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Data-Mail

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Data-Mail was founded in 1971 by Andy and Joyce Mandell. It is a family owned, full service direct mail production company, headquartered in Newington, CT. Andy opened the business after working for Addressograph selling their addressing equipment. Data-Mail still has pieces of this equipment on display throughout their facility. Moving from selling equipment to selling service was a natural mover for him, with humble beginnings.

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Andy and Joyce Mandell

“We started out with 1,000 square feet and two employees, one full-time and one part-time.”

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Andy Mandell, 1976

The company has been growing ever since. In 1984, Data-Mail acquired a 250,000 square foot shopping center in Newington which became the new center of operations.

At that time, the Data-Center was created and computers were being used to process mailing lists and help create the mailings. The first Data-Center employee is still employed at Data-Mail as a leader in the System’s Development group.  The original impact printers with fan folded sheets were the bridge to roll to roll laser printing, digital sheet fed printers, and to the latest and greatest continuous form variable color digital printer. The continuous form variable color digital printer is a newer technology which brings high speed production into the world of variable color to create highly personalized mailpieces. The advanced data processing capabilities, campaign analytics talent, and creative services, enable Data-Mail to fully support their clients with the execution of their direct mail campaigns.

In the early 1990’s print was added to the menu of services at Data-Mail, where printing pre-converted envelopes was the stepping stone to the 6 web presses, 2 sheetfed presses, and 3 envelope print/converting lines that Data-Mail has today.

In the early 2000’s, the company added a second 225,000 square foot facility in Windsor, CT. Today, the combined facilities represent one of the country’s leading full service direct marketers, employing almost 950 people.

The Windsor facility started as just a Lettershop with cutting folding and inserting, and has since become the hub of production and mailing for Data-Mail. It has 3 full commingle lines that run 24/7 to help clear our 1.6 billion pieces of mail each year.

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Data-Mail, Inc. - The Beginning

[music]

00:02

Andy Mandell, Chairman of the Board:

My first job was at a company called

00:04

Dressograph Multigraph which was a

00:05

national company that sold addressing

00:07

systems back in the early '60s.

00:10

People used to maintain names on metal plates.

00:13

They would embosse a metal plate.

00:15

They would take these plates and put them into a machine,

00:17

there'd be a ribbon on it and paper and they would stamp it,

00:19

and they would actually address a catalog,

00:21

or an envelope, or whatever and that's how it all basically started.

00:25

Joyce Mandell, Executive Vice President:

So, in 1971 Andy and I founded Data-Mail

00:30

which at that time really was a letter shop.

00:32

And the story behind that was that Andy really was always entrepreneurial.

00:37

Andy:

I thought that maybe we would go into a service business

00:40

rather than selling someone equipment and machines,

00:42

and they to hire people, we could do it as a services

00:46

instead of spending $10,000 to $20,000 on equipment and having staffing.

00:49

Joyce:

Why would an insurance company want

00:51

to be in the mailing business?

00:52

Why wouldn't they sell more insurance

00:54

and have somebody do their mailing?

00:56

He always was thinking about, what do people need?

00:59

What's the niche?

01:00

And he felt that this would be a good one for us.

01:04

So we started off with some used equipment.

01:07

He had 1,000 square feet in Bristol, Connecticut

01:10

and we had a small desk and office in Hartford.

01:14

And we had one full-time employee and one part-time employee.

01:19

The full-time employee retired maybe three years ago.

01:23

His wife worked for us.

01:25

His son work for us.

01:26

And we have a lot of actually, interestingly enough,

01:29

family presence in our business.

01:32

Today we have both of our sons and our son-in-law

01:35

in business with us.

01:37

So it's truly a family business.

01:40

Andy:

I would never talk business at home,

01:42

we never discuss it.

01:43

The boys all did other things prior

01:45

to coming into the business for a number of years.

01:48

Mark Mandell, SVP for Finance and Technology:

My background was in strategic planning

01:50

and Data-Mail was starting to think about

01:52

what the next fifty years will look like.

01:54

I thought it would be really great time for me

01:55

to apply some of the skills I had picked up and

01:58

help the family company think about what

02:00

the next few years will look like.

