Postage costs can be a little high, especially for startup businesses and new entrepreneurs who want to ship and advertise their products to customers. If you’re planning to deliver many products or mail hundreds of letters to your clients but you’re worried about blowing your budget out of the water, here are the most effective ways to save up on postage costs and become more profitable.
Use The Standard Boxes
If you have just started out with your business venture, there’s no doubt that the business is still small, unestablished, and not making any profits yet, which also means that you have a small budget. You can start out by using priority mail, to take advantage of the standard boxes and envelopes provided by the Post Office and shipping services. These boxes are durable and free, which will allow you to save up on boxes. When you start making profits and expanding, you can then produce your own boxes or envelopes to strengthen your brand.
Bulk Mail and Barcoding Systems
Bulk mail is when you send mail in bulk quantities. If you’re planning to send mail in large quantities, you have an advantage; bulk mail costs less per post. However, you need a permit; meet with your postmaster and ask about your eligibility to get a bulk mail permit. The information found at the royal mail mailmark, suggest you put in place a barcoding system that allows you to process your mail in a cost-efficient way. Try to know the mail requirements and find out about the bulk mail and mailmark costs to determine how much money these methods will save. This way you can lower your breakeven point.
EDDM
EDDM or Every Door Direct Mailing is a great way to get more postage savings. The EDDM postal service allows you to target specific geographic areas by demographic criteria and characteristics and mail to all homes in a neighborhood at the lowest postage rates. You can choose to send mail to one or more full carrier routes, depending on your wants and needs. This service is perfect for local businesses who want to reach all customers in their vicinity. Restaurants, sports centers, and local clubs can send posts and deliver products to all nearby homes without buying a mailing list or spending money on promotion costs. All you need is to:
- Visit the EDDM site from the US postal service
- Type your zip code or specific address
- Select the routes where you want your postings to be shipped
- Choose whether you are targeting consumers or other businesses (B2C or B2B)
- Check the blue routes to see how many homes and neighborhoods you will reach, as well as the postage price
- Choose a drop-off day when you will deliver your mail to the post office
- Press continue and choose your method of payment
- You will then be sent the nearest post office location and drop-off information to get to the right post office.
This service can also inform you about the overall demographic information of the carrier route. This can be beneficial as you can gather more data about your target market and appeal to them. However, you can’t deliver mail to more than 5,000 homes using this EDDM service. You also need to check the EDDM reference guide to know the specific requirements regarding the shape and size of the mailing piece.
Consolidating services
If your postage weighs between 150 and 20,000 pounds, this is referred to as LTL or “less than truckload” shipments. Less than truckload shipment rates are much higher than shipments meeting the truckload criteria, they have to pass by a truck terminal first for the carrier to consolidate them. Reaching out to a freight consolidation service can be a good idea as they will combine your shipment with other shipments to reach a full truckload that can be taken to the company’s terminal directly, loaded onto the truck, and delivered, saving money and time.
Bubble Mailers
If you’re shipping lightweight materials like clothing or books, you don’t need sturdy padding or packages, you can send them with a bubble mailer. This is a famous, inexpensive packaging method that many businesses like to use when sending out products that are less than 13-oz.
Informative Products
Downloading software and adopting cloud-based versions and applications can inform customers about your products at reduced costs. If you choose to include all information about the products in your postings, this will increase your costs and will require more items to be sent by mail. Using software for informative data and promotions can be a lot more economical.
Shipping merchandise and delivering posts can make for complicated operations at first. There are a lot of options to choose from and narrowing them down to find the ones most fitting to your needs can be a hassle. However, after reading all these tips and methods, and with the right planning, anyone can find affordable, efficient, and consistent methods to reach customers.