Postage charges increased last April 2012 with a 1st class stamp costing 60p and a second class stamp 50p. In spite of these increases, many businesses mail out a constant stream of marketing letters, invoices, direct mail and obligatory customer letters and printing mailing services have never seemed more expensive.
If your company or organisation cannot reclaim VAT, your postage costs can only go one way and that is UP.
Businesses that rely on bulk mailings and use the royal mail’s bulk mailing services such as mailsort, presstream, walksort, cleanmail, packetpost, advertising mail, sustainable mail and standard tariff will have experienced rising mailing costs.
Irrespective of escalating postage and mailing costs there are a number of measures that an organisation can undertake to ensure the cost of print and mailing is kept at a reasonable cost level.
How?
By optimising all or some of the following.
Multi-channel distribution
Multi-channel distribution of business documents – your data file is broken down into those letters that are required to be printed and mailed, electronically sent or documents that need to be printed and then returned to a head office or delivered to regional offices all from one data file. Providing you with a complete printing and mailing service.
How can this work for my business? 
Working with a mailing solutions partner who will advise you what the alternatives are and provide guidance on the best method to ensure your mailing is a success.
Whether it is getting those invoices out to your customers on time or a direct mail piece, a print and mailing solutions provider will take your data file containing names and addresses, extract the letters that are required to be printed and mailed, electronically send documents to those recipients and return those documents that are required to be internally distributed back to head office and regional locations.
To find out how to choose the right mailing solutions provider click here
DSA
DSA is the term used to describe mail which has been collected and distributed by a competitor of the Royal Mail but is delivered into the Royal Mail centres for final processing onto local offices. The cost savings per envelope depending on weight can be substantial saving companies as much as 0.24p per envelope.
Electronic
Not quite as straightforward to get your customers to accept the fact that you will be communicating with them solely via email and not every one of your customers will want to receive an electronic bill, statement or letter for all sorts of different reasons but as long as you follow the process I’ve outlined here you can see your postage costs reduce substantially.
Beware, your customer’s perception may be a negative one.
If you are wanting to drive your mailing costs down by moving to an electronic system of sending out your documents you need to be aware that some customers will view that you have effectively passed the costs of processing and in many cases, printing to your customer.
If they don’t have an effective accounts payable/invoice processing system then there is the manual processing of your document at the customers end resulting in additional work.
Aside from the print and mailing solutions there are also known desktop mailing solutions.
How does this work?
Easy really if you click here there’s more information on how the system can help you reduce your mailing costs or click here to find out how mailing on a budget can make a difference to your organisation.
Finally…
Avoid the use of C4 envelopes
Avoid having to use 1st class Royal Mail
Maximise your discounts by using downstream access mailing
Use a hybrid mail solution like the one described above.
For more information on hybrid mailing solutions click here
