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Digging Deep for IMB Benefits Part 2
April 2009
Greetings!


In the last issue, we discussed how companies that wished to establish a return on investment for converting to the Intelligent Mail Barcode would likely need to investigate business benefits that occurred outside the mail room.

[Part 1 of this article can be downloaded from the archive: Click Here.]

We pointed out that, unlike most postal technology or regulation changes in the past, organizations were not likely to recoup their costs to convert and manage intelligent mail through postage savings or improved delivery alone.

The real value of being able to track mail after it leaves your shop will be apparent to other parts of the company such as legal, compliance, marketing, environmental sustainability, or customer care.

We also acknowledged that document center and mail room managers are not often called upon to participate in strategic decision-making that goes on in these other departments. They may not be comfortable with leading the discussions among those groups that will be necessary to uncover how the IMB conversion can make a difference to the way they do business. But those discussions are exactly what is required and people in the mail business are the ones to initiate those conversations.

In part two of this discussion, I promised to suggest some actual areas where your organization may investigate how intelligent mail can be of value.

Every Organization is Different
 The areas to explore in your organization and the impacts that intelligent mail might have are going to be dependent on the type of business that you run. Insurance companies, financial institutions, utility companies, telecommunications firms, non-profits, associations, service bureaus, and others will all have different needs that might be satisfied by IMB.

The size of your organization will be a factor as well. Larger companies will generally see greater benefits from some factors like more responsive staff scheduling or predictive cash flow than their smaller counterparts. However, being a small or medium-size business has it's own challenges that intelligent mail may help to address.

For some, the value opportunities will be a reduction of cost in some way. Other mailers may find that the data available via IMB allows them to provide better service or penetrate markets where they had difficulty before.

Marketing is often listed as the biggest benefactor from the utilization of IMB-generated information. They are definitely one of the parties that should be most interested. However, other entities may have equal or even greater needs that can be addressed in your organization.

Some Possible IMB Benefits
 Here are some things to think about when considering benefits that your organization might realize by taking advantage of some of the features of intelligent mail:

ADDRESS QUALITY - Dealing with returned mail is never easy and always expensive. I've been in many shops where I've seen trays of returned mail stacked in corners or in unsecured back rooms. They sit there for months waiting ". . . for when we get time to deal with them". With OneCode ACS, available through the IMB, you can get address corrections electronically and actually use the information to your advantage.

OUTBOUND TRACKING - For multi-channel campaigns (including Transpromo content), publishing supporting web content, coordinating telemarketing efforts, or scheduling email blasts may require more precise timing than ever before. Companies can save on labor costs by not staffing outbound call centers too early, and can show better response rates for the campaign by making sure all the channels are accurately timed and targeted.

Full Service IMB also provides some documentation of when you mailed a document. While not as iron-clad as Registered Mail, it might be sufficient, particularly for those documents where the high cost of current alternatives can't be justified and you simply go without any documentation at all.

Also, what if you were able to save 30% on your postage to some addresses? I did some informal, pre-IMB tracking for one client a few years ago and found out that Standard Mail was being delivered to zip codes within a 10-mile radius of the downtown Post Office in the same amount of time as First Class. With IMB, you will be able to do a much more detailed delivery analysis and possibly take advantage of the postage savings. It's like your qualifying mail is flying coach - it gets to the same destination at the same time, at a lower cost!

INBOUND TRACKING - For response mail that will trigger fulfillment, you can use print on demand instead of stockpiling documents, working a couple of days ahead to produce just the right amount needed for each day's fulfillment work, based on the return mail IMB data. Or you can schedule people or machines more accurately to handle the fulfillment work.

You can use incoming mail data associated with payments to suppress in-house collection activities and notifications or avoid turning some accounts over to outside collectors too soon. The expense of unnecessarily canceling an account and then reinstating it can be avoided. There's an environmental angle too, since you can avoid producing and mailing more letters, demands, or re- instatement materials.

Look For More Benefits at Your Company
 Of course the above isn't a comprehensive list by any means. There may be some functions of intelligent mail that can have a dramatic effect on how your company can:

  • Be More Accurate
  • Be More Efficient
  • Offer Additional or Improved Service
  • Save Money
  • Attract New Customers
  • Retain Existing Customers
Deciding when to convert to the IMB is a strategic decision that depends on lots of variables. Delaying implementation might be the right choice, but only if you are sure that your organization is not missing out on some valuable benefits in the meantime. It's not going to be an easy, shoot-from-the-hip decision.

Document Professionals or executives can always call us for guidance. We can verify that the ROI just isn't there for your organization or we can help you discover your own opportunities for utilizing intelligent mail to improve your business.

Sincerely,

Mike Porter Sig
Mike Porter
Print/Mail Consultants
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