In the world of direct mail, there are many categories. Most are promotional and have a simple workflow with little oversight required. Transactional mail printing and mailing services are unique and more complex. This is due to the nature of the communication in that it contains sensitive or protected information.
Any company can choose to outsource this work. Doing so comes with many benefits, including saving money and gaining efficiencies. You can reap those and more by partnering with the right provider.
What Are Transactional Mail Printing and Mail Services in Transactional Communications?
Transactional mail printing and mail services in transactional communications describe outsourcing the production to a vendor. The services for this include the entire lifecycle of a job, from data transmission through delivery.
You can expect these things to be part of the service:
- Receipt of job files through a secure portal
- Print production that follows all regulations and compliance mandates
- Accurate insertion of each document into the correct envelope
- High-quality printed products reflecting your design and brands
- The ability to track jobs from data transmission through delivery
- Visibility into all production activities, data, and accounting through a secure online business document management portal
- Postage optimization strategies to reduce costs
- Business continuity safeguards
- Letter design
It’s a complete package of transactional mail printing and mail services that removes the administrative burden from your staff. Since print and mail aren’t your core competencies, you’ll achieve savings and efficiency.
How Do Direct Mail Printing and Mail Services Reduce Costs?
Production costs of your in-plant are only growing. Ensuring you have a modern operation that supports compliance, accuracy, and quality is an expensive endeavor. You may have considerable volume in the millions, but that’s still a small scale compared to professional print companies. Because of the number of jobs they print and mail, they get the best rates for materials and postage.
The Real Expense of Your In-Plant
So, what is your in-house printing really costing you? You have to look at all expenses — direct and indirect. Those include:
- Equipment and technology: These are capital purchases in the millions that require continuous maintenance and upgrades.
- Materials: Paper, ink, and toner have all risen in price. Transactional print and mail companies have contracts with the largest distributors and receive the best rates because of their volume.
- Postage: In order to get the best rates, you need sophisticated capabilities for presorting, commingling, and using the USPS IMB (Intelligent Mail® Barcode) to sort and stack, and address hygiene to minimize returned mail.
- Labor: If you have dedicated resources for your print and mail, your costs are increasing here, as well.
- Overhead: This cost category includes everything needed for your space, including rent, utilities, security,
- Other expenses: These relate to your operational framework and would include the additional costs of inserts, template changes, and downtime.
Outsourcing Transitions Capital Costs to Operating Ones
When you outsource transactional mail printing and mailing services, you no longer have capital expenses, only operating ones. You immediately eliminate equipment, technology, labor, and overhead. You also benefit from a transactional communication company’s scale in terms of getting better rates for materials and postage.
Further, you’ll realize savings from their expertise. For example, we use the White Paper Factory (WPF) method for our transactional mail printing. It marries fully digitally composed files with in-line print production and intelligent insertion for dynamic printing on each document. As a result, there are no changeovers, as letters print at once. It also provides the ability to print dynamically on each document with custom messaging to each recipient. You’ll no longer need inserts, either. The WPF also reduces waste, supports compliance, and improves accuracy.
Your costs for outsourcing are more consistent, so you can budget accordingly. You’ll also have access to all accounting data with a real-time dashboard. It provides information on postage tallies and invoices.
How Do Transactional Mail Printing and Mail Services Deliver Efficiency?
With transactional mail printing and mail services vendors, they have a defined workflow for each job. It ensures consistency and accuracy in operations. This creates considerable efficiency, with most jobs completed within 24 hours of receipt. That’s important because compliant communications must deliver within a certain timeframe.
Efficiency in how they operate contributes to cost savings and is also crucial in ensuring control over your jobs. You need to have clear insights into production so that the entire lifecycle operates reliably and predictably.
We do this with the WPF along with proprietary processes that incorporate Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma. An efficient production floor should always have these concepts as a foundation.
The inefficiencies you face now with an in-plant operation strain resources, and everything’s always in a rush. These challenges often include the need to change out pre-printed templates and manual work by operators. All these things are no longer a pain point when you outsource.
Outsourcing Your Transactional Mail Printing and Mail Services to Yield Cost and Efficiency Savings
Now is the time to evaluate your in-house printing. It may no longer be fiscally or operationally viable. With an outsourcing provider like PCI Group, you will reduce costs and increase efficiency with complete visibility. Learn more about how we can help by requesting a consultation.
