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A number of
people have asked me about the
effect of the recent rate
increase, and whether their
experience is ‘typical’ of other
mailers. The answer is as varied
as the weather in Chicago on any
given day.
Letter mailers saw the loss of
Carrier Route discounts for
destination entry. If you are a
flats mailer, you were
blindsided in May when the rates
jumped up to 40%. Periodicals
mailers had to re-learn how to
sort and present their mail. And
parcel rates went up, down and
everywhere in between. BUT…if
you do your homework, you’ll
save yourself postage now, AND
in the future.
Automation compatible letters
are the most efficient pieces of
mail for the Postal Service to
process. Design an automation
compatible piece and you save
some money. Utilize drop
shipment discounts and postage
drops even more. Eliminating
Carrier Route can also save you
money. The Postal Service finds
this mail more difficult to
process, and has told us so by
making the AADC postage rate
less expensive than the Carrier
Route rate.
There are still ways to further
reduce the postage hit on letter
mail. By utilizing a 3rd party
provider, we can co-palletize
the no discount mail that falls
into 5-Digit Scheme, 3-Digit
Scheme and AADC trays. Under co-palletization,
the service bureau takes full
trays of your mail and separates
it to the various SCF’s
throughout the country. These
trays are run on the same tray
sorting equipment the Postal
Service uses. Your trays of mail
are combined with other full
trays of mail from other mailers
to build pallets of mail for SCF
discounts. With this work
sharing discount, you can save
money without changing anything
you currently do. Just give us
the say so that you’d like to
try it.
They say every cloud has a
silver lining. Flats mailers,
periodicals mailers and now even
parcel mailers can utilize a 3rd
party provider to move mail
closer to it’s destination and
save money by commingling or
zone skipping in the process.
Want to know more?
Give
us a call.
Jan Merchantz
jmerchantz@superiormailing.com
Content Expert |
