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THE POST OFFICE AND THE SMALL MAIL ORDEROPERATORIf you have not yet done so, right NOW go to the nearest major postal center and request
GO FIRST CLASSDo not try to memorize all the information you are given by the post office, like when you were in school cramming your head with useless information which you quickly forgot. You will find that if something is financially important to you, you will remember it. After you are familiarized with rates and mailing methods, you should of course try to minimize postage costs with one provision - do not send responses and orders by anything other than first class, unless a special license can save you a lot of money on postage and you've given your customer notice that his order will be delayed. People judge you by how fast and how well you respond to their questions and orders. This is why your reply to inquiries and orders should be filled immediately via first class mail.WHEN TO GO BULK (OR USE OTHER SPECIAL LICENSES)Bulk mail in the U.S.A. is a shipment of at least 200 identical mailing packages. The only admissable variation between envelopes is the arrangement of the contents, and the mailing address. Otherwise, each piece must be the same. Bulk mail is (or at least should be) only for periodic mass mailing of your regular publication(s), if you have any. If you mail out a monthly, bimonthly or quarterly newsletter or tabloid, bulk mail is appropriate.A warning about book rate mailing. In the U.S. and Canada there is a mailing license available which allows a dealer to mail books at very cheap rates. A book is defined as a bound document containing literature and no advertising, at least 48 pages excluding the cover. It does not apply to books that the mailer has published himself (ie., "vanity publishing" is not allowed for book mailing rates). Almost every book I've read about book-selling tells you to break the book mailing law twice: first they tell you that advertising for more books and information should be in the back of your book. Second, they don't tell you that you can't use this special rate for self-published books. These dealers are getting away with it because their packages have not been checked by the post office - yet. Indeed, most of them have been doing it for decades. Some even mail bundled adsheets as "books". I just thought I'd let you know it's technically illegal. If you are making proper (legal) use of a bookrate license, you can add advertising material to the package but you must tell the postal clerk that you are doing so, and you will be billed a little extra. BUSINESS REPLY MAILWith business reply mail you pay the postage when a customer sends you an order or inquiry. Adding this customer service option to your business is a serious matter because of the expense involved. You may wish to use business reply mail (envelopes, not postcards) only for orders, so that you never actually lose money with it.REGISTERED MAILDon't send anything important without registering it and asking to be provided with proof of receipt in the form of the recipient's signature. This includes requests for refunds, mailing legal documents, money orders, collection notices, payments to companies you don't trust, and so on. You could use regular first class mail, but why take the chance?ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTEDIf you put the words "Address Correction Requested" on your third class mail, the post office will go to the trouble of finding and telling you the address of those people on your mailing list who have moved. Some dealers do a mass mailing like this to their entire list once every 6 months or annually, to clean things up and keep their list current. Otherwise, with the postal system the way it is, you could be mailing to a stranger or an empty box for months without knowing it. Believe it or not, 25% of all North Americans move during the course of each year. For this reason, your list (anyone's list) has a natural self-destruct built into it. Address correction will help keep it in check, and will ultimately keep your direct marketing expenses down. An "I miss you" mailing combined with address correction requested is a great way to clean your list. If someone hasn't contacted you since the last 5 to 10 times you've mailed, you may purge him from your list and let him know that you have been forced to do so, but that upon his request, you will put him back on your list.U.S.P.S. OFFERS ADDRESS CORRECTION FREEThe United States Postal Service will check up to 50,000 of your names to make sure they are accurate and up-to-date. Your list must be given to them on disk. Look them up in the phone book for more information. They do this simply because it helps them unclog the mailing system of incorrectly addressed mail.UPS (UNITED PARCEL SERVICE)You can find UPS in your phone book. Call them if you don't want the hassle of having the post office bend, fold, mutilate, burn and lose your packages. UPS insurance is built-in to the pricing; at the post office you pay extra (and you probably don't bother, which makes you both vulnerable and liable for lost or damaged packages). UPS is fast and reliable, and comes highly recommended by a lot of very successful and experienced dealers. That's good enough for me. The UPS operates in the United States and Southeastern Canada. A colleauge in the Northeast U.S. says that he uses U.P.S. and would never use the U.S.P.S. for mailing the thousands of books he sells yearly; the post office is just too unconcerned, there's no real insurance of delivery and delivery is too slow.TIMING YOUR MAILINGSome dealers recommend that you time your mail so that your recipients don't receive it on a Monday. The reasoning is that people receive most of their mail on Mondays and therefore pay less attention to each piece, so you should get your mail to targets on days when they receive less mail - especially Thursdays and Fridays. This of course applies only to unrequested mail or periodical mailings, since orders and inquiries should be filled immediately regardless of what day it is. To make sure that your first class mail arrives on a Wednesday, Thursday or Friday 95% of the time, mail it on a Sunday night (before Monday morning pickup). The postal system currently makes a 90%+ 3-business-day delivery guarantee for out-of-state mail.Where bulk mail is concerned, you can forget about timing, since it takes anywhere from 3 to 15 business days (or longer) for your mail to be delivered. CASH ON DELIVERRuss Von Hoelscher says 40-55% of COD deliveries are returned because the person is unavailable or unwilling to pay the postal carrier for the package when it arrives. I myself am unfamiliar with this payment method and never intend to use it. In fact, most mail order dealers cannot be bothered with it. Consider this: most people work away from home during the day, while U.P.S. and the postal carriers are working.By the way, Russ is the author of over 40 books (!!!) and publishes a newsletter for direct marketers. Write to him at Publisher's Media, POBox 546, El Cajon, CA 92022 (619)-282- 5822. He is one of the top figures in the industry. WRAP YOUR PACKAGES SECURELYFor large envelopes and boxes, you should seal all edges and all seams with packaging tape. Then wrap the package again completely around once in each possible direction (3 strips for boxes and 2 strips for envelopes since envelopes have width and length but no depth).The packages you send WILL be subject to abuse from time to time, so wrap them well. If they fall apart in transit and get returned or lost or arrive at the customer's house damaged, you've got an unhappy customer on your hands. |