02:01

Scott Braunstein, Senior Vice President:

Every one of us has a particular area that

02:04

we really focus most,

02:05

if not all of our energy on.

02:08

And there's a trust between each one of us.

02:11

Andy:

There aren't many companies like ourselves

02:12

in the business anymore.

02:14

I would say, years ago that 90% were family-owned.

02:17

Its kind of special that we can make quick decisions,

02:20

we all get along.

02:22

The hands-on approach is really the advantage

02:24

to the family-owned business.

02:26

Bruce Mandell, President:

We never have made a decision that

02:28

everyone was on board with, not one.

02:30

It happens because we did have great mentors

02:32

who set the right values,

02:34

gave us the right goals,

02:36

and allowed us to go out and do it.

02:38

And that's made us want to do the same

02:40

with people who work for us,

02:41

and maybe one day, with the next generation.

Joyce Mandell, Andy’s wife, is the company’s Executive Vice President, and has been by his side since day one. Joyce attributes the success of Data-Mail to Andy’s leadership, and his drive to keep up with the most advanced technology and intelligent machinery so that they can best service their clients. As Andy and Joyce look toward the future, they are confident their dedication to smart business and compassionate commitment will carry on through their children. Eldest son Bruce is the President of Data-Mail and joined the family business in 1992. Bruce’s brother Mark Mandell joined the company in 2002 as SVP of Finance and Technology and is now President and CEO of Intelisent. Son-in-law Scott Braunstein joined the company in 2003 and is Data-Mail’s SVP of Operations.

Today, Data-Mail has a client base of Fortune 500 companies and major ad agencies based in New York and Boston. With an average daily production of over 6 million pieces of mail, Data-Mail has consolidated high quality offset printing, advanced computer personalization technology, and traditional Lettershop capabilities to create a full service, state of the art print and mail processing facility.

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Data-Mail, Inc. - The Evolution

[music]

00:04

Mark Mandell, SVP for Finance and Technology:

There's a lot of parts of the mailing industry

00:06

that don't seem all that interesting or futuristic

00:10

especially in the Internet age.

00:13

But it turns out that there's a lot of complexity in mail.

00:16

Scott Braunstein, Senior Vice President:

So many different facets that there's a very creative side

00:21

that goes to help in the execution of the art that we produce.

00:25

There's a lot of data driven technology

00:28

that we use, programming careers you can go into.

00:31

And of course the machinery in and of itself

00:34

is never going to go away.

00:35

Andy Mandell, Chairman of the Board:

That's been the growth,

00:36

it's been the computer,

00:37

it's been the equipment to process the mail

00:39

and it's been the printing of the data

00:41

and it's been in the personalization which is the largest areas that we deal with,

00:46

where we send an offer to someone

00:47

that really relates to their needs

00:48

rather than just a generic letter.

00:50

Bruce Mandell, President:

We were fortunate to get on that curve early,

00:53

in investing, data processing, and personalization equipment.

00:57

That was very important because it totally changed

00:59

the game terms of quantity of mail that you could get out timing.

01:03

Andy:

We process somewhere between five and six million pieces of mail a day,

01:07

those are envelopes,

01:08

stuffed envelopes with self mailers.

01:10

Now within that, we could have multiple pieces

01:12

so we could be processing twenty twenty-five million

01:15

pieces of printed matter a day through our facility,

01:18

and when you think about that,

01:19

it becomes complex.

01:21

Mark:

Taking a page out of the Data-Mail playbook which is,

01:24

if you can be innovative, and you can be creative,

01:27

and you can be an entrepreneur, go ahead and do that.

01:29

We develop some new products and services for our customers

01:32

and they caught on,

01:33

created a lot of value in a whole new industry

01:35

out there in mail tracking and address correction and postage optimization.

01:39

And so in the end we decided to spin off that

01:41

as a separate business so that we could focus our attention

01:43

on doing that for customers.

01:45

Early on we started working with the postal service

01:47

to help them think about how to enhance the value of the mail.

01:50

And one of the ways to do that

01:51

is through the barcode on the mail.

01:54

Barcodes can contain a tremendous amount of information.

01:56

And if you can use that information you can create

01:59

new kinds of products and services that never existed before.

