This is one of the major things that most businesses that we speak to never even consider. They feel that going to the Post Office to collect mail from the PO Box and returning in the afternoon is part of the job description of one of their administrative staff.

It is only after delving deeper that they realise the true cost of the staff member leaving the office to collect lodge the mail and if you are thinking to yourself that it does not cost my business anything then guess again!

Labour Cost

Based on our experience it can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour each day for a staff member to visit the post office once you factor in variables such as travel time and post office queues not to mention staff using the time out of the office to carry out personal tasks. Roughly speaking will all things considered including factors such as superannuation this costs the business $30 each day

Opportunity Costs

What is not getting done in your business while your staff are down at the post office? Are the phones going unanswered or more important tasks not being completed? The likely answer based on our experience is a resounding “LOTS” Why are your staff wasting time doing menial tasks instead of focusing on tasks which are more aligned with the company’s mission and goals? We understand that opportunity costs are impossible to quantify so we will leave it up top your imagination as to its true cost.

 

Staff Morale

It has long been understood that one of the key factors to improving your employee’s morale is to link the work they do as being valuable to the business and aligned with your organisational goals. To add to this improved morale has strong ties to staff retention. So why would businesses send their staff out to do menial tasks such as collecting / lodging mail? Instead you could use the time to focus on developing your staff and improving their productivity. Imagine if you could have a staff member spend an entire hour each day on development? What would that do for your business?

Workers Compensation

It is likely that even if your employee is collecting the mail on the way to work that their entire trip from home is covered by your workers compensation policy as they are not starting their day from the office. This opens up a whole raft of potential claims and with every business conscious about ever rising insurance premiums why take on the extra risk?

Sick Leave / Annual Leave

Most businesses who are sending staff to the post office to collect and lodge their mail have a dedicated staff member who performs the task each day. Have you considered what would happen if that staff member was sick or took unexpected leave? There are only a limited number of keys that your company has to access your PO Box and therefore you are forced to consider rushed redundancy plans. What would happen if you could not get access to incoming cheques or other important documents such as contacts?

So there you have it. Not exactly as simple as you thought right? When you really think about it, it really does not make any sense to be sending a staff member to the post office each day when it is costing your business more than $30 each and every day.

Here at Everyday Mail we have been able to help companies to save this significant amount of money and alleviate the related pains and risks so why not get in touch with us today by clicking here or feel free to call us on 1300 624 562 so that we can discuss your own specific requirements.

 

With the proliferation of internet banking in today’s world it is a wonder that people visit bank branches at all anymore.

Our customers tell us that this is not the case and here is why:

Many businesses still continue to pay their invoices via cheque rather than direct transfer, the reasons for this are a little unclear however one possibility is that it gives an extra week or so before the funds leave their account which has a positive effect on their cash flow. Perhaps your business does the same thing for this reason or another one?

Regardless of the reasons, the fact is that many businesses are receiving cheques on a daily basis and if we look at the other side of the coin, the sooner that you can deposit the cheques to your financial institution, the sooner the funds are cleared having a positive effect on your cash flow.

 

Business is a strange beast right? However, the part that many businesses don’t consider in this paradox is the cost of sending a staff member to the bank every day to deposit their cheques. Sure banks have quick deposit facilities available so that you don’t have to stand in a line but these come with their limitations as well as you need to get your banking there before 4pm for it to be processed on the same day.

The issue that presents itself here is that unlike mail, it is impossible to send a staff member to the bank on their way home (providing they are working typical office hours) so the only option is to go during the day. The obvious side effect of this is the opportunity cost of the more productive tasks that they could be doing rather than visiting the bank.

Top that off with many staff members running personal errands whilst they are out of the office, the cost of sending a staff member to the bank each day is north of $30 per day according to our customers.

Everyday Mail provides a daily or ad hoc banking service which allows your business to take advantage of the cash flow benefits of depositing your cheques on the same day that you receive at a fraction of the cost of sending a staff member to do it which you can read more about by clicking here.

If you have any questions about our banking or any other of our services, please click here to get in touch with us or call us on 1300 624 562.

 

If your business is sending any volume amount of mail, it is common that return to senders become a large problem so we decided to create this free resource in order to help you to find out ways to reduce these annoying return to senders and to save your business money at the same time

Why do you get Return To Sender Mail?

Many businesses maintain large customer and prospect databases and invariably over time the integrity of these databases become degraded as their customers move and the system is not upgraded. Now this issue is very difficult to solve and the solution will depend on your business and processes unique to you.

However the second cause of return to senders is caused by information being incorrectly added to your database in the first instance. A good example of this is forgetting to put a unit number at the front of a street address or when a customer provides what is known as a “vanity” suburb whereby stating that they live in one suburb but their postal address is in another.

 

How do I avoid bad data being entered into my database?

Each quarter the Post Office releases what is known as the Postal Address File or PAF which is a database of every deliverable address within Australia and the correct address format in order to ensure that the mail gets to that definition. Now this database can never be 100% accurate as it cannot allow for the knowledge of local posties which may allow mail to be delivered even if the address is not completely accurate but it is pretty close.

