Category: Mailing

When buying an item online you may look at the delivery options to see which one suits your needs. Many companies offer a next day delivery service and recently some have even started offering same day delivery! If the item is being sent by royal mail post then it is usually recorded, tracked, 1st class or 2nd class. Recorded delivery is not guaranteed for the next day (many people get this confused), it just means that someone will need to sign for the item. Tracked items are usually delivered the next working day and you can chose if you need it delivered before a certain time. 1st class is often 1 -2 working days in the UK and second class 2- 4 working days. This said, apart from the tracked service none of the others are guaranteed, so you could be waiting weeks for that parcel to arrive. The post office will not investigate a missing letter or parcel until after 28 days and even then, if it has no tracking number it will be very hard for them to find out where it has gone.

So is it worth paying for faster delivery? Only really if it is guaranteed.

Many people now do much of their Christmas shopping online. This can save money as you are able to quickly shop around for a great deal and mean that you do not have to contend with the Christmas rush and traffic that you will find within the town centres.

One issues that comes with online shopping around Christmas is actually getting your parcels delivered. Already retailers are warning of delays with normally postage due to a high demand, and this is only set to get worse as we get closer to Christmas.

The advice is order as soon as possible and allow for delays. If a product states delivery 5 days then you should allow for at least 10 to be on the safe side. Another way to avoid this is to do click and collect where you reserve the order online but collect from store, saving on delivery times.

Printing out material can be costly, especially if you are having to do a lot of colour or photo printing. Many manufacturers recommend that you only use the genuine inks that they manufacture as other inks may not only offer you the best quality and do not last as long, but can damage your printer in the long run. They often also state that they probably will not work correctly in the printer or not even be recognised.

Following up on this I did some research of my own and found many companies offering printer ink at a much lower price than the manufacturers and they stated that you were entitled to 100% money back if the ink did not work. After trying some of the ink in my HP printer I found that I as pleasantly surprised with the results. Not only was the ink a lot cheaper but the quality was great and the cartridge seemed to last longer.

Still for some companies, mailing is a huge annual cost. With many companies sending out thousands of letters each month to their customers the costs soon start to add up, especially if they also send out postage paid envelops for their customers to use to return paperwork to them.

You will find that a number of companies now offer paperless systems allowing them to not only help the environment but also save money on staffing costs and postage. These savings are often then passed on to the customer to bring the cost of their services down.

If your company does still need to mail information out then be sure that as much of it is sent in one go as possible. Too many companies still send out letters a few days apart to the same customer, which could have easily gone in one envelope saving then hundreds of pounds over a given period.

When it comes to marketing, it can be hard to know what works and what doesn’t. One option that you have is to do something called mass mailing. This is where you send out an email to a large group of people to advertise a product, service or your company in general.

Some businesses send out mailings to an existing database they have built up from previous, current or prospective clients and other businesses buy in lists from a third party. When doing any mass mailout you need to ensure that the people you are sending it to have opted in to receive information from you as it is illegal to send to someone that hasn’t. All emails should have an unsubscribe link on to allow people to remove themselves from the list should they wish to do so.

Buying lists of data can be dangerous as you do not know that they have opted in and more often than not you will find a number of the email addresses no longer exist or that you are contacting people that have no interest in your company and the products or services you sell.