AU Post Print Post

Print Post is an Australia Post bulk-lodgement service for approved periodical publications. Australia Post requires the item to be a continuing printed periodical with a fixed title, issued at least twice a year, pre-approved, and carrying a Print Post publication number printed on the article. Triggered marketing postcards are not periodicals, so they do not travel under Print Post, despite the term being widely and loosely used across direct mail marketing content.

What Print Post actually requires

A continuing periodical — a printed publication with a fixed title, issued at least twice a year. Magazines, member newsletters and journals qualify; a one-off promotional card does not.
Pre-approval — you apply to Australia Post and are issued a Print Post publication number.
The number on the article — that publication number must be printed on the envelope or flysheet.
A minimum quantity — Australia Post specifies a minimum number of items per publication per lodgement.

Check the current criteria on Australia Post's Print Post page, since eligibility and rates change.

Why the term shows up in direct mail marketing anyway

Print Post is one of the better-known Australia Post product names, so marketing content across the industry reaches for it as shorthand for "bulk addressed mail in Australia". That is not what it means. If you are comparing direct mail vendors and one of them claims Print Post for triggered promotional postcards, it is worth asking which product their mail is actually lodged under.

What applies to triggered postcards instead

Promotional postcards are addressed letter-class mail. They are printed, sorted and barcoded to Australia Post's addressing standards, then lodged in volume through a licensed mail house. Bulk lodgement services carry their own minimum article counts per lodgement, which is why lodging through a licensed mail house matters: your batch is lodged as part of the mail house's broader volume rather than lodging alone.

Addressing standards still apply

Whatever the product, Australian addressed mail needs a correct postcode, the suburb in uppercase, a state abbreviation, and a correctly formatted street address. TouchDrop validates every recipient address against these requirements before a batch goes out, and excludes addresses that do not meet the standard rather than dispatching them with a risk of non-delivery. Parcel lockers and parcel collect points are filtered out, because they do not accept addressed marketing mail.

Tracking and delivery confirmation

Letter-class mail does not carry individual-piece tracking the way parcels do. TouchDrop uses QR code scans as a proxy for delivery confirmation: if the QR is scanned, the postcard clearly arrived and was read. Campaign-level delivery estimates are based on the lodgement date and Australia Post's published delivery timeframes.