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Well, the year is winding to a close and, along with the Holidays and festive spirit, we are once again facing our annual dose of postage increases.

Today, I want to focus on Lettermail postage and how a little planning can help to trim postage costs.

I guess the first thing to suggest would be to ensure that if you have Lettermail mailings of any volume, to try to mail them on or before Friday, January 8, 2010 (last day for current pricing) if you can. We are all facing a 5.56% increase on Short/Long (standard size) Lettermail weighing 30 grams or less. That translates to $556 on 10,000 pieces and $5,560 on a mailing of 100,000 pieces. Either way, it is money that you can easily keep in your pocket if you mail before the new prices come in to effect on Monday, January 11, 2010.

Next, we must be aware of the two new Lettermail weight classes that will be introduced for heavier, Oversize Lettermail. I will explain these in detail, but by way of a quick example, it will cost $50,000 more to mail 100,000 pieces weighing 401 grams and $25,000 more to mail 100,000 pieces weighing 301 grams after January 8. Again, the obvious solution is to mail prior to the price increases if you can. However, in the event that this is not possible, there are some things that you can do to keep your Oversize Lettermail postage costs down.

Today, the heaviest weight class for Oversize Lettermail is 201 grams to 500 grams. As of January 11, 2010, this weight class will be broken into three separate classes, with postage increases, as follows:

First of all, if we can stay between 200 and 300 grams, inclusive, there is no increase at all, which is a bonus! However, as we can see from the table above, there are two weight thresholds that it would be preferable to stay under, these being 301 grams and 401 grams.

I would never recommend cutting back on text or copy to reduce pages because that could undermine the intent of the communication, especially for regulatory mailings. However, you can often say the same things with less weight, as we will show below.

Many people are not aware that some coated (glossy) stocks tend to be about 16% heavier than plain stocks. If we look at a plain, 70-page 8.5” X 11” booklet plus a cover letter being mailed in a 9” X 12” envelope, weight components might be as follows:

However, one might prefer to use a coated stock and in this example a coated stock would increase the weight roughly as follows:

As you can see, this would move us into the more expensive weight class.

The purpose of the foregoing examples is to show how the use of stocks can affect the overall weight of a mailing package. And, in this example, we would only have to reduce the weight by about 6 grams to enjoy preferable postage rates. Of course, there are many different types of coated stocks and I am sure that we could find one that would still keep us around the 300-gram mark. The key is to recognize where the thresholds are and to work with your printer to select stocks that enable you to keep the weights at or below key thresholds, if possible.

If you look at Lettermail rates across the board, you will see that there are some very hefty increases in moving from one weight class to the next. For example, there is currently an 81.48% increase for Short/Long (Standard) Lettermail when going from 30 to 31 grams. On 100,000 pieces of mail that represents increased postage of $44,000. Ouch! To illustrate this further, the following graph shows the escalation at each threshold for 2010 Lettermail postage rates.

As you can see, recognizing Lettermail postage thresholds and examining practical ways to marginally reduce the weight of a Lettermail piece can really save you a lot of money. Should you ever need assistance in this area, as always, please do not hesitate to call us here at Highland Marketing.

Tagged As: Direct Mail lettermail postage