Headed out to Bethel, Ohio this morning. Our first postcard mailing for Echo was shipped to us yesterday, all labeled and ready for postage. Why did I have to go to Bethel? We needed a bulk mail permit so we could get the good non-profit rate on our mailing. CEF, the church planting organization who gave us this grant for our marketing, hooked us up with theirs. Part of the stipulation of using the permit is that you have to get postage counted at the post office of origin. CEF's postage is handled by the staff of Bethel Church of Christ, thus my trip to Bethel. So I took a 40 minute drive out to the far eastside of Cincy to get this done. All throughout the drive, I was a little leery of how things would go down; the only government entity more difficult to work with than the IRS is the US Postal Service. Add slow traffic on Ohio 125 and I was really not excited. But by the end of my trip I was incredibly grateful. I was blessed with a wonderful postal worker there named Nancy who was very understanding and worked step-by-step with me to get this done. After 45 minutes of her help, all 19,742 cards were ready to go. I think God let us have the experience at a small town post office to let things work out that well. If I had to do the same thing down at the downtown post office, I'd probably still be there.
Tomorrow I have to "drop ship" the boxes to three local post offices [it saved us some money to drop them off at the local post offices]. That means by early next week, are mailing should hit homes. I know you're curious what it looks like, so here it is:
Front
Back
We didn't design it; Outreach Marketing had this existing design we were able to pick and customize. I like it because it's striking, yet simple. Pending tomorrow's drop-offs, the process hasn't been too bad. Not sure what kind of return we'll get from it, but it's a great way to introduce the community to our church.
We're gaining speed. Just 24 days until the relaunch.