The Power of Print: Experts Offer Printing Tips to Offset Postal Rate Increase

In keeping with the recent NEMOA conference’s overriding theme of trimming down and keeping your catalog business fit, three printing and postal experts offered techniques to help combat the May postal rate increase as well as anticipated rate hikes in the near future through smart and effective mailing plans, list hygiene and postage discounts.

Ann Marie Bushell, group executive vice president of marketing for the Global Print Solutions Group of RR Donnelley; Joe Schick, director of postal affairs for Quad/Graphics; and Anita Pursley, vice president of postal affairs for the Quebecor World Logistics division of Quebecor World, comprised the guest panel at NEMOA’s fall conference in Portland, Maine. Here are some of their tips taken from the session.

1. Proper address hygiene is an essential. The importance of good addressing can’t be lost on catalogers, Pursley said. By simply cleaning up addresses, catalogers can reduce overall postage costs and improve deliverability and response, while reducing U.S. Postal Service undeliverable-as-addressed costs, which hopefully would be passed down to mailers.

As an example of how much postal automation discount rates can save catalogers, Pursley provided the five-digit presort rates for Standard mail. The automation five-digit rate is $0.335, while the nonautomation rate is $0.363, a difference of $0.028.

2. Take advantage of all the discount and work-sharing opportunities available. Catalogers need to look to co-mailing, co-palletization and address hygiene, as well as possibly converting their Standard mail flats to letter size, Bushell said.

3. Educate yourself on the new USPS requirements.

a. While the USPS already has installed new delivery point validation (DPV) requirements, more are on the way. A move update is expected to be implemented in the latter part of 2008. This will require mailers to process their lists through USPS-sanctioned software within 95 days before a mailing goes out in order to receive the automation and other discount rates.

b. Pursley noted the USPS’s annual coding accuracy support system (CASS) becomes tighter each year, and an 11-digit barcode requirement for flat sequence sorting via intelligent mail barcode (IMB) will be required in January 2009.

c. The flats sequencing system (FSS) is a short-term concern for catalogers, Schick noted. This USPS software will check for address placement and construction (e.g., font size, character spacing), mail prep and entry, and critical entry times (CETs), the time the postal facility receives the mail.

4. Know consumer- and environment-friendly best practices. Pursley said these best practices include respecting consumer choices (notably with the DMA’s mail preference service) by clearly enabling them to opt out, offering “Recycle Please” messaging on catalogs and reviewing address-quality methodology (address acquisition, merge/purge, apply change of address and list certification).

5. Do-Not-Mail legislation? A more long-term consideration is the threat of a more intensified do-not-mail legislative threat. Pursley noted four states introduced this legislation in 2006, 15 more did in 2007 and likely more will in 2008.

6. Another rate hike looms. Schick cautioned the USPS is deliberating the possibility of another rate case that could start as soon as this December. Rate increases could range around 3 percent this go-round, he said.

7. Take advantage of co-mailing opportunities. Co-mailing provides the mailer two benefits, Schick said:

a. It lowers the per-piece postage rates due to the improved level of presort for each title; and

b. It creates deeper penetration into the postal system, facilitating more consistent and timely delivery while allowing catalogs to arrive in prospects’ and customers’ homes more quickly and in better condition.

Schick used Cataloger A as an example. It mails 276,881 copies of its catalog; with co-mailed copies, that number rises to 2.4 million. The total cost of presortation without co-mailing is $63,360. The cost of presorting if it co-mails is $54,704. This represents $8,656 in savings by co-mailing the catalog.

Schick said although the postage rates increased, so did the discounts in bulk mailing. He stressed that catalogers should talk to their printers to make sure everything is being done to effectively co-mail their catalogs. Although co-palletization doesn’t improve presort rates, it’s still worthwhile, Schick advised. It helps to move mail out of sacks and onto finer-level pallets to create deeper penetration into the postal system and facilitate more consistent and timely delivery.