CHAPTER 11
THE POST OFFICE AND
THE SMALL MAIL ORDER OPERATOR
If you have not yet done so, right NOW go to the nearest
major postal center and request
- a business reply postcard and envelope license application
- a bulk mail license application (you may also wish to make
an appointment to attend a post office How-To-Use-bulk-Mail
training session)
- a book rate mailer's license application
- postal rate cards for domestic and foreign mail
That which you cannot immediately obtain should be ordered
by phone.
GO FIRST CLASS
Do 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 MAIL
With 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 MAIL
Don'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 REQUESTED
If 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 FREE
The 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 MAILING
Some 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 DELIVERY
Russ 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 SECURELY
For 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.