Postage discounts - cheaper postage - mail sorting - Mail sorted

There are many hundreds of ways to post or transport mail - so please do give us a call to discuss the best or most cost effective method for your project. We post many thousands of items a day and specialise in getting the best discounts possible.

If you are posting using stamps or a franking machine then there are many options to get more cost effective posting - what is the catch I hear you think? Well there is not one, there are a few rules you need to comply with and the more you post the better the discounts you get.

You may be surprised about how much discount can be achieved for small volumes of mail ... confused then please read on and we may be able to un-scrabble the confusion.

What is the entry level and where do we start?

Large letters and items over 100 grams - you only need 1000 items
Letters - under 100 grams and C5 or DL in size - you need 4000 items
Letters - under 100 grams and C5/DL Cleanmail - you need 1000 items

Why are we able to offer such high postage discounts?

We work closely with Royal Mail and the Down Stream Access Providors (DSA) to get the best speed of delivery versus the best price. We ship high volumes of mail that is joined from many different clients to help us achieve an overall postage discount for everyone. This is also referred to as Bulk mail services.

What is the highest postage discount available and why?

The best cost for sending a piece of marketing campaign materials is in the form of a letter (under 240 x 165 and less than 5mm thick and under 100 grams) you do need to send over 4000 mail sortable items (Bulk mail) - or a number of Companies joining together to send this volume.

We carry out a process called mail sorting the data, which really means we sort it into an order that Royal Mail can handle without any further processing.

This comes in a number of forms - here are a few examples

Letters

• Low sort Barcode (Use to be called 120 CBC)
• Low sort OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
• High sort (Use to be called 1400
• All of these come in 1st class, 2nd class and Economy (economy use to be Mailsort 3)

Considering sending with Down Stream Access (DSA)

The only difference with sending via the DSA service is that only one service is available which is a 2-3 day (2nd class service), however there are some benefits with sending via the DSA channel.

• More cost effective
• More control over the landing day of the post
• You have several options of who you prefer to send with Citi Post, City Link, Secure Mail, TNT, One Post
• This is still referred to as Bulk Mail Services
• You can generate your own version of the postage mark

What is mail sorting?

Royal Mail or downstream access suppliers call it work share, we do some of their work and get the discounts for this and pass the discounts on to you. It means that we sort the data, print it and maintain it in an order that makes it easy for the postal carrier to handle - getting you the discount and a faster speed of delivery.

First, second or Economy (third class)?

Royal Mail are the only postal provdor to be able to post on an Economy service, (this use to be called Mailsort 3 and was delivered on a 5-7 delivery schedule, the prepaid postage impression (PPI) has not changed but the name has it is now called Economy mail and Royal Mail endevour to deliver 66% of this mail by day 4 of posting - they are increasing this percentage as the new systems bed in, but do bear in mind this Economy mail can still take longer than 4 days - so still exceptionally good where you are expecting telephone responses and want to spread the calls over a few days as the different mail cetres will deliver on differenet schedules depending on the workload in thier area.

What are the entry levels?

You can post with us from as little as 1 item if you use our Drop and Post Service, it means you haev to drop the post off here at Mail and Print in Berwick St Leonard, but you get the benefit of the discounted franking rates

Approvals

We hold all of the mailing approvals for the following

• Low Sort Barcode and OCR
• Highsort - all levels
• Advertising Mail
• Mailing House approval to send Mechanical Mail approvals on your PPI account
• Strategic Mailing Partnership - Full Membership

Previous approvals held

• Cleanmail (OCR or CBC)
• Cleanmail plus
• Mail sort 120 OCR
• Mail sort 120 CBC
• Mail sort 700 CBC
• Mail sort 1400

Got your own Royal Mail account? Then we are happy to post on this, but do bear in mind that if you don't have the data and material processing approvals for Mail sort 120 or 700 systems you may not be getting the best discounts available.