Intelligent Mail: Are You Ready?
Starting in fall 2009, if you have not implemented Full Service Intelligent Mail you will not qualify for the lowest postal rates on your bulk mailings. So, if you have not switched from Basic Intelligent Mail or POSTNET™ barcode, you have some planning to do in order to take advantage of the greatest savings.
In addition to lower postal rates, benefits of Full Service Intelligent Mail include Onecode ACS™ address correction, virtual return mail, tracking and delivery confirmation. This new technology also allows you to embed data into the barcode that provides you specific information, unique to every single piece of mail sent.
The new barcode can hold a vast amount of data in a smaller overall area than previously occupied by POSTNET™ and PLANET Code® barcodes. By utilizing a unique identifier in the barcode for each addressee, you can do anything from integrate highly tailored, cross-promotional messaging on-the-fly during production of your mailers to tracking remittance billing on its way back to you.
While Intelligent Mail affords many, and varied benefits, the path to implementation requires careful thought and planning. Understanding the issues and opportunities that exist within your organization will ensure you maximize the numerous benefits of Intelligent Mail while keeping costs in-line. With the time left until the regulation goes into effect, gaining a sense of your internal resources is crucial to meeting these challenges:
- Migrating all automated mailstreams
- Modifying document composition applications and converting print streams
- Getting a handle on sequence number management
- Ensuring postal compliance
These are all major undertakings, needing time and attention from IT and other departments throughout your organization.
The question becomes one not of “if” but of “how” to implement Intelligent Mail because the benefits of transition can be tremendous. Do you have the internal resources to tackle the transition or do you turn to a partner, experienced in large-scale, multi-system implementations of mailstream automation solutions? There is no right or wrong way to meet the new regulations but the Intelligent Mail barcode assessment can help you decide which is the best route for your organization.
According to David Robinson, Director, Address Quality at Pitney Bowes Software, “there are many ways that Intelligent Mail adds value to business operations, whether it’s receiving advance notice of payments in the mailstream so you can avoid sending cancellation notices to customers, adequate staffing of call centers consistent with mail volumes delivered, or gathering business intelligence about who is actually receiving your mail.”
One thing is for sure, with the size of your mailing operation, you need to take advantage of as many cost-saving measures as you possibly can. Intelligent Mail may be the best way for transactional mailers like insurers, banks and financial institutions to take advantage of new postal discounts and improve mail creation and the distribution process. Companies that plan an early, thoughtful and thorough implementation of Full Service Intelligent Mail will truly reap the benefits by having a fully integrated, automated and intelligent mailstream.
- Read more about Intelligent Mail barcode at the USPS® website
- Read the Pitney Bowes Software white paper on Intelligent Mail barcode
- Get an Intelligent Mail barcode assessment for your organization
Categoria
