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Show HN: PostalAgent – Send Postcards online by circling areas on a Google Map
Hey HN, I just launched https://PostalAgent.com 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.
- nikbar 2y agoGreat tool, upvoted! As the creator of https://aiagentslist.com/ https://aiagentslist.com/, I'd love to feature your PostalAgent. It's a perfect fit for our AI tool directory.
- tonyBran 2y agothat’s pretty awesome. I’m going to give a try. What did you build it in?
- channingd 2y agoLove the simplicity of just selecting the area on the map. Great stuff!
- patcon 2y agoReally curious, but seems to be down. Internet archive showing white screen too though, so not sure: https://web.archive.org/web/20240904211947/https://postalagent.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240904211947/https://postalage...
- AutoAPI 2y agoSorry about that, I had an issue with Cloudflare and had to purge the cache, does it work for you now?
- MidhaelBollox 2y agoNo
- patcon 2y agoit's back for me! thanks!
- tylermenezes 2y agoStill happening here.
- AutoAPI 2y agoAre you outside North America and possibly getting a captcha from CF? Looking into it now, sorry
- tylermenezes 2y agoNeither.
- connor11528 2y agoVery 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 2y agoAre 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.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoI have a use case immediately for this. Thank you for sharing this!
- Y_Y 2y agoI 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 2y agoin 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 2y agoThe postal service is established the constitution and provides essential infrastructure. The fact that it can balance its books shouldn't matter.
- simple10 2y agoIt'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-remove-name-from-mailing-lists https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Refuse-unwanted-mail-and-remo... [2] https://www.dmachoice.org/register.php https://www.dmachoice.org/register.php
- AStonesThrow 2y agoThis 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.
- muttantt 2y agoHow are you able to get all addresses within a polygon?
- AutoAPI 2y agoThere are several occupant APIs that let you do this
- clay_the_ripper 2y agoHey 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 2y agoI'd love that, shoot me a message from the contact page and let's get in touch
- dennisy 2y agoThis 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 2y agoYes, I use an API to print and mail. There are a few of them available
- thedigitalone 2y agoMany 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 2y agoYes, 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 2y agoThis 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 https://eddm.usps.com/eddm/select-routes.htm
- AutoAPI 2y agoIt'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 2y agoI 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 2y agoYes 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 2y agoI do not understand nor support the vision, no.
- kamefrede 2y agoIs 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 2y agoThere is a demo that doesn't require a signup that would let you fully test the product
- dinobones 2y agoVery 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 2y agoThank you for the feedback. There are more demographic filters coming too, as well as additional lists like "new movers" or "new homeowners"