Tip of the week (May 11, 2011)

Posted by Elizabeth Lombard on May 11, 2011 in Mail

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TIP #3: Use your Pitney Bowes Mailing System or Shipping Solution to Gain Delivery Information and Help You Save Money!

Hello again!

Customers in my Mail Management Seminars tell me that their biggest mail/shipping center objective or initiative is to mitigate mailing and shipping costs while maintaining efficiency, including the ability to track and/or know that their packages have been delivered. To that end, many are changing the way in which they use USPS Extra Services and also are moving some packages from other expedited and ground carrier services to the USPS.

To accomplish this, the USPS® offers many services that can confirm delivery of letters/flats and packages and so Pitney Bowes customers are using a number of our solutions to process their mailpieces with Delivery Confirmation™, Signature Confirmation™, and e-Return Receipt ~ at the reduced “electronic” prices.

For example, you might consider some of these mailer best practices to gain delivery information of your packages while minimizing costs.

If you simply need proof of delivery, instead of using Certified Mail™ (the fee alone is $2.85), you could use electronic Delivery Confirmation™ and save up to 27%. The “math” works like this… Postage for a 1 oz. letter is 44¢. Add the Certified Mail fee and your total is $3.29. Whereas, if you were to put those documents into a “parcel” type container, you’d be able to use electronic Delivery Confirmation and reduce your postage spend. On most PB meters, the current postage for a First-Class Mail® parcel is $1.56 (that’s the 1-3 oz. Commercial Base single-piece price). Add the electronic Delivery Confirmation fee of only 19¢, and take on a few extra cents for the cost of a “parcel” type container (as that may be a bit more than the cost of a #10 envelope), and you’ve got a savings of almost a dollar per piece.

Or, if you needed proof of delivery with a signature, instead of Certified Mail with a Return Receipt, you may want to choose Signature Confirmation™ and save up to 24%. Postage for a one-ounce letter plus the Certified Mail fee and the “green card” return receipt fee ($2.30) is $5.59. But if you were to put those documents in a parcel-type container and use electronic Signature Confirmation ($2.05), you could save more than $1.00 again per piece!

Some of my customers say that in using Delivery and Signature Confirmation on parcel-type containers, there is a bit more visibility of that piece, i.e, the package jumps out from that pile of mail! They also say that using First-Class Mail parcels and Priority Mail® with Delivery and Signature Confirmation instead of some next-day or second day/ground services of other carriers, their carrier expenditures have been greatly reduced, as the USPS doesn’t add on all those assessorial charges.

If requirements within your business or organization do require the use of Certified Mail and Return Receipt, you might consider using the electronic option of Return Receipt. The fee is only $1.15 as compared to the “green card” fee of $2.30, and in addition to hard dollar savings, you gain efficiency in not having to fill out the forms, and also in the ability to manage the signature files electronically rather than manually!

As always, I welcome your comments on this topic, such as your success stories in leveraging USPS classes of mail and Extra Services to manage costs.

If you have questions or concerns regarding your equipment, please go to www.pb.com/ratechange to find out more or to contact us.

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Tags: Mail, managing costs, saving money, shipping solutions