Designing Mail

Determine who, what, where, how and when

 

Your first step when designing mail is to determine what type of mail piece you would like to send.  Do you want to send out a letter or a letter with additional pieces inserted into an envelope?  Do you want the letter to be personalized or generic?  Do you want to provide a Business Reply envelope (BRE) or a Courtesy Reply envelope (CRE) for people to send back information to you in?  Maybe you want to send out a typical postcard, an oversized postcard or even a self-mailer.  Once you have decided on the type of mail piece next you need to decide if sending the piece first class or standard class will fit your needs and budget.  Next you need to determine to whom you will be sending your mail piece.  Will you be using a list you already have and are maintaining or will you need to purchase a mailing list?  If you are purchasing a mailing list which type of list will work best for you, a business list, a consumer list or an occupant/resident list?  Do you want to send to existing customers or potential new customers or both?  Last you need to factor in the time for designing you mail-piece, time for approval of the design, printing, mail preparation, postal delivery and what date you would like your pieces to arrive in the mailboxes.  Now that you know what you are sending, what class of mail you will be using, and to whom you will be sending your mail pieces to, it's time to learn a few things about how to reduce your postage costs. 

How to reduce postage rates

 

Postage costs are determined by many factors.  Is the piece a postcard, letter or flat?  Are you saturating (mailing to every mailable address) in a zip code or carrier route?  Is the mail being delivered into Seattle 980 or 981 zip codes?  Is the piece automation compatible?  All of these factors have an effect on your postage rates.  Mailers can have an impact on these factors by 1) learning how to qualify for a postcard, letter or flat mailing 2) learning about designing mail to be automation compatible 3) learning that where your mail is entered at the Post Office can effect your rates 4) preprinting a permit indicia to save on metering costs.

Designing self mailers

 

A self-mailer is a piece of mail that is designed to be mailed on its own without the use of an envelope.  There are many ways to design mail but we will focus here on designing mail that is automation compatible (barcoded) because of the favorable postage rates that are associated with this type of mail.   One way to control your postage costs on any mailing is to automate (barcode) the individual mailing pieces.  The post office reduces the per piece postage rate on each piece of mail that qualifies or has been designed for automation processing and contains a delivery point barcode.  The reason for this reduction in postage is because it saves the post office the step of having to send each piece of mail through their optical character readers (OCR's) to obtain and apply a barcode to each individual mailing piece.  By using a mailing service that provides this step for you, you can save anywhere from a few pennies to several cents on each piece of mail.  There are also reductions on postage costs for mail when it is simply presorted or sorted by carrier route but is not automated.  Below are some of the ways to qualify for an automated mailing when designing self-mailers.

·        On a single sheet mailer (8 1/2 x 11) use a minimum paper weight of 28# (70# offset).

·        When designing the mail piece for folding, have the fold at the bottom of the piece (meaning the recipient cannot open the mail piece at all from below their printed name and address).  On a trifolded piece there will be a flap at the top of the piece and a fold only at the bottom below the mailing address.  Exception: when the fold falls on the top of the piece it can be mailed at automation rates however the mailing piece requires 2 tabs instead of 1.

·        For oversized postcards use a minimum paper thickness of .009 inches.

·        Choose a paper color that is light such as white, off-white, cream or pastel colors.  Make sure there are no paper flecks, screening, shading or other distractions in the paper that will interfere with the barcode readers.  Exception:  you can use labels instead of direct printing to accommodate paper that will interfere with the barcode readers and that we cannot direct print onto.

·        Plan to have a single 1" tab or wafer seal applied to the middle upper part of the piece to hold it shut.  On pieces where the fold is at the top plan on having two 1" wafer seals placed on the bottom of the mailing piece each placed within an inch of the edge of the right and left side of the mailing piece.

·        Plan to leave enough space for an address block and a barcode on the mailing panel of the piece (approximately 1 1/4" in height and 3 1/2" in length).  Also plan on leaving a 1/2" margin on the right hand side of the mailing piece beyond the barcode (overall address block including this margin 1 1/4" in height and 4 " in length).

·        Leave a "clear zone" at the bottom right hand corner of the mailing piece measuring 4 3/4' in length by 5/8" in height.  This is not a requirement for automation compatibility however if there isn't a clear zone the post office will place a label to cover any information in the clear zone area and apply a barcode onto the label on any pieces that are not already barcoded or any pieces where they are having difficulty reading the barcode provided.  There is also a second label possibly covering up information placed on the front side of the mailing piece during this process.  A clear zone will avoid this problem.

·        Design your piece using a permit indicia and save the metering charges.  If you don't have a permit already, save yourself the $180.00 setup and $180.00 annual fee and use our permit for free (some special rules apply for non-profit organizations).  Mail N' Stuff Services maintains a Seattle based permit which qualifies you for additional savings on all of your zip code 980 and zip code 981 mailing pieces.