Postal Tips & Advice ↓

If you haven’t done so already, you should consider incorporating drop shipping into your direct mail plans.

Drop shipping is the act of sending qualified mail to either a BMC or SCF surpassing your local post office as the point of entry. This results in postal cost savings.

The sample analysis below shows the difference of postage between a mailing being shipped local entry (your local post office) and the same mailing going out as a drop shipment (drop shipping). 

As you can see, the postage savings can be pretty substantial.  We chose a job that was prepared and mailed as a drop shipment for this analysis.

Drop shipment:                            Local Entry:

Quantity: 1,250,026 pieces              Quantity: 1,250,026 pieces

Drop ship penetration                      Drop ship penetration

BMC: 52.82%                                 BMC: 0%

SCF: 43.09%                                 SCF: 0%

Local: 4.09%                                 Local: 100%

Postage: $240,022.15                     Postage: $284,433.04

This particular mailing has a postage savings of $44,410.89 less freight preparation and fuel surcharge.  In most cases these costs remain less than half of the postal savings.

If you have any questions about drop shipping, please contact Matt Cote: matt (at) ballantine.com

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The post office offers many tools to help make a direct mail campaign execute problem-free and more cost-effective.

One of the areas that we take great advantage of here at Ballantine is our local Postal Design Specialist.

These employees of the USPS are given the task of making a mail piece design flow through the postal system with no problems such as machine jam-ups or not qualifying for the automated mail postage rate.

The ideal time to take advantage of them is when you’re in the early design stages of your project. You can send them a mock-up of your mail piece and they will respond quickly with suggestions.

All of their information is based on the Domestic Mail Manual — actual written rules that all mailers must follow. If not followed, the consequences could be very expensive.

For example, if the post office deems your letter size mailer as non-machinable, the surcharge could be as high as $0.25 per piece.

For information on a Postal Design Specialist nearest you, contact the USPS.

The United States Postal Service has now made it mandatory that anyone seeking to receive discounted automated rates must have their names processed through Delivery Point Validation or DPV software. The goal of this software is to reduce the amount of Undeliverable-As-Addressed or UAA mail that is processed by the USPS.

One of the main advantages of the DPV service is that it pinpoints if a record is a valid USPS delivery destination. DPV’s other half, the CASS certification service, can only tell you if the address falls within a range. For example, if you have 123 Main Street, CASS can confirm that it falls within a range of 1-200 Main Street but doesn’t confirm that it’s a valid USPS delivery destination.

But Delivery Point Validation does.

Ultimately, DPV is important because the more we can do to help make the post office more efficient, the better off all direct mail marketers will be.