This is a tricky question that has caught a lot of our customers out so we will try and help you to figure out what is best for your own specific circumstances.

On the one hand it can be difficult to send bulk mailings out to mailhouses because their definition of “bulk” mail is likely to be vastly different to yours. For them “bulk” might be volumes of more than 5000 items in one go and sure they will take on your job but it is likely that this will take a lower priority than their higher volume customers and they will charge you an arm and leg for their services.

On the other hand let’s say for arguments sake you had a mailout of 2000 envelopes to send out, unless you have had experience doing this before, it is likely that you will severely underestimate the true costs of doing it yourself.

First off you have the cost of printing the material and unless your business has spent 10’s of thousands on high speed low cost machines this is likely to cost you far more than to outsource in ink or toner and don’t forget you will need to get envelopes printed as well with your company logo and return address.

 

Secondly and far more significantly, unless your business is lucky enough to have specialised equipment you will have to sit down and fold all of the paper and stuff it into the envelopes ready to present to the Post Office. Now, statistics show that the average person working flat out can fold and insert 100 envelopes per hour so in this case that is 20 hours of staff time doing the menial and unfulfilling task of folding and inserting envelopes. If you factor in $30 per hour for your staffs time, this has cost your business more than $600 assuming that they are very fast at inserting the envelopes.

Outsourcing is starting to look like a better idea even if the cost is slightly higher than these numbers because you can’t forget about opportunity cost here, what else could they be doing that is far more productive for your business if they did not have to spend two and a half days stuffing envelopes?

There is a third alternative however, Everyday Mail heard this issue time and time again from our customers which lead us to establishing our boutique mailhouse at www.everydaymailing.com.au which is designed to cater for the jobs that are too big to do in house but really too small to send to the larger mailing houses.

So there you have it, everything that you need to know in order to make an informed decision if you should do your bulk mailout in house or outsource it to a mailhouse. If there are any mail related questions that we can assist you with even if it is outside of our core mail courier service we are happy to point you in the right direction so click here to contact us or call on 1300 624 562

 

Despite the multitude of ways that you can proactively work to reduce your postage bill, the single method that our customers tell us can help to reduce their postage bill is staff education and training both in the practice of sending mail for each employee or failing that, establishing a sound business mail process can establish redundancies.

Staff education such as sending each staff member that sends outgoing mail our ultimate guide on saving money on postage will have the effect of at least raising awareness of how their actions impact on the size of you company’s postage bill.

However, facing reality, as more important priorities become front of mind many times this knowledge goes out the window and employees tend to revert back to the “whatever is quickest and easiest” mindset in the heat of the moment when it comes to sending items out in the mail. The side effect of this is that the “quickest and easiest” is usually the most expensive.

 

So how are businesses tackling this issue? Simply put, they are establishing what we have dubbed a mail “gatekeeper” – a person within their organisation that other staff members give their mail items and are responsible for asking the right questions to ensure that they understand the requirements of each item such as speed of delivery and choose the method of sending that not only meets these requirements but also in the most cost effective manner for the business.

Using this method of staff mail education, usually is met with the least resistance within organisations as people can as we all know be resistant to change and doing it this way only requires a few people to change their mindset rather than every member of the organisation. However where most businesses are falling down is they are operating under the assumption that “gatekeeper” administrative staff already possess the knowledge and know-how to make informed decisions on the best and most cost effective method to send mail.

This was one of the primary motivators for us to create “The ultimate guide to saving money on your postage” which is available for download on our website and we strive to keep this updated as we hear of new methods and strategies from our customers.

So there you have it, invest a little time in educating your staff that handle the mail and you will see a leveraged improvement in the size of your postage bill.

If you have any mail related questions, please don’t hesitate to call us on 1300 624 562 or click here to contact us.

 

Now customers tell us that this can have a major effect on the size of their postal bill but the size of it’s effect is closely linked to the volume of mail that they are sending. However, even if your mail volumes are not astronomical you still may find a couple of slivers of value in the information to follow which can have a positive effect on reducing the ever growing postage bill.

If You Are Not Sending A Large Volume Of Mail

If you are not sending a large volume of mail, we have two small tips that may help and hey, every little bit counts right?

Firstly, identify the most regular people that your send letters / parcels to, if you are anything like some of our customers you may notice that these key clients / vendors comprise a surprisingly large percentage of your mail. From here, it may be possible to limit the number of times you send stuff to this address to perhaps 3 times per week instead of every day which may allow you to send 1 large letter instead of 10 small letters and save money in this way.

 

Secondly, centralise your mail preparation. There are often situations that come up where two or more members of a company send mail to the same recipient on the same day and it will be much cheaper for the business to group these into one letter rather than two or three. This is especially true if your business has multiple locations with correspondence going to and fro, perhaps sending one parcel 3 times per week will be far cheaper than sending 20 letters each day?

If you are sending a large volume of mail

There are some elegant mail aggregation solutions available from vendors such as Neopost which allow for all of your staff members to print to a centralised print server and for that mail to be intelligently aggregated and sorted for the purposes of reducing your postage bill.

However it is a little difficult to go into this in detail as it will really depend on your individual requirements but needless to say it can have a massive effect on the amount of money your company is wasting on sending multiple items to the same recipient on the same day.

If you need any specific information regarding how to save money on your mail bill then we are happy to chat with you and point you in the right direction even if it is beyond the scope of the services that we offer so please click here to contact us or give us a call on 1300 624 562.

 

Well, our customers tell us that this is rather a sensitive issue and generally only gets asked when a review is being done on a company’s mail and courier costs and it is realised that costs are spiralling out of control.

To help those in this situation we thought that we would put together this free resource with some of the critical questions we have learnt that our customers ask themselves in order to keep costs in check.

Is the item being sent to a PO Box?

This is generally the first question that you need to ask yourself because if it is being sent to a PO Box unfortunately you don’t have much choice. No other organisation other than the Post Office can deliver to a PO Box so you are stuck with them on this one. If you are curious about why this is then we have an explanation which you can access by clicking here.

 

How Urgent Is My Item To Get There?

Staff education is paramount when it comes to reducing your mail and courier costs. Most companies we speak to when we really examine the issue, the first thing that we are discover is that employees are taking the path of least resistance and most convenience for them rather than considering the cost to the company. If you want to know more about this we have written about it here.

The second thing that we usually discover is that staff are grossly exaggerating the urgency of their item getting to the desired recipient. When 1-2 days delivery will suffice and the Post Office can get it there cheaper they are opting for expensive same day courier services.

The key here is to stop and think, is the world going to end if my item gets there one day later than what I expect – you will find out that in most cases the answer is no and a simple change in perception can have a dramatic effect on the amount of money being spent on your mail.

Is the item going to a regional or metro area?

Speaking in general terms, most private courier companies do not have the networks to deliver items to regional areas in a cost effective manner and you may find that they are outsourcing the delivery of your item to the Post Office in any case. So the question to ask yourself here is why are you paying for a third party? It is likely that you will be better off sending the item directly through the Post Office.

The question here is what comes under the banner of a “regional area” and unfortunately there is no simple answer to this question as it will vary from carrier to carrier.

Which Courier Company Is Cheaper For This Specific Item?

Each courier company including the Post Office has a specific market that they serve and are most competitive in that area. The issue for businesses is that varies from courier company to courier company, some are better at small items, some at urgent same day items some at regional and some at metro.

With all these variables how can I possibly make an informed decision as to whether to use a courier or the Post Office?

To be honest to solve this problem most of our customers have told us they have taken one of two paths:

• Pick one courier company and stick with them for all your consignments. Depending on your volume you may be able to negotiate a special price, however the downside is that you need to be able to live with the fact that you may be winning on some items and loosing on others. If the one you opt with is not the Post Office then you will still need to maintain an account with them if you ever want to send items to PO Boxes
• In this wonderful world of technology that we live in there are some fantastic services out there that will calculate the cheapest way to send your item based on your unique requirements. The one that we particularly like is Temando as they maintain bulk accounts will all of the major providers and therefore it is possible to send something cheaper by using this service than if you approached a specific company yourself for a one off item. Plus it is really simple to use

So there you have it, everything that you need to know in order to make an informed decision as to whether to use a courier service or the Post Office.

Please let us know if there is anything that we can do to help you to improve your mail processes or if you are interested in saving money by having your PO Box mail delivered to your office each day then click here to contact us or call on 1300 624 562.

 

Generally, of all the discount services that are available from the Post Office in terms of letters, this offers the highest level of discounts, however it does come with a caveat that there is a lot more involved on your end in order to access these discounts.

The other thing to consider is that this is a bulk mail service and is only available for mail volumes of over 300 items in the same postal category ie small letters or large letters of the same weight all sent on the same day. So for many businesses it simply may be impractical to use this service on a daily basis as there are extensive software requirements as well as other preparation requirements.

Essentially what we are saying is that unless your business is sending a large volume of mail ie more than 1000 letters per day, then this service is more than likely not for you.

What Is Pre Sort Mail?

You may have noticed that when you receive a letter through the mail there is a faint orange barcode printed on it by the Post Office. Essentially what is going here is that the address on the mail is being scanned and turned into electronic data and matched up against a database that the Post Office keeps of every deliverable address in Australia called the Postal Address File (PAF). They print this barcode on the envelope so they can then put them through their high speed sorting equipment and basically work out which Post Office the letter needs to end up at for distribution.

If this is confusing to you, think of when you receive a phone bill or bank statement, above your home address there is a barcode which is exactly the same thing as those orange marks except they are printed on the businesses end, not by the Post Office.

So, by printing the barcode the business is essentially making it easier for the Post Office to process the mail and being rewarded by cheaper postage rates.

 

How do I get the barcode on the mail?

There are several companies that have worked in conjunction with the Post Office to develop software which takes address data that you have either in spreadsheets or varying database applications and matches it up with the PAF and assigns a barcode to that address record. One such company is Data Tools and as an indication entry level software starts at around $700 per annum.

What other lodgement requirements are there?

There are a whole raft of lodgement requirements in order to access the pre sport service such as the size and width of the barcode marks that need to be adhered to in order to ensure that the Post Office scanning machines can read them. Rather than going through them all we suggest that if you are interested in exploring this option for your business that you check out the Pre Sort Letter guide that is available on the Post Office website.

What Sort Of Pre Sort Discounts Are Available?

Again, there are several levels of discounts available depending on how much of the Post Office’s “work” that your business does. To give an example, there is the Barcode Reside rate which is where you send more than 300 items of the same category anywhere in Australia, however if you were to sort this mail using your software into one of the Barcode Sort Plans or thought of another way group the mail into which “truck” it needs to end up on then you will be able to get a higher level of discount. In some cases this discount can equal or even exceed 25% of your postage costs.

What if I don’t send bulk mail regularly but still want to get Pre Sort Discounts?

So if you have irregular bulk mail, it does not make sense to invest in the software and infrastructure required to barcode your mail in house. So the option available to you is to outsource your bulk mailings. You learn more on when you should outsource your bulk mail by clicking here.

So, in summary the pre sort service is not for every business and perhaps you might be better off learning more about the Clean Mail service which has a much lower barrier to entry unless your business is sending a very large volume of mail.

As always we are available to answer all of your mail related questions and even they are outside the scope of our core services of PO Box Mail delivery we are happy to point you in the right direction. Please Click Here to get in touch with us or call us on 1300 624 562.