Producing Peel and Stick Mailing Labels with an Electronic Mailing List

Many smaller business owners prefer to develop their direct marketing campaigns in-house. They will print their own postcards, affix the addresses, and mail out their pieces. Most list providers offer electronic mailing lists in excel and also offer printed and shipped peel and stick labels. Rather than paying the additional cost of printing and shipping from a list provider, it is more cost effective to simply convert the electronic excel mailing list into a word document ready to print labels. This will save a significant amount of money and the peel and stick labels can easily be purchased from any local office supply store.

Here are the simple steps to saving money on mailing list peel and stick labels by importing your own excel file in a word ready to print document:

Step 1: Save electronic mailing list file to your desk top.

Step 2: Open Microsoft Word.

Step 3: On the top of the word document click Mailings, Start Mail Merge, and Step by Step Mail Merge Wizard.

Step 4: This next screen is where you will click label options and select the type of label you would like to create. Avery 5160 and 8160 are the most common. Click the label format you would like to use, click OK, and Next: Select Recipients.

Step 5: You will now select browse change the source to desktop and select the excel file you have saved on your desktop, click OK three times, and Next: arrange your labels  

Step 6: On this next screen you will arrange the name and address information for your labels. Select more Items.

Step 7: Select the name and address information for the labels, you can double click each title to add. You should add PREFTITLE, FIRST NAME, MIDDLE NAME, LASTNAME, ADDRESS, ADDRESS2LI, CITY, STATE, ZIP, and ZIP4. Once all is added you can click on the close button for merge fields. We will worry about spacing in the next step. Simply insert these fields.

Step 8: Here you can simply put spaces between each field and hit enter to move the address lines to the next line and enter to move the city state zip down to the third line. You will also want to add a comma after city then a – between the zip and zip 4. 

Step 9: It will look as the information runs onto other lines. You will then click update all labels, so each label has the same fields.

Step 10: We will now move onto the next screen by clicking Next: Preview labels. This is where you will see exactly how your label will look with the complete name and address included.

Step 11: A common mistake is thinking that this is done. This page is only showing you a preview of one page of labels. At this point, you will want to click Next: Complete the merge, then Edit Individual Labels, ALL and OK.

Step 12: An entirely new word document will open and this will be your completed label file. You can simply save this document and print. This process can take a little while for the new pop up document to complete, so be patient.

These easy steps to creating peel and stick labels from your electronic mailing lists will give you the ability to do your own mailing. Creating your own labels will save you hundreds of dollars rather than purchasing the actual labels from a mailing list company. This will avoid the cost of paying extra for another company to print and ship the labels.