Logo GIF
Mail Center Management Tips
February 2008
Greetings!
It's Been Nine Months Since the Postal Rate Case - How Are You Doing?
On May 14, 2007 one of the most dramatic set of postal regulation changes in recent years went into effect. In addition to rate increases, mailers were faced with a major shift in the way the USPS classified mail.

Instead of paying the same price to mail items regardless of whether they were letters, flats, or parcels, the new prices adopted last Spring were based not only on the weight of the mailing piece, but also on the shape. It's cheaper and faster for the USPS to sort and route letter mail than it is to perform the same operations on flats or packages. So new prices were implemented to more closely tie the amount of work required by the USPS to process the mail to the postage prices that mailers paid. Additionally, some mail that had been categorized as flats (but had in reality been handled within postal sorting facilities as parcels) fell into a new classification - non-machinable flats.

The impending changes were pretty widely publicized in advance of the effective date of the new regulations. Many mailers took a hard look at the documents that they were producing and made some format changes. They changed parcels into flats if they could, and lots of flats were reformatted to be mailed as letters.


More Education is Probably Necessary

For a number of reasons, there are still lots of jobs being produced and mailed at postage rates that are higher than necessary. Some of these are legitimate - the costs to re-engineer the documents or perhaps even the entire document workflow did not justify the postage savings. However I suspect that there are some jobs still being run that could easily be made more cost-efficient from a postal perspective but have not been changed due to an ignorance of the new regulations.

I still get mail at home from a company that sends four sheets of paper in a 9 x 12 First Class envelope. Maybe there are factors within the document production facility that have made it difficult to switch to folded mail. Or possibly the mailer feels that sending a flat increases their chance of having their envelope opened. But it could also be possible that neither the mailer nor their print/mail vendor have looked at other possibilities for getting the mail delivered in a more economical manner. Perhaps no one has noticed that their postage costs could be reduced by over 20%.

And then there are the pieces that I just know were designed and manufactured before anyone consulted with an informed source at the USPS or the mail house. I've received self-mailers that obviously incurred the non-automation surcharge when they were mailed. The aspect ratio (length divided by height) was not within the USPS machinable specifications. Ever get a 6" x 9" piece in the mail with the address parallel to the short side? These First Class pieces incurred a surcharge of .17 each - a 50% premium over what it would have cost to mail the same piece with the address parallel to the long side. I don't know that the novelty of the orientation was really worth the price.

By the way that surcharge is going up to .20 in May, making the price to mail a non-machinable 1- ounce First Class piece 60% more than a piece designed to stay within USPS machinable specifications. That's a pretty hefty increase that almost always comes as an unbudgeted additional expense.

I have to believe that the company that addressed the pieces and prepared that non-conforming mailing probably got the finished pieces delivered to their shop along with the address list and immediately called their customer with the bad news about postage. That was probably a tough call to make. But by then it was too late and too expensive to redesign and reprint.


Keep Yourself in the Loop

Internal print and mail operations need to be proactive in their education efforts. By holding a little mail piece design class for the marketing people you will allow them to avoid costly design mistakes and establish a relationship with them that will result in substantially reduced costs. Provide guidelines about the minimum and maximum measurements and other specifications that define cards, letters, flats, non-machinable flats, and parcels. Show them the differences in postage costs so they can make intelligent cost/benefit design decisions right at the beginning of a project and avoid getting one of those uncomfortable phone calls from the mail center manager.

Service bureaus and independent mail shops have it a little harder. Customers often insist on designing and producing their own materials with little or no input from the mailing professionals. But it can still be helpful to reach out to customers. Perhaps you can put some design tips on your web site, or hold an open house and seminar. Your customer account managers should be well aware of the postal regulations and should insist on getting design specifications, measurements, samples, or mock- ups early in the project. In this way they can watch for design problems and suggest modifications while there is still time to make changes.


Never Stop Analyzing

It pays to continue to look at all the jobs in your shop with a critical eye. There may be additional opportunities for savings as you experience changes in postal rates and regulations. But there are also times when the business value or the makeup of certain documents change. Perhaps a document that used to average 4 pages has recently grown to 5 pages because of new disclosure language or other content. With a few minor tweaks to margins or fonts, they could fit on 4 pages again. Presto! A 20% reduction in printing and inserting costs!

If you last looked at the jobs you are running in your production environment back in early 2007 now might be a good time to check on them again and see what else can be done to improve productivity or lower costs.

Sincerely,

Mike Porter Sig
Mike Porter
Print/Mail Consultants
Email Marketing by