Is there a better option than franking? 

When your company is looking to save money on their mounting postal costs Franking is one of the first places you may start looking. On the front of it, Franking seems like the perfect answer. Many companies are still avid fans of this method.

But when you speak to a large number of these companies as we have, companies embroiled in franking are mostly naively unaware of the actual costs. And those that are, struggle to find alternatives and when they do their contractual small print won’t let them out of the agreement without significant penalty costs.

Franking is a minefield of hidden charges and fixed contracts, leaving many companies with as many headaches as they were trying to prevent. So what are the alternatives?

In this article, we are going to look at the whole process of creating mail and highlighting the things that you should consider before looking into your options.

Things to consider before creating your Direct Mail Campaign

• Machine costs (rental & Purchase)
• Contract terms (Usage Penalties & Long contracts)
• Contract cancellation costs
• Franking Ink prices (and their time-limited digital controlled lifespan)
• Postage Rate update costs
• Postage costs
• Material costs (Paper & Envelops)
• Brochure costs
• Storage costs
• Print costs
• Amount of time spent performing or arranging all the above

The first thing to ask yourself is what kind of mail you are sending out.

Each company is different and different solutions are needed. Here you want to be considering not only what size of the item you are posting but what each item contains. Letters and Parcel differ by physical size and are easily distinguished. But the content can vary in weight and size too. If you can forecast the potential cost then that becomes a relief when budgeting.

For help with this, you can use “Size & Weight Guide”.

So what type of letters are you sending out: Regular, Large or Both?

Now consider the written content of the letter.

• Are you sending large volumes of the same letter to different recipients?

(for example marketing materials)

• Are you sending large numbers of bespoke letters to varying recipients?

(eg.  Monthly Statements or contract documents)

• Are you sending the same letter to the same recipients regularly?

(eg.  Service or membership Documents)

• Are you sending bespoke letters to same few recipients?

(eg.  communications to a client list)

Each one of these questions and any others you think of will enable you to change how you even create these pieces of mail, not just how you post them.

Sadly the hidden costs in Franking make what should be a simple and cheap task, often quite the opposite.

A consideration to put all of these into a cost-saving scenario is to use a mailing house solution.

Where not only the cost of postage can be reduced but the cost of print, all the materials and time involved too.

A solution that provides the paper, the printing ink, the envelop, the folding and insertion, the postage and the sortation and still save you money and time on each and every one of those aspects.

Personalisation is key to many mailing offerings too. Did you know you can personalise the content of your mailing? Not just the name and address, But the actual body of text or content of a package. With the use of a database, clever printing, smart feeding and Pick’n’Place you can automate nearly all mail requirements down to the images they see on their letter or marketing materials that are relevant to each and every individual.

Now Franking can do a lot but it can’t do that. And the best bit is there are no hidden charges with our direct mail service.

Each aspect is priced at a set rate dependant on volume. At Flow we measure everything, we can give you a page count on your print. Envelop usage numbers, a number of items posted and their type and weight and much more. We can even warehouse and use your own brochures,  letterhead and envelops if you already have them or we can create them for you inhouse. I think what’s important when looking at Mailing is to establish what you need and then what part of the industry benefits you the most.

Benefits of using our Direct Mail Company

The unique aspect of Flow is that we also do

• Pick & Place with inline Gluing
• also, we incorporate a Database for your product to ensure we know when to reorder stock for you and how much we have in the warehouse.

We for example send samples of Plumbing products out for our client. When Flow is asked we send a brochure and the sample item (everything from new valve types to actual pieces of pipe.) out to their client list. Not something your average Mail provider can do.

Flow has saved companies Huge amounts of money annually as our clients will testify. Not just the first time, but every time there becomes another cheaper way still, we will offer you that too. We gain Clients because we know what we do, very well. And we keep our clients because we continually ensure we are doing the best job at the best price for our clients.

Let’s recap all of once again.