The number of mail pieces moving through the Postal Service is on the upswing, and marketers are again eyeing traditional mail as a viable vehicle to reach customers and prospects.

Unfortunately, Direct Marketing News estimates that returned mail or “undeliverable-as-addressed” (UAA) mail costs direct mailers more than $6 billion every year.1

Chances are, your customers are looking to produce such documents every day, and you might worry a great deal about how to outfox the UAA mail phenomenon. With a savvy staff who knows the ropes about postal optimisation tools, you can help extend the life cycle of these communications.

It is important to show your customers that you can deliver the services and capabilities they may not realise are possible today, while saving them every cent possible on postage — the major portion of mailing costs.

Do you demonstrate such expertise to your customers today? You certainly should, and with this checklist, you are much closer to doing so.

The checklist:

  1. Do you have Intelligent Mail® barcode (IMb) solutions to help you qualify for the steepest discounts possible, as well as provide tracing services, critical for time-sensitive documents?
  1. Is your shop equipped with the latest postal optimization solutions? This is essential. It includes address cleansing and postal sorting, which guarantee that an address actually exists, eliminating non-deliverable mail and ensuring that your document is mailed to the right person at the right address.
  1. How up-to-date are your data integrity tools? The right tools can help you to ensure that missing or damaged documents are replaced. Software can track and verify individual documents, providing simple verification or complex audit-ready reports — a capability that can eliminate potential fines.

The cost of preparation, materials and postage is high and going higher. Your operations manager should have a checklist like the one above when evaluating new postal optimization technologies, which can help keep these costs down and your customers happy.

Ricoh helps you embark on your digital transformation journey to deliver a better customer experience while improving productivity and reducing operational costs.

Ready to learn how other Canadian businesses are dealing with mail? Visit Ricoh ChangeMakers today.

 

1 Ken Brashears. “Quality Control: Taking Action to Void Undeliverable-as-Addressed Mail.” Mailing Systems Technology. May 27, 2015. http://mailingsystemstechnology.com/article-3367-quality-control-taking-action-to-avoid-undeliverable-as-addressed-mail.html