02:03

Scott:

When I first got here there was no such thing

02:06

as being able to track the mail,

02:07

meaning do you know where the mail is

02:09

once we give it to a our logistics partner and off to the USPS.

02:14

That used to be a blind spot for clients and ourselves

02:17

as to where is the mail after you give it to them.

02:19

Mark:

And so by partnering with the postal service

02:21

we are able to create this new visibility into the mail,

02:25

not only where it is in the production cycle,

02:27

but once handed off to the postal service,

02:30

where is it in the postal service?

02:31

Has it been delivered?

02:33

Is it out for delivery?

02:34

Did it get returned?

02:35

And in that environment you can start to really create new value.

02:39

You can do things like trigger.

02:40

So if we see that that piece of mail

02:41

is out for delivery today we can take some kind of action.

02:44

We can trigger an outbound email that says,

02:46

hey we understand you got that offer today,

02:48

here's an additional 5 percent of if you go online.

02:51

Last year alone we tracked over four billion pieces of mail

02:53

through the postal service on behalf of our customers.

[music]

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Data-Mail, Inc. - The Present & Future

[music]

00:01

Mark Mandell, SVP for Finance and Technology:

There's a lot to producing direct mail.

00:04

It can be extremely complex.

00:06

And being good at it and figuring out how

00:10

to support your customers in the best way

00:12

takes a lot of practice and a lot of

00:13

skill and a lot of effort.

00:15

And Data-Mail has built that business over the last 40 years.

00:18

Andy Mandell, Chairman of the Board:

I think it's honesty, its integrity,

00:20

being very supportive to the client,

00:21

giving them service,

00:23

I think is the thing that we sell.

00:25

It makes us successful.

00:28

Bruce Mandell, President:

For 45 years we've been able to continue

00:31

to grow this business and satisfy our clients.

00:33

And everyone here understands that we're

00:37

in business to satisfy our clients' needs.

00:40

Everyone gets that.

00:41

And when we do a great job of it,

00:43

we're able to continue to grow.

00:45

Joyce Mandell, Executive Vice President:

There's one most important thing of value

00:49

in our company and that is the employees.

00:51

You're going to buy new equipment,

00:55

update technology, but loyalty, commitment,

01:00

dedication, we really celebrate it.

01:03

Mark:

There's a lot of belief that the mail has no future.

01:07

We have the exact opposite view.

01:09

Andy:

There's always going to be mail.

01:11

There's always people who buy through the mail.

01:13

They're never gonna switch over 100% to some other kind of media.

01:16

So there's going to be a need for it

01:18

on a much more selective basis.

01:21

Scott Braunstein, Senior Vice President:

We'll be using different things to execute

01:24

our clients campaigns in a much quicker manner,

01:27

in a more data driven manner,

01:29

and a more one-on-one personalized manner.

01:32

Mark:

I'm really proud of the fact that

01:34

I grew up in the mailing industry.

01:36

I'm proud of what my parents did

01:37

to build Data-Mail.

01:38

I'm proud of what my family has done

01:40

to continue operations of Data-Mail

01:43

and create new businesses like Intelisent.

01:45

And I'm really excited about the future.

01:47

There's something very special about mail.

01:49

It's not going away, it's just changing.

01:52

Joyce:

We don't see an end to it.

01:53

We may change, we may grow,

01:54

technology will change, the efficiency will change,

01:57

but we think that there's going to be advertising,

02:00

print, television, radio,

02:03

and who knows what else is going to come along.

02:05

We'll be a part of it.

[music]

Refer to caption
Data-Mail new construction, 1984

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Data-Mail employee and Admark machine, 1991

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Data-Mail laser printer, 1990

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Data-Mail Laser room, 1991

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Data-Mail Computer room, 1995

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Warehouse in Windsor, CT location

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Plate making processing line

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One of Data-Mail’s six Miyakoshi Web Presses

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Komori Sheetfed Press

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QC station on Komori Press

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View of Pressroom in Newington, CT location

Newspaper article, 1991
Newspaper article, 1990

Photo of Andy Mandell in a newspaper article
Andy Mandell, The Hartford Current

Newspaper article
Newspaper article, Herald, Newington, CT

America’s Mailing Industry