Mail Merge

Discover the benefits of offering printing and mailing all under one roof. Read what these managers say about running a successful mailing operation.

We've all heard the familiar (though unofficial) United States Postal Service (USPS) slogan: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

This creed also seems to be the testament of many in-plant managers who offer mail services, in addition to printing, to their parent companies and organizations.

In recent years, however, there's been a change in the way mail is handled and distributed. Today, having a central location for both mail and printing is important, and in-plants are merging the two to fit under one roof with one manager. The ability to share staff, equipment and expertise make having a centralized operation a plus.

"If there's no cooperation between mail and design—meaning if it's not designed properly—it can't be mailed properly," says Dennis Maze, supervisor of Printing/Duplicating Services at Southern Illinois University (SIU) in Carbondale.

Since mail and print functions were merged 12 years ago, he says, printed pieces are now able to be designed with mailing in mind. Automated mailing codes can be incorporated into the design, information can be moved away from the address area and pieces can be folded to meet postal requirements.

USPS reclassification efforts have greatly changed the way mail is managed. The more preparation a mail document gets (such as bar coding), the bigger the discount—and you can pass on the savings to your customers.

Before USPS reclassification, Maze's customers used to mail on their own and didn't worry about how mail arrived at its destination. With the new regulations, however, that would have proven expensive. By using automated pre-sort software, SIU weeds incorrect addresses out, letting the customer know the mistake, beforehand.

SIU isn't the only organization to change with the times.

"We used postal reclassification as the justification to begin our company-wide project to CASS certify [for address certification] and bar code all of our mail," says Tim Steenhoek, director of printing and distribution at the Equitable of Iowa Data and Graphics Printing center.

Printing and mailing functions there were merged in September into a brand new building in Des Moines. The in-plant purchased an abundance of equipment to support its new duties and location. Some of its primary mailing equipment:

• Group1 software including Accumail.

• BCC Software Mail Manager 2000.

• Videojet 4000 address system.

• Neopost and Bell-Howell inserters.

• Pitney Bowes Paragon II mailing machines.

"Every company employee now has Accumail on their PC," Steenhoek says. "Move update regulations also prompted us to implement National Change of Address. This has reduced our return mail by over 70 percent."

New Rules Mean New Equipment

Likewise, University of Washington Publication Services had to adjust to the USPS regulations. So the combined in-plant/mail center purchased $600,000 worth of automated mailing equipment.

"Before we had the equipment, sometimes we would have to label a job twice," recalls Frank Davis, associate director of UW Publication Services in Seattle. "We would first put on the return address and then run the piece through again and put on the [mailing] address."

With his Videojet 4000 ink-jet address system, the return and mailing address now get sprayed on in one step, eliminating unnecessary work.

Since his shop processes 20 million pieces of mail annually, Davis needed a machine that would let him verify addresses, cutting down on errors—and headaches. His solution?

"We have an optical character reader machine that sorts incoming mail and sorts and bar codes outgoing mail for discounts," reveals Davis.

Likewise, Steenhoek's operation bar codes and sorts by zip code.

"Approximately 92 percent of all desk mail that is sent to our presort house is bar coded," he reveals. "We even sort, on the computer, our internal mailings by message station before addressing." The latter eliminated manual sorting.

For Equitable of Iowa Data and Graphics Printing—which handles inbound, outbound and automated mail—financial reports are the first order of business, so accuracy counts.

"Our most difficult mailing job is to mail new variable annuity prospectuses and annual reports," says Steenhoek. "Each policy holder could be invested in a number of different funds, which means they get a report for each fund they are invested in. In order to avoid having each policyholder receive several pieces of mail on the same day, we sort the databases to group the policyholders into every possible combination."

Steenhoek says that with the emerging growth of the variable annuity, the project is complex from the data preparation to management of all the materials for the mailing.

Secrets of Success

Both expedient personnel and superior equipment are necessary ingredients in a successful mailing operation. But customers also need some prompting. Davis offers his university clients training classes on how to prepare ink-jet files to convert mail painlessly.

Since 1989, printing, mailing and copying are under the umbrella of UW Publication Services, and Davis says that communication exchanges between customers and employees are one of the advantages of the successful merge.

"We have publication coordinators that are, in a sense, customer service reps, and they manage the customer's job," he says.

Customers can contact the coordinator about the job's status, or to make a change.

Easier To Do Business

At the Indiana University-Purdue University, in Indianapolis, Terry Waldon, director of publishing, document and distribution services, says his 80-employee shop's merger a little more than a year ago makes it much easier for internal customers to do business, since they only have to deal with one department.

"When [customers] do direct mail pieces, all they need to do is meet with one person that will do everything from the design, printing and the distribution," explains Waldon.

"It's like one-stop-shopping," he adds.

Waldon says his shop is always reevaluating itself to meet customer's needs. "We are continuously evaluating technology with our customers in mind and with our speculations," he says.

SIU Printing/Duplicating Services also had its customers in mind when it created its user-friendly Web site. At the site, customers can learn about computerized mail list management services, standard mailing lists, bulk-rate mass mailing services and more.

Before SIU Printing/Duplicating Services offered mailing, problems of invalid addresses, incorrect automated rates for certain documents and wrong mailing classes plagued the in-plant's processing center.

"Sometimes, the customers are not consistent in how they type in the information," discloses Maze. Entering data in incorrect fields is one example. To combat that, the shop passes out a handout to guide the client step-by-step on the correct way of mailing. "The more [our customers] do it, the better they get."

Find Out More:

www.pso.siu.edu/home/printdup.html