There are several software providers available out there that created applications that integrate with the PAF to ensure that your business has clean mailing address information at two key points:

How do I ensure the addresses are correct when I enter them into my database?

Some of the third party software developers have integrated the PAF with CRM and other database management tools in a way that your staff members are forced into marrying the address they enter into your systems as true against the PAF.

This is usually done in a reverse fashion starting with the postcode then the street and then the number. By doing it in this fashion it also has the additional benefit of making it faster for your staff to collect addresses by progressively narrowing down their selection options.

How do I ensure that my addresses are correct before sending out mail?

In most instances, prior to sending any bulk mailing, the first step is of the process is to export data from your systems ready to be merged into your document. Some third party developers have created add-ons in applications such as excel to batch process addresses and correct them automatically just prior to you printing your documents and sending your mail out.

So there you have it, a couple of key tips in order to drastically reduce the amount of return to senders that your business receives and when you calculate out the actual cost of return to senders to your business depending on the amount that you receive, this can actually add up to quiet a lot.

Feel free to give us a call on 1300 624 562 or click here to email us for a no obligation chat about anything mail related.

 

Now before we get into this issue, we need to put in a small disclaimer that we are not qualified to provide workers compensation advice and you should consult with a professional before making any final decisions.

With that being said, sending staff out to run errands of any kind is logically a workers compensation risk as they are carrying out tasks outside the office on work time and therefore they need to be covered by you workers compensation policy.

One thing that we often her from our customers is that they feel that having their staff collect their mail from the post office each morning is not costing their business anything as the staff member collects the mail on their way to work each morning and is in the office on time to start work anyway. Essentially they feel that they are already getting this service for free.

Well, when you consider this from a workers compensation perspective, the staff member is beginning their work day from a location that is not the office where they generally carry out their work each day. In some cases this can mean that unlike a usual trip from home to the office, your business may be required to insure them from their trip from home to the post office.

 

This creates a large range of potential implications including but not limited to things like car accidents required to be covered by your workers compensation insurance. So as a business you should consider is that worth the risk, sure you are covered by insurance in the event of an accident but the flow on effect of any claim is much higher insurance premiums for years to come.

So the question we pose to our customers is – is this really worth the risk?

Besides the fact that due to economies of scale we can provide mail courier services much cheaper than paying a staff member to do this, we will assume all of the workers compensation risk and you can focus on the core services of your business.

If you are interested in exploring a mail courier service for your business that:

• Delivers your PO Box mail to your office
• Collects and lodges your express deposit banking at your financial institution each day
• Collects and lodges your outgoing mail and lodges it at the post office each afternoon
• Much More

Why not contact us today on 1300 624 562 or by clicking here.

 

A question we have had from a few customers recently , particularly those that are new to the postage industry is what exactly is DX Mail and how does it differ from the Post Office offering for getting my documents across the country.

DX mail actually is a reference to the document exchange and it bears it roots in the legal profession where clerks from different law firms would meet at a certain spot each afternoon to exchange relevant documents relating to the matters they were representatives for.

Naturally this posed many issues with the obvious one being – what if the firm representing the other party was located in a different area then my offices?

Fast forward to day and we have DX Mail which at its core is a subscription service whereby members can sent unlimited amounts of mail to other DX members in return for an annual fee. The organisation that is responsible for it has set up DX hubs in many areas around the country and these essentially have become DX “Post Offices” whereby its members can lodge and collect items from their secure DX Box located inside the hub.

 

 

The service is typically still used by law firms but has also expanded to many larger businesses sending correspondence through the DX exchange. These larger businesses also utilise the service to send documents from offices to offices within their own company and have set up DX boxes in this location for this function.

One issue that has been expressed to us by customers is that while they do find this service convenient, they still are required to send a staff member to the DX hub each morning to collect their incoming DX mail as well as visiting the hub again each afternoon to lodge their outgoing DX.

Couple this with the same requirement to visit the Post Office each morning and afternoon to do a similar function and this adds up to a lot of unproductive time being wasted each day carrying out these menial tasks.

Enter Everyday Mail – we are a specialised mail courier service carrying out this service for hundreds of businesses each day and even if you are using a service to do this already we can still help you as we have many other customers to save a significant amount of money on this function. Click here to read more about how we can help you to save money or call us on 1300 624 562 to have a no obligation discussion.

 

Most companies that we speak to have at least one preferred courier company that they deal with to send items either locally, interstate or internationally. In many cases they use several different couriers depending on the size, destination and urgency of the item that they are sending.

Again, many of these courier companies offer a PO Box collection and delivery service as well as express deposit banking and afternoon mail collection and lodgement. The issue that was faced by many of our customers is that when getting pricing from their regular “point to point” courier company to carry out these services for them, the model that these companies used to price the service was based on their core “point to point” work.

So let think about this for a second, say if our business required all three of these services each day, we would be paying an ad hoc rate for each pickup and delivery which really does not sound cost effective especially when the pickup and drop off points are the same each business day.

 

 

Enter Everyday Mail – we provide a specialised mail courier service, in fact that is all we do and our pricing model is reflected around this which means that we are able to offer our time and money saving service at a fraction of the cost that traditional freight companies can do it.

In addition we have dedicated drivers that operate in each area which means we can amalgamate customers mail in the morning when we visit the post office each morning and therefore the cost to us for adding one new client is very small and we pass this benefit on to you the customer.

The bottom line is if you are thinking about using your regular courier company to carry out regular mail deliveries from your PO Box to your business each day, then why not give us a call on 1300 624 562 to see exactly how much you can save on this service by using a dedicated provider in this space.

 

 

A common question that we have from our customers as they are instigating the switch from their current provider to Everyday Mail is “Do I have to give notice?”

The answer to this question will vary based on the provider that you are currently using, however what we have observed in practice over a wide range of industries that the service levels during a notice period may not quiet be up to par when compared to when the agreement was in full force.

As a new provider sometimes it is difficult for us to assist customers during this period as we are not in control of their mail. So, what we have found works well if a notice period needs to be served, we would prefer to commence our services immediately and not charge our new customer while they are paying out the notice period to their old supplier.

 

This, over time has been developed to ensure the most important party, our new customer does not experience any disruption to their service and can go about their business as usual. At the same time, it provides an opportunity for us as their new provider to build up rapport and to demonstrate the improvement to the service against their business requirements without charging them for it.

Whichever way you look at it our new customer is the winner in this scenario and they can be confident that we will need to continue to earn their business each month in this fashion as we do not have any fixed term contracts to create any obligation for them to continue to use our service.

So if you are unsatisfied with the service levels of your current mail courier service provider, why not give us a call today on 1300 624 562 so we can work together with you.

Recently we had a conversation with a potential customer where we had established how and why we were not only able to improve their service standards but also able to help them to save a significant amount of money when compared to their current provider. We also established that they did not need to be concerned with a ‘bait and hook’ marketing strategy whereby companies offer cheap pricing up front and gradually jack up their prices over time to cover their initial losses through our fixed pricing guarantee.

At this point, the customer was satisfied with our value proposition however their final concern even after talking to several reference sites was “what if the service is not as good as I think it is going to be or drops off over time?” This is a perfectly natural concern for this customer to have however, we were able to assure them that whilst we commit in our agreements that our pricing will be fixed for a period of time, this does not in turn obligate them to stay with our service.

 

In fact, we have intentionally set up our business so that in order to retain our customers we need to earn their business each and every month as there is no recourse for our customers to cancel our service at a moment’s notice. We feel that this will not only keep us on our toes in terms of service levels it creates a sense of trust in our customers as we are literally putting our ‘money where our mouth is’.

We felt it important to share this philosophy with both our current and prospective customers to show them that we constantly have their interests in mind and that our interests are in fact aligned.

So if you are unsatisfied with the service levels of your current mail courier service provider, why not give us a call today on 1300 624 562 so we can work together with you.

Recently we had some feedback from customers who were undertaking a review on their mail courier services around the flexibility of our delivery times and we thought this would be a good opportunity to share.

It seems that when customers have been using a mail courier service for a long period of time (a couple of years) that the service is still the same as when it was first put into place and has fell out of sync with the evolving needs of the business – you can read more about this by clicking here.

In addition to this, our feedback from the marketplace is that providers are offering delivery times that suit only their own logistical requirements and not meeting with the customer’s needs.

One example of this is outgoing mail being collected at 2-3pm in the afternoon and when important documents miss this deadline, staff members are required to visit the post office themselves (defeating the purpose of having a mail courier service in the first place) or even worse, the urgent mail is delayed until the next day.

Another example of this is that too meet with a large number or customers per driver by some of the players in the mail courier industry, some customers are having their incoming mail delivered at 6am in the morning. The issue with this is that the mail is being collected from the post office even earlier than this and before the post office has a chance to complete the sorting of the mail and as a result, important documents are missed. You can read more about this and how specifically it effects express post-delivery by clicking here.

 

 

Everyday Mail adopts a consultative approach to its discussions with its customer with a focus on delivering a service that is centered around our customers’ requirements – not the other way around.

Should you wish to have a no obligation chat with us regarding your mail collection and delivery service please call us on 1300 624 562.

 

Recently we had some discussions with a customer using an alternative provider for their mail courier services and they raised an important issue that there are some providers are using staff without vehicles on foot to deliver PO Box mail to businesses.

For this particular customer the fact that their provider was not using vans to service their account became an issue as their business was receiving a significant amount of parcels each day and because of this the level of service gradually declined over time. This was a result of the work becoming too cumbersome for the provider and was causing significant flow on effects for the business.

So if you are using a mail courier service or even considering one, an important question to ask the provider is if your driver will be using a van to deliver and collect your mail or if they will be doing this by foot or bicycle.

 

Everyday Mail drivers all use suitable vans to carry out our services, this is due to the significant amount of mail we are transporting to and from the post office each day. So if you are sending a lot of parcels, please contact us on 1300 624 562 to learn more about how we can help your business.