Is cost-cutting on your list of company goals? As your budget lines swell because of increases across many lines, you can get a quick win by reducing your auto insurance communications expenses.
Let’s review how you’ll cut spending without compromising quality, compliance, accuracy, or security.
Eliminate All Costs Associated with Materials
Print and mail communications require materials, including paper, ink, and toner. Depending on your volume, you may or may not be getting the best prices. Additionally, these things are getting more expensive, especially paper, which now may come with a tariff tax.
Decreasing the amount of paper and mailed documents won’t bring expenses down because you’re not buying at bulk rates. Those are usually only achievable by commercial printers.
Instead of seeing these costs balloon, you can lock in great rates by outsourcing.
Remove Capital Expenses Associated with Auto Insurance Communications
In-house print and mail includes capital expenditures such as equipment, machinery, and technology. These things are expensive and require maintenance and upgrades. You’ll be in an endless loop of costs.
Capital expenses no longer have to be your responsibility when you work with a provider. They have built an ecosystem of the most advanced solutions. If you’re no longer maintaining the equipment, you’ll cut out these expenses, as well.
Clear Out Overhead
Beyond the machinery and materials, there are many overhead costs associated with printing and mailing in-house. There’s the space that you either own or lease. For any location, you’ll also have energy and utility expenses, as well as security features.
It all adds up on your budget lines, but they are all necessary for operations. You’ll be able to remove these expenses if you opt to outsource.
Reassign Labor
Running printing and mailing internally requires skilled labor. They must understand compliance and security measures. They also need to know how to use the equipment and technology.
Transitioning to a service provider for transactional communications doesn’t mean you have to remove headcount. Instead, these employees could focus more on your core competencies. You may have open slots now that they could fill, so you don’t have to spend more on recruitment.
Get Much Better Rates on Postage
Postage is another big cost center. It’s only going to increase, and, in fact, does so usually twice annually. Postage optimization helps with better rates, but you may not have the volume or expertise to realize this.
However, with a professional print and mail company, they use a variety of strategies to achieve the best pricing. These include:
- High-volume presorting by ZIP codes
- Using address hygiene tools to limit undeliverable mail
- Sorting and stacking with the Intelligent Mail Barcode (IMb)
- Commingling to further sort by ZIP codes
- Mail piece standardization
By employing all these features, an outsourcing partner earns the best rates and passes them on to you.
Reduce Compliance Costs
Another somewhat hidden element of in-house print and mail is the cost of compliance. You need many mechanisms in place to adhere to regulations regarding protecting consumer data and ensuring accuracy.
These checks and balances could be costs associated with technology and labor. It can often be tedious, taking lots of time because much of it is manual.
With a transactional specialist, they bake compliance into every workflow and use technology like intelligent insertion for accuracy. They typically have dedicated employees who focus solely on compliance. You don’t really pay “extra” for this, but you are now.
Auto Insurance Communications Doesn’t Have to Be So Expensive
Cost savings cross many operational areas when you decide to outsource. You’ll be able to reinvest that money in other areas of your business that provide growth and profits. You can see boosts in accuracy and quality, as well.
The key is to find the right partner. There are many choices, but most commercial printers don’t specialize in transactional communications. PCI Group does. It’s all we do, and we’ve transitioned many in-house operations with a streamlined, effective process.
If you’re ready to save on this expense, schedule a no-cost consultation today.
