This post will serve has a follow up to our recent video on how to cut postage costs on catalog type mailers.

We want to expand on a few points so our cost-saving suggestions are complete. Please watch the above video before continuing so our points below make sense.

In the video, we spoke about cost-effective solutions for cutting postage on booklet or catalog type mailers. We mentioned the postage cost savings could be as high as $0.25 per piece. This savings does not include the additional costs to produce the options we’ve noted in the video.

For example, on the slim-jim piece, you will incur the cost of the (2) wafer seals required to mail at letter automation rates which is usually around $10.00/m. Another factor in moving from the full-size mailer to the slim-jim is the decrease in the amount of creative real estate. You will generally need to add 4 to 8 pages to make up for this lost space. Despite these two additional costs, the savings are huge because of how much postage you’re cutting.

The other option we spoke about is printing a full-size mailer but refolding (or soft-folding) the piece to 8.5 x 5.5. There are two additional costs associated with this as well.

First is the cost to refold the piece which generally runs about $500 depending on the equipment of your printer. The second is the cost to apply (2) wafer seals to close the piece and qualify for letter automation rates. As was the case above, even with these two factors considered, the cost savings are huge.

On a side note, the post office is reevaluating the use of the slim-jim format to make it run better on their letter sorting equipment. As it stands right now, many of the slim-jim pieces do not run well on their equipment and, as a result, have to be either hand sorted or run on their flat sorting equipment.

Stay tuned for an update on this ruling.

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