Postal Tips & Advice ↓

Reminder: The new postage rate increase goes into affect on Monday, May 11th.

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Today’s blog post is going to make you aware of a service the USPS offers just in case you weren’t aware it was an option.

It’s called the ACS Service. Here’s what it does in a nutshell…

You send out a direct mail campaign and some of the mail pieces don’t get delivered because the recipient recently moved. Well, with the ACS Service, the USPS will email you an electronic spreadsheet with the new addresses of these new movers.

For First-Class mail, your mail will get forwarded to the new addresses…for Standard mail, they won’t…but either way, you’ll receive an electronic spreadsheet of new addresses to easily update your database with.

The cost for this service varies. Furthermore, the customer/mailer — not the print/mail vendor — has to set it up. Reason being, ACS is tied to the BRE that gets returned with orders…and this bulk permit is usually in the customer or mailer’s name.

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Welcome back. Have you subscribed to our blog's email updates yet? Remember - you also get the free whitepaper pictured left on cutting direct mail costs.

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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What is commingling and why should you be using it?

Commingling has been around for many years and until now was mainly used as a way for smaller mailers to presort their mail. The reason for its increased popularity is due to the recent rate changes for BMC and SCF discounts. As a result, it’s now more financially attractive for most mailers to commingle their mail.

So to define commingling: it’s the act of taking your direct mail and sorting it with other company’s mail to qualify for postage discounts.

In theory, this can apply to nationwide mailings of all sizes, but usually really large mailings (1 million plus pieces) already have a significant portion of their mailing going to the BMC or SCF level. The portion that isn’t, however, would benefit from commingling.

The way it works is this:

You take your mail file and sort it into zip code sequence. Then the mail house will image only the bar code and address information on to the addressing panel. There is no Optional Endorsement Line imaged.

Your vendor will then pick up the mail and put it on sorting equipment that takes each individual piece of mail and sorts it to either the BMC or SCF level based on what they’ve received from other mailers. As a result, this gives you deeper postal penetration and discounts.

Furthermore, here’s a PDF that gives you some visual examples of how commingling affects delivery.

Download the PDF Here.

And we also recommend you watch our 5-minute commingling video.

If you aren’t currently commingling your mail, it’s definitely worth speaking with your print and mail vendor because the postage savings can be substantial.

If you’d like to speak to us about what your postage rate would be using commingling, please contact Matt Cote: 973-305-1500 x207 or matt (at) ballantine.com.