Entries from April 2008 ↓

In order to insure that you’re paying the right price for your print job, it’s important to bid it with at least 3 vendors. 

This, however, is not always enough because printing has become a very specialized business and a major key to paying the right price is running your job on the right equipment. 

So in addition to getting multiple bids, be sure to consider the following questions:

• Web vs. Sheetfed?
• Inline vs. Offline?
• Heatset vs. Non-Heatset?

This can be accomplished by working with vendors that have a large variety of equipment and can offer one-stop shopping or by increasing the number of vendors you consider.

Popularity: 48% [?]

Tags: Direct Mail Printing, Print Price, Printing Equipment

As it stands right now, First-Class mailers are required to update their mailing lists every 185 days. On November 23rd 2008, however, the USPS is changing their standards to require ALL mail classes to update their mailings lists every 95 days.

This new move is USPS’ attempt to decrease the amount of “Undeliverable As Addressed” mail they handle every year. In 2004, UAA amounted to 9.7 billion pieces of mail, which resulted in $2 billion dollars of extra costs for the USPS.

And given that Standard UAA mail is discarded (First-Class is delayed), this amounts to a pretty significant amount of waste.

This update is actually good timing because the Do-Not-Mail bill is growing in size — there are currently 18 such bills in 15 states.

But new rules like the one above  – as well as programs like the DMA Choice Service that lets you opt-out of receiving certain mail — are forward-thinking moves that will help protect both the Direct Marketing industry as well as the environment.

Popularity: 52% [?]

Tags: DMA Choice, Do-Not-Mail Bill, Mailing Lists, USPS