Direct Mail

 

Chicago Mailing Service can save you time and money on your mailings. Here’s how…

 

POSTAGE SAVINGS VIA USPS WORK SHARE DISCOUNTS

You are familiar with the regular, first class stamp. Most people think of a first class stamp as a ‘fixed fee’ for mailing a letter.

 

The USPS views the stamp revenue as several payments that are applied to the various steps of processing, transporting, and delivering the mail.

Think of what happens to a letter when it is mailed – each step has a cost associated to it:

  • Letters travel from the mailbox to the local post office and then transported to a regional facility.

  • The address is read, verified and a postal barcode printed on the mailpiece.

  • Sorting machines read the barcode and automatically sort and bundle by destination.

  • It is transported to the destination regional facility.

  • It is re-sorted and this time bundled for delivery to the local post offices.

  • It is carried by foot to the mailbox at the destination address.

 

 

The USPS offers reduced postage as a ‘work share discount’. This means that if certain volume requirements are met and the mail is properly preprocessed (the way the USPS processes it), then the customer will earn a ‘work share discount’.

When the customer has preprocessed the mail, the USPS shares the portion of the postage that would normally be required to perform the processing. The discount varies by how many of these steps are performed: address verification and move updates, barcoding, sorting and delivery.

The preprocessing requirements are constantly changing as the USPS automates, and reorganizes its carrier routes and post offices.

 

AUTOMATED PROCESSING MACHINERY REDUCES TIME AND COSTS OF PREPARING THE MAIL

Here are just a couple of examples of how we process mail pieces with machines, providing a high quality mail pieces at costs below what you could by hand:

Folding

Wafer Seals

Inserting

Addressing

 

 

 

Chicago Mailing Service minimizes the total of (postage plus mailing services). You send mail as cost-effectively as possible.

  • Chicago Mailing Service takes your list and mail pieces, and preprocesses them for the Post Office. By doing this (verifying addresses; updating addresses for people that have moved, applying USPS Intelligent Mail Barcodes on each piece; presorting, delivering closer to it’s final destination), Chicago Mailing “shares the work” with the United States Postal Service, and earns a discount on your postage.

  • Sophisticated Machines and Computer Software Reduces Labor, Shortens Processing Time

  • Chicago Mailing Service takes the mail piece as it comes from the printer, and performs all of the steps required before mailing: fold, wafer seal, insert into envelopes, seal, address, apply postage. We can even supply the mailing list!

  • This eliminates the time required to do this yourself… That Thursday mailing that took all of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (!) is now done by someone else.

  • Please take a look at our factory tour to see the machines in action!

Q. We already do our mailings with volunteers. Why should we use Chicago Mailing Service?

A. Chicago Mailing Service processes mail every day, and is current with post office requirements.

Our sophisticated mailing software can generate greater postage discounts than what our customers are earning. Even if you use free labor (volunteers), our ability to earn a lower postage rate many times pays completely for our services!