per mailpiece. They'd use Every Door Direct Mail [1], which is 22 cents per postcard/envelope and doesn't require individual addressing or individual stamps. Printing adds a bit of cost, but that doesn't nearly make up the 53-cent difference between your service and USPS's.

[1]: https://eddm.usps.com/eddm/select-routes.htm

AutoAPI
It's not misleading at all, that is exactly what a USPS postcard stamp costs.

It's not fair to compare this to EDDM. The whole point of my site is so you dont have to mail to "every single door".

For example, I have 2 landscapers using my service and they target based on home value because they know most of their clients live in houses > $xxx. They also exclude renters because nearly all of their clients are homeowners. If they were using EDDM they might pay a bit less per postcard, but they would be sending to houses that will never signup for their service, so the actual CPA is higher

You mention "printing adds a bit of cost" but if you look around you will see that it adds quite a bit of cost. It depends on how many pieces you are sending but it could be .25 cents or .40 cents for 500-1000, or more -- but you have to send to an entire route, where you can send to a single house with my service.

Also, with EDDM you either have to batch your mailings per route, and deliver them to specific locations for USPS distribution, or pay extra for a print house to do that for you

nicbou
I find it hard to celebrate a service that makes it easier to spam people and waste our planet’s resources. Was either of those things a consideration when you chose to pick up this project?
AutoAPI
Yes actually, saving our planets resources is exactly why I built this service.

Direct Mail is never going away, so a service like this that lets you target your delivery using multiple consumer demographics allows you to send significantly less mail than other services that deliver mail to every single house.

This isn't a product used for "saturation" type mailings, it's used to refine and target your ideal customer and send less mail but with a bigger impact

Additionally, every postcard is made from responsibly sourced and recycled paper

I'm glad you understand and support the vision

nicbou
I do not understand nor support the vision, no.
kamefrede
Is this something that's US-only? The website doesn't say (or at least I couldn't find it) and I'm not keen on creating yet another account for a service just to be met with disappointment
AutoAPI
There is a demo that doesn't require a signup that would let you fully test the product
dinobones
Very nice website, I appreciate the mailing list demo. I was skeptical about how much data you would have ,and the mailing list demo convinced me and probably many others that you have a good amount of data to offer a quality service.
AutoAPI
Thank you for the feedback. There are more demographic filters coming too, as well as additional lists like "new movers" or "new homeowners"
nikbar
Great tool, upvoted! As the creator of https://aiagentslist.com/, I'd love to feature your PostalAgent. It's a perfect fit for our AI tool directory.