Anybody have any experience with bulk mailing?

When i started my business EDDM (every door direct mail) seemed like the most logical option for getting the word out, i believe the first year i sent out around 20,000 post cards but at $.17/piece+ cost of cards it adds up quickly! It was worth it however and did what we were aiming for.
After going to different post offices twice a week one of the mail clerks suggested i look into “Bulk mailing” the way it was described to me is you get a mailing permit, pay a yearly fee and it greatly cuts down your price of mailing out these cards. This year we are going to be hitting the advertsing hard and are hoping to hit in the 100,000 customer range for advertising! Has anybody had any experience bulk mailing?
Any other suggestions on better ways to get your name out there? Cheap way of advertising? I was never a fan of walking door to door advertising just doesnt look professional IMHO.

We do some EEDM to get our name out there but feel allocating a majority of our advertising $$$ elsewhere, helps US get better results. My understanding is that bulk mailing is NOT cheaper than $.17. I may be wrong , $.17 is an incredible rate for mailings and have never really questioned ways to mail cheaper…One successful way WE have found is advertising in the smaller (suburbs) area newspapers (10-20k subscriptions) they can work magic.Cheaper, friendlier, and have very loyal clients that are great customers to have. The smaller papers in our area actually care if YOUR business gets results.They bend over backwards to keep your advertising $$$, unlike the main/bigger city newspapers that only cares about their results/bottom line.

One thing i have considered is through a coupon book type of deal. theres a local business who basically sends out a coupon book every single months, i believe he does 13 routes per month each route having 20,000 residential homes and some businesses. i believe each route is $700. This sounds like a fraction of the price of EDDM, however i always feel like 99.9% of these will be thrown out without people even flipping through them. Therefore not even seeing our advertisements/coupons

The EDDM mailing rate is not only a little expensive (however it shows results) but the actual post cards themselves get quite expensive due to the sizing requirments USPS has! The first batch i ordered i got 10,000 for around $330 which was great but the post office started giving me a hard time telling the post cards needed to be DOUBLE THE SIZE. This sizing standard raised my price from $330 per 10,000 to $1,200 per 10,000!!!

Order your cards here. Save money.
http://store.atcostprinting.com/store/product-view.html/40-Postcards%20(EDDM%20Eligable)

that is cheaper but not by much… at that rate its gonna cost you around 2,500 just to send out 10,000 post cards. plus time sorting them… time traveling to post offices. We need to work smarter not harder!