When you think about it, the snail mail and/or email your company sends every day is not really mail. It's actually a series of one to one or one to many messages that are:
· Targeted marketing campaigns designed to build your brand with direct response offers establishing brand awareness and driving growth for your company.
· Critical communications from HR, AR and AP that keep you in compliance, pay your vendors and make it very easy for your customers to remit payment for installed products or services.
Snail mail, e-Messaging and e-Billing aren't very exciting. Quite frankly, it's downright boring to employees and executives in most organizations. Nobody really pays much attention to thisuntil something doesn't get delivered! That's when the fire drills begin, right?
Our message delivery process has changed over the years from hand delivered messages to Pony Express and now, USPS Express. However, the core goal has never and will never change. You need important messages delivered to the intended recipient to "close the loop" on that message, period.
Most businesses look at annual mailing and shipping expenses the same way they look at their water bill. Not sure what happened but it has to be paid, right? Millions of dollars are wasted each month by businesses on mailing and shipping expenses but most CFO's don't know exactly why.
Many businesses invest large sums of money into mail metering machine leases to "automate" their hardcopy snail mail processing and pay way too much money for equipment they use for a few minutes each month. Meanwhile, employees from multiple departments waste time manually printing, folding and inserting documents so somebody else can pick up their mail for metering and mailing.
Think about it! Your company has invested lots of money in network infrastructure over the years, but you still insist on printing paper in each department on high cost per piece printers so high cost labor can pick it up and DRIVE it to where we are going to meter and mail it. Does this really make sense?
Why are you paying full time labor to drive or cart paper around? Seriously, why would anybody in their right mind spend hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands of hard dollars each month paying high cost employees to drive/walk a route across multiple departments picking up manually folded and inserted mail that is printed on extremely high cost department printers so they can drive/cart that paper back to the "mail center" for someone else to meter and deliver it to the USPS?
That's just the way it is, right? C'mon, we've always done it that way. Times have changed and if you don't think this is important, think about thiswhen your competition streamlines they win, period.
Food For Thought Homework Project:
When you go home tonight, look at your mail with a critical eye and play the role of your customer. I GUARANTEE that the vast majority of your big box company bills/statements (American Express, Visa, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, etc.) are delivered to your mail box in a window envelope with a preprinted (ie lower cost-no postage meter) indicia in the upper right of the envelope similar to this
Professional mailers learned many years ago that their money needed to move from mail metering machines to software that dramatically reduces per piece postage costs and automatic folding, inserting sealing systems that eliminate manual (error prone) labor. These systems also generate reports on the status of each document so compliance standards are met and customer communications are solid.
Bottom-line, permit mail gets their mission critical message delivered to the intended recipient AND they can track it all the way home, with reporting, to make sure no customer is left behind.
Next Steps:
Contact your local USPS Postmaster or click HERE to get more details and information from the USPS regarding this great way to drive more hard dollars to your bottom-line AND lower your costs.
· Targeted marketing campaigns designed to build your brand with direct response offers establishing brand awareness and driving growth for your company.
· Critical communications from HR, AR and AP that keep you in compliance, pay your vendors and make it very easy for your customers to remit payment for installed products or services.
Snail mail, e-Messaging and e-Billing aren't very exciting. Quite frankly, it's downright boring to employees and executives in most organizations. Nobody really pays much attention to thisuntil something doesn't get delivered! That's when the fire drills begin, right?
Our message delivery process has changed over the years from hand delivered messages to Pony Express and now, USPS Express. However, the core goal has never and will never change. You need important messages delivered to the intended recipient to "close the loop" on that message, period.
Most businesses look at annual mailing and shipping expenses the same way they look at their water bill. Not sure what happened but it has to be paid, right? Millions of dollars are wasted each month by businesses on mailing and shipping expenses but most CFO's don't know exactly why.
Many businesses invest large sums of money into mail metering machine leases to "automate" their hardcopy snail mail processing and pay way too much money for equipment they use for a few minutes each month. Meanwhile, employees from multiple departments waste time manually printing, folding and inserting documents so somebody else can pick up their mail for metering and mailing.
Think about it! Your company has invested lots of money in network infrastructure over the years, but you still insist on printing paper in each department on high cost per piece printers so high cost labor can pick it up and DRIVE it to where we are going to meter and mail it. Does this really make sense?
Why are you paying full time labor to drive or cart paper around? Seriously, why would anybody in their right mind spend hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands of hard dollars each month paying high cost employees to drive/walk a route across multiple departments picking up manually folded and inserted mail that is printed on extremely high cost department printers so they can drive/cart that paper back to the "mail center" for someone else to meter and deliver it to the USPS?
That's just the way it is, right? C'mon, we've always done it that way. Times have changed and if you don't think this is important, think about thiswhen your competition streamlines they win, period.
Food For Thought Homework Project:
When you go home tonight, look at your mail with a critical eye and play the role of your customer. I GUARANTEE that the vast majority of your big box company bills/statements (American Express, Visa, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, etc.) are delivered to your mail box in a window envelope with a preprinted (ie lower cost-no postage meter) indicia in the upper right of the envelope similar to this
Professional mailers learned many years ago that their money needed to move from mail metering machines to software that dramatically reduces per piece postage costs and automatic folding, inserting sealing systems that eliminate manual (error prone) labor. These systems also generate reports on the status of each document so compliance standards are met and customer communications are solid.
Bottom-line, permit mail gets their mission critical message delivered to the intended recipient AND they can track it all the way home, with reporting, to make sure no customer is left behind.
Next Steps:
Contact your local USPS Postmaster or click HERE to get more details and information from the USPS regarding this great way to drive more hard dollars to your bottom-line AND lower your costs.
Jay Rajcevich is President of Blazar Communications Corporation. Contact them at 888-390-0195 or www.BlazarComm.com to learn more about their proprietary technology that turns your "yellow label" UAA return mail problems into a serious business opportunity that retains customers and avoids collection charge offs.
