How to Prevent Your Business from Being Affected by Postage Rate Increases

Overview: First Class stamp prices have recently increased again, as they do periodically, but there are ways for your business to consistently trim postage costs to help your bottom line.

We’ve become accustomed to regular postage rate hikes from the United States Post Office. While you still get a great bang for your buck, the cost of mailing letters has increased significantly over the last decade. It’s still the safest and most cost-effective way of delivering important documents to your customers.

Do you want the facts?

Even though one-half of Americans pay their bills online, a large majority of US consumers still prefer to receive their bills and statements via the US Postal Service. So, clearly, businesses that listen to their clients still use postal mail for these important documents. In past blogs we’ve discussed the reasons why consumers still like to receive financial documents in the mail—online security concerns, keeping paper copies for their records, etc.—so this article will focus on the best way to trim those postage costs and keep the postage rate increase from hurting your bottom line.

How can you accomplish trimming postage costs?

Here are a few options that may work for you:

Lease a Postage Meter

This is a viable option if you have the resources to print and mail your invoices, billing statements, late notices, shutoff notices and other customer communications in house. You’ll incur the monthly lease payment for the meter, so be sure to see if the postage savings equals or exceeds the monthly lease. For example, with Pitney Bowes, you can save a few cents on postage for each letter, so if you mail a big batch, it makes a difference. However, it's crucial to consider all the other expenses to determine whether the savings on postage outweigh the total costs of leasing and maintaining the equipment. You’ll also pay for leasing the machine, as well as the ink costs. At the average lease price, you’d have to mail a substantial volume of envelopes to recoup the expense.

Not to mention that you’ll need to factor into the savings the cost of having someone print and fold the documents and stuff the envelopes as well as operate the meter. And don’t forget to look at all extra expenses. Watch out for additional fees, like processing or “reset” fees, along with charges for changes to your logo. You may even need an additional phone line to put postage on the meter.

Buy Forever Stamps

If you have small mail quantities or just like to apply stamps, consider buying 73-cent Forever Stamps in large quantities. Calculate the quantity you’d need for the next two or three years, and buy them in bulk. The good thing with this method is that any stamps you purchased in the past at a lower price remain valid for use after the price hike. However, it’s a big upfront cash outlay that not every small business can afford. But at least you’d be spared the regular price increases.

Buy Online Postage

Using a service such as Stamps.com provides you with the ability to print postage on your envelopes using your existing desktