Making the USPS work for business - Business Issues

Making the USPS work for business

Making the USPS work for business
Nov 10, 2008
Daniel Kehrer
Providence Business News

hese days, some business owners live and die with e-mail and scarcely give snail mail a second thought. But millions of small businesses still depend heavily on the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) for marketing, invoicing, communicating with clients and a host of other critical tasks.

For these businesses, mailing and shipping practices can have a huge impact not only on costs, but also efficiency and speed. Now is a good time to review how your business manages its mailing and shipping to see where you can make improvements.

Here are postal practices that can contain costs and make your business a more effective mailer.

• Automate to save: You’ll save big on postage costs by making your mailings “automation compatible” (in USPS-speak). That simply means the mailings are prepared in line with USPS rules that allow the mail to be sorted by robots. That, for example, means addresses must be in all capital letters, standard state abbreviations must be used and there can’t be any punctuation (except for the hyphen in ZIP+4 codes). Check the USPS business mailing site (USPS.com/business) for rules.

• Be shape conscious: A postal pricing shakeup in 2007 produced a shift to shape-based pricing for some items. Many businesses unaware of the new rules are still wasting money on postage. Review designs of all current and planned mailings to ensure they are shaped properly for the lowest rates (hint: square is bad!). For example, a 6-inch-by-6-inch, one-ounce envelope has an aspect ratio of 1:0, which fails the required range of 1:3 to 2:5 and thus costs more to send.

• Capture “certified” savings: To verify that a mail piece has been sent (and if a return receipt is not needed) your business can pocket huge savings by requesting a Certificate of Mailing instead of using the vastly more expensive Certified Mail.

• Address for success: Bad addresses on your lists can mean unpaid invoices, lost sales and poor customer service. Use “address verification software” or Web-based services to regularly clean up your lists. A quick search on Business.com will yield a selection of options.

• Fire your flats: Mailing “flats” is more expensive. Whenever possible, fold pages and insert them into small envelopes to save money. The difference is major. Inserting nine pages into a 10x13 flat envelope costs $1.17 to mail. The same nine pages folded into a 6-by-9 envelope cost only 59 cents in postage. Printing pages on two sides will also help by reducing both weight and