Best USPS rate?
February 2, 2009 1:30 PM   Subscribe

Best postal rate? I need to send 25,000 postcards (4x6), no rush. What's the going rate at USPS? Thx! "Just a guy trying to sell something."
posted by Brzht to Work & Money (5 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
How much work are you willing to do up front? These guys seem to have a decent explanation of the concept of "pre-sort", which can make a big difference in the rate paid.
posted by nomisxid at 1:46 PM on February 2, 2009


Find a bulk mailer in your area. They buy leases and rent their services. Chances are you can drop the cards w/o addresses and they'll do that + ship for just a couple cents more than the bulk rate.

Look for custom shipping places around your town.
posted by TomMelee at 1:49 PM on February 2, 2009


vistaprint does bulk pre-sort mailing. you can buy lists from them as well.
posted by wocka wocka wocka at 2:05 PM on February 2, 2009


Careful with vistaprint. They are a smidge shady (or used to be).
posted by cashman at 2:59 PM on February 2, 2009


If you want to save money, the best way is to do what TomMelee said and look for somewhere that can do bulk mailing for you.

I work for a non-profit, so we try to save money everywhere. That includes all our mailings, so we do, in-house, the bulk mail sorting in the manner that nomisxid linked to. I have three years of experience working with mailing lists and sorting them for bulk mail, and it's still confusing and hard to do. And if you do it wrong, you may end up having your bulk mailing rejected, and you have to do it all over.

To break it down a little, doing bulk mail yourself requires:
1. Buying a mailing permit for the type of mail you are sending, and printing it on the postcards
2. That you sort the items in order by their 5-digit zip codes, by their 3-digit zip codes, or by the ADC (Area Distribution Center) corresponding to the zip code (so you have to look the ADC up for your zip codes).
3. You have to stack, bundle/tray, and put stickers on the bundles/trays of the items, and there are very specific instructions on how big the stacks can be/what stickers need to go on them, and how the trays need to be arranged.
4. Bundles go into sacks, or trays are stacked by their 3/5-zip codes, by ADC, or as a mixed group. The rate you pay at the post office is calculated on how many sacks or full trays of each zip code/ADC you have. (You get a much larger break on the items all going to the same 3 or 5 digit zip than you do on the others.) There are both minimum and maximum weight and #of item restrictions for trays and for sacks.
5. Taking the items to the Bulk Mail Unit (BMU) responsible for the sending zip code, filling out a bunch of paperwork, and having them double check all the work that you did.

Sound complicated? That's not even covering the half of it. Plus the fact that they are (according to the guys at my BMU) going to be getting much stricter on bulk mailers in the next few months, for example on placement of addresses (to make it easy to read for the delivery people).

Again, your best bet is to find a local bulk mailer. You will get the correct permit number from them to print on your postcards, and they will do all the hard work for you. You still save a bunch in comparison to normal mail, but you don't have any of the headache. Good luck!
posted by gemmy at 5:12 PM on February 2, 2009


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