Is presorting First-Class mail the right route for you?

The following is taken from Newsletter Publishers' Guide to Smart Mailing, written by Harry L. Baisden, revised by Kate Muth, and published by the Newsletter & Electronic Publishers Association.

Even if your First-Class mail doesn't have barcodes on it, you can get a discount by having it presorted by delivery areas. The problem is, you have to have at least 500 or more pieces in the mailing to qualify for presort rates. There are other requirements, too.

But there's a way to avoid seeing to all those requirements yourself. Just like a newsletter publisher is usually not in the printing business and thus has his newsletters printed by an outside vendor, he isn't in the presort business either. Hire a reputable outside presort house and skip over the next few paragraphs about presort requirements.

However, if you insist on doing everything yourself, here are the basics. First, you have to pay an annual $100 presort mailing fee. Second, every mailing has to have at least 500 pieces to qualify for presort rates.

Under rates current at the writing of this report (2001), it costs 34[cts.] to mail a one-ounce letter to anywhere in the United States. So figuring your fulfillment postage costs should be a simple process--.34 times the number of subscribers you have times the number of issues to be sent to them. But it isn't that simple, because of all the discounts available plus a few options.

If you presort without bar-coding, your single-piece rate is 32[cts.] So if you're able to mail 500 or more pieces at a shot, you can chop 2[cts.] per piece off the mailing cost by presorting the mail yourself. But doing that isn't all that simple.

Address update tools

First, you must have updated your addressing system within 180 days of the mailing with a Postal Service-approved address update tool like the Address Change Service, National Change of Address, or FASTforward. And you must use a Postal Service-certified process at least annually to ensure the accuracy of your +5-digit ZIP Codes.

You can't drop the mail at just any old post office--it must be deposited at an entry point designated by the USPS for accepting presort mail. The mail must be marked "pre-sorted" and "First-Class," and it must be packaged in Postal Service one-or two-foot letter trays, labeled in accordance with Postal Service regulations. The trays also must be strapped and sleeved in accordance with regulations.

And this is just a simplified overview of what you have to go through to get the presort rate for your mail. Just like with a lot of other services, you have to ask yourself, "Am I in the newsletter business or the mailing business?" If your answer is the former, your best bet is a presorter....

Presort Houses

Lest readers get the idea that this report is an ad for the presort business, there are pluses and minuses to using presort houses, particularly for fulfillment mail. If sending your fulfillment mail to a presort house causes you to lose any time in delivery of your newsletters, presorting may not work for you.

If the presort house has to hold your mail to wait for sufficient volume from other mailers, you can lose a day or more in delivery. Or, switching to a presort house may mean switching to a less reliable post office entry unit, where your mail can lose a day or more in delivery. Former NEPA president John Wills