A client recently called with an urgent question about the estimate for mailing the invitations for her company’s gala annual dinner. She had the numbers in front of her and was worried because it was too low.
She said, “It’s only 36 cents each. A stamp is 41 cents! This isn’t bulk mail is it? This mailing is urgent, I don’t want it to take a long time to get to people!” I assured her that it was OK and explained why the cost was less.
She said, “The post office gives discounts??!!!”
Yes, they do. And, if you follow some basic rules, you can pay 25 cents each or even less (as little as 9 cents a piece if you’re a nonprofit and mail millions of pieces).
Paying 41 cents is like paying retail. With a bit of effort, you can get it cheaper. And, the best part is, you don’t have to wait for a sale!
The Untied States postal service has a lot of mail to deliver (over 213 billion pieces per year, according to their Web site). So, they reward you for doing some of the work for them. The more work you do, and the more mail you send at once, the less you pay.
For example, if you hand your assistant a two-foot-tall stack of papers with bills, letters and memos from three or four projects mixed together it will take him or her hours to sort through it all and file it. But, if you separate everything by project and then by date, content, etc. it will only take a few minutes to manage. The same concept works for the post office. If you “pre-sort” your work, they will charge you less.
There are two basic kinds of mail, which you probably know about: first class and standard (or bulk mail). Both have discounts based on volume (how many pieces you send), density (how the addresses are concentrated together) and whether you are a nonprofit or a commercial business.
Here’s what you need to do:
*Put th (more…)
