What you don’t know about commingling mail can cost you time and money!

The mail industry is complex, and navigating the USPS can seem intimidating - to the point of stopping a lot of marketers, mailers, and other organizations from realizing significant postal savings. Demystifying commingled mail may help you decide if it’s a good option for your organization.

What’s commingled mail?

In a nutshell: Commingling mail is the automated sorting of multiple mailings into a single mail tray. This mixing of mail is done to satisfy USPS requirements for five-digit discount rates.

How it works: Mailers need to put a minimum of 150 pieces of mail, per ZIP code, in a mail tray. Commingling increases your chance of hitting the magic 150-piece number.

Example: Imagine there are three mailers, and each has 50 pieces for zip code 44102.  Alone, they all qualify for a three-digit rate.  But together, they all qualify for the lower five-digit rate.

When you commingle your mail with a five-million-piece mailing, your mail qualifies for five-digit rates. The savings can really pile up!

What commingling is not

Don’t confuse commingling with co-palletization:  Co-palletizing mail is the process of manually building single destination postal skids. This will only impact destination entry discounts.

Some mailers are also under the impression that commingling adds time to a mailing, due to the coordination and extra steps. But commingled mail actually saves time: It’s consolidated and touched less (keeping the mail piece’s integrity, to boot), and also ships deeper into the USPS system from the outset. When you work with a high-quality mailer, such as Midwest Direct, the integrity of your mail is maintained while the speed is improved.

There’s also a misconception that commingling mail means you will lose flexibility. Meaning once your job has started, it can’t be undone. This is not true for data-enhanced commingled mail. Smart use of customer data means mail pieces can actually be moved in and out of mailings - like pieces on a chessboard. You actually gain added flexibility, and a process for addressing any problems or concerns that arise after a mailing has begun.

The benefits of Asking Midwest Direct to Do Your Commingled Mailings

Why choose Midwest Direct to commingle your mail? We have high standards! When you work with us you'll have a dedicated service representative. So you'll never struggle to solve a mail problem alone. Contact us for information ranging from "Where's My Mail?" to "What's the best way to do this?" We will make sure you're working with the best information at all times. Because we maintain a high-quality production facility with modern redundancies and risk management practices in place, your mail integrity is maintained and safe. And because we deliver directly into the USPS mail stream, your mail will earn a discount from the USPS.

Don't let misconceptions about commingled mail stop you from better mail services and postage discounts. For more information on how to save time and money through the highest possible automation discounts, direct mail delivery into the USPS system, and best-in-class customer service, contact us today.

 

Download our Commingle Fact or Fiction Infographic to learn more or contact us today to get started!