When planning a mailing to take advantage of postage discounts, every piece must weigh exactly the same. The reason for this is that when mail is brought in for acceptance, it is weighed in as a total. Ten pieces are then counted and weighed. From this, the math is done to see if the total weight presented is within 1% of the weight calculated. Since you are allowed only a 1% margin for error, you really need to make sure each piece weighs the same.
Some of the items that can wreak havoc with this are:
The printer ran out of the desired paper stock in the middle of a job and substituted another. The paper might have the same desired look/feel as the original, but the weight is off.
A note pad is included with each mailing and the sheets are not counted out to be exac. Sometimes there’s 1 or 2 extra or under sheets. Remember, the post office calculates what the weight ought to be based on only a handful of 10 pieces – which weight are those 10?
Who doesn’t love their pet? We once had a client who’d written a book about pets and did a mailing to several thousand dog owners. Inside each envelope we placed a whole dog bone. Do you know that a fish variety and a liver variety weight differently? What a nightmare!
And then there were the Red Rocks of Sedona to send home. Like every single rock is going to weigh the same.
Or the spa that mailed small packets of lavender bath salts. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get equal measurements on that! This would not be a great idea anymore due to possible anthrax look-alike. You want to make sure whatever you mail can be received and not confiscated.
The bottom line – plan a mailing that can all be the same. There are plenty of ways to be unique without having to worry about weight.
Filed under direct mail costs, direct mail tips, direct mail weight by on Jul 1st, 2009. Comment. 
Generally speaking, it is not wise to bring a mailing into the Post Office for processing right before a holiday. The Post Office tends to run a skeleton crew the day before the holiday, especially when the holiday falls on a Monday or Friday as most of them do. The net effect of this is that if you bring a mailing in for processing, it will likely sit until the first working day after the holiday.
Further, when the postal employees come in to work the first day after the holiday, they start helping new customers and, to nobody’s surprise, the new mail is put on top of the mail that was brought in before the holiday. As is human custom, the mail that is worked first is the mail that is on top.
Therefore, mail that is brought in after the holiday is usually worked and processed before the mail that was brought in just before the holiday. Bottom Line: try to avoid bringing mail in for processing to the Post Office until just after the holiday. If you have the time, I highly recommend waiting until the second working day after the holiday – this ensures timely processing of your mail.
Filed under direct mail, direct mail tips, mailing schedule by on Jul 3rd, 2009. Comment.
We have a video below that you will be interested in regarding how you design a successful direct mail piece that gets opened. Enjoy.
This video has been brought to you by, Business Helpers Mail Center out of Scottsdale Arizona. Feel free to contact us for a quote on your next direct mail campaign. Call us at 480-483-7677.
Filed under Arizona mail services, direct mail, direct mail campaign by on Jul 24th, 2009. Comment.
Despite the passage of postal reform legislation a little over two years ago, the US Postal Service remains steeped in financial problems.
It’s anybody’s guess how much, if any, financial assistance the USPS will get from Congress — whether or not it’s part of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package.
The major issue continues to be how the postal service will cope with its nearly $5.8 billion annual obligation to pay healthcare costs for retired postal employees.
All this comes at a time when the USPS reported a loss of $384 million for the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2008 and projected that mail volume would fall even further, to some 12 billion to 15 billion pieces, for the year ending this Sept. 30.
Even with these losses, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) mandates that the USPS can raise rates every year — but only in accordance with the rate of inflation specified in the Consumer Price Index.
And so the postal service announced last month that standard mail and nonprofit rates will increase an average of 3.8% on May 11.
Catalog or flat rates will rise by 2.5%. But some standard hikes are going to exceed the average.
“It looks like standard rate parcels went up an average of 16%,” says Jerry Cerasale, the Direct Marketing Association’s senior vice president for government affairs. “Our initial response is that it’s just going to depress volume more.”
Under the new rate schedule:
Standard mail regular automation letters with five-digit ZIP codes that weigh 3.3 ounces or less will cost 23.3 cents to mail.
Standard mail regular automation letters with three-digit ZIPs will be priced at 25.1 cents.
In the standard mail regular nonautomation category, machinable automated area distribution center letters weighing 3 ounces or less will now cost 25.6 cents.
Meanwhile, the industry is hoping the USPS can remain solvent given its fiscal woes.
The PAEA allowed the postal service to file an “exigent (i.e., urgent) rate case” if the conventional CPI-based hike would leave it with insufficient operating funds.
But Postmaster General Jack Potter said in testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security in late January that the USPS doesn’t believe it’s “appropriate” to ask for an exigent rate case.
“This would be counterproductive, particularly in an environment where mailing activity is already severely contracted,” he testified.
Early last month, a coalition of 40 mailers and trade groups wrote a letter to National Economic Council director Lawrence Summers, Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag and OMG deputy director Robert Nabors, asking that any forthcoming stimulus bill include an amendment from Sen. Thomas Carper (D-DE) that would allow the USPS to pay retired postal employees out of a separate retiree health benefits fund and not from general postal revenue.
The letter argued that “The U.S. Postal Service confronts a severe economic challenge that, if not addressed in an effective way, could cause serious and disruptive changes to its structure and services, and the estimated 9 million jobs it supports throughout the mailing community. Because the Service remains an essential and fundamental part of the nation’s communications and commerce infrastructure, and because of the vast network of jobs it supports, we believe that action must be taken swiftly. …This is vital legislation that will preserve or restore up to a million jobs in the mailing sector.”
Before the groups wrote that letter, Potter asked the Senate panel for changes in the law that would permit the postal service to cut back its delivery schedule to five days a week, and also requested assistance with the USPS’ healthcare obligations. His proposal received, at best, a lukewarm response among the senators.
For the latest postal news, visit http://directmag.com/legal/postal/.
(the above article is taken from http://directmag.com/mail/0301-usps-financial-woes/)
Filed under US Postal Service, bulk mail, direct mail costs, mail services, postage stamps by on Jul 30th, 2009. Comment.