If you create outbound mail for a living, you already know change isn’t just constant, it’s your daily reality. Between supply shortages, postage rate hikes, inflation, and shifting postal rules, it sometimes feels like the ground never stops moving below you.
Add the incredible advancements in the technology in the mailing industry, and I wouldn’t blame you if you took a moment to reminisce about “the good old days”. Now, however, we’re on the brink of some major transformations in how people in the United States, both mail senders and mail receivers, view postal mail.
Today’s business mailers have a different agenda, and they know that the technology to improve how mail works for them now exists. On the receiving side, consumers expect their mail to be relevant and personalized, similar to their experiences with online shopping and streaming TV. Mail service providers, whether as outsource vendors or in-plant operations, need to prepare. You’ll need strategies to adjust your business once again. Those who adapt now will be the ones leading the way as mail continues to evolve.
Emerging Trends
Outbound business mailers: your clients are nearly ready to abandon the mass mail approach that has been the long-standing foundation of mail services revenue. Expect clients to insist on smaller mailings with a more data-driven, hyper-personalized approach.
The strength of postal mail is its tangibility and the ability to stand out in an environment otherwise dominated by overwhelming volumes of digital messages. As a mailing expert, make sure to make your clients aware of postal mail advantages and help them exploit the capabilities of modern mail.
Hyper-Personalization
Marketers use software to predict customer interests based on purchase history, browsing behavior, and demographics. Investments in AI platforms are making targeting even more precise. Digital printers apply this data with customized text, images, and offers.
With these capabilities, marketers can create messages customized for each individual customer, reduce waste, and increase the chances of conversion. Going forward, few clients will be satisfied with mass marketing campaigns.
How to Prepare: If your organization prints the materials, then you’ve probably already invested in digital printing technology. To best serve your clients, you may need to boost your data handling and document composition expertise to create high-impact mailpieces for your clients. If your clients are composing the documents, check to see if PDF optimization software will shorten the RIP time for your digital presses. It might also be time to look at adding camera-based matching on your inserters. You could also support personalized mail with envelope printing, piece-level integrity, mail tracking, and reprinting solutions.
Omnichannel Triggers
Postal mail received at the right time is highly effective, especially when combined with personalized messaging in other channels. The workflow for offering triggered mail based on actions such as abandoned online shopping carts, birthdays, warranty expiration dates, etc. will differ from the traditional batch method of producing mail.
Postal mail can also be triggered when digital channels fail, such as when emails are undeliverable or unopened within a designated time.
How to Prepare: Update your data intake methods so clients can automatically send information to generate single mailpieces and you can add them to a work queue. Talk to your clients about the business rules surrounding triggered mail.
Waste Reduction
Rising postage costs are driving mailers to create only mail that has a reasonable chance of producing the desired result. Aggressive data hygiene like NCOA, PCOA, and DPV allows you to eliminate mail that would be undeliverable. Strategies like duplicate recognition and suppression lists also help you drop worthless mailpieces and achieve the campaign ROI targets your clients desire.
How to Prepare: Have a conversation with your clients about the actual cost of bad postal address data, which frequently goes beyond just the money spent on paper and postage. Set up mechanisms for supplying updated address information to your clients. In addition to the common data hygiene strategies, query your clients about the buyer profile of the intended audience for each project. Can you exclude some ineffective mailpieces by augmenting the data and filtering on age, gender, income, geographic proximity to a physical site, etc.?
Production Optimization
To ensure growth in the coming years, print/mail service providers must ensure their production workflow is as automated as possible and supports the changing conditions of the marketplace. With transactional document volumes decreasing every year, adjustments in processes designed for consistently high page count batches may be necessary.
Every manual step in your process costs time and money, and no one has either to spare. The shops pulling ahead in the next couple of years will be automating wherever they can, from quality checks to reprints. The payoff will be fewer headaches, smoother runs, and happier clients.
How to Prepare: Switch to a white paper workflow. This move eliminates many costly manual steps such as material movement, machine idle time during job changeovers, and the ordering and inventory of custom forms and envelopes. A white paper workflow enables you to implement several strategies, including combining small jobs, increased presort density, and triggered mail.
Upgrade inserting machines to add automated material changeovers and camera-based integrity monitoring. Not only does this move make your operation more efficient, it lowers your dependence on an aging workforce of machine operators. Automated processes allow you to hire less experienced employees to keep your production operation moving at full speed.
File‑based inserting, piece‑level tracking, and automated reprints create a closed loop that guarantees every recipient receives the right content.
Recognize the Shifts and Adjust
To survive in a rapidly changing environment, you must understand the trends and fluctuating conditions of the mailing industry. Stay ahead by reading industry publications and news like Mailing Systems Technology, monitoring relevant groups and individuals on LinkedIn, and attending webinars offered by leading analysts and vendors.
Attend industry conferences and events whenever you can, including the National Postal Forum and the Printing United Expo. Connect with industry experts (many of whom appear in the pages of this publication) and follow their blogs, newsletters, and social media posts.
Understand your clients’ needs by regularly gathering feedback through surveys, interviews, and meetings. Dig deep to uncover the business needs behind the print and mail requirements. This may cause you to connect with representatives from marketing or the executive suite. Use the information you gain to adjust your products and services to meet their expectations.
It’s an exciting time for mail. The tools to make it smarter, faster, affordable, and more personal are within reach. Those who embrace the latest trends will lead the way towards cementing mail’s position in the broader communication landscape.
Mike Porter at Print/Mail Consultants creates content that helps mail service providers and other companies in the document industry attract and retain customers through content marketing. Learn more about his services (and see the About Us page) at www.pmccontentservices.com. Follow @PMCmike on X, or send him a connection request on LinkedIn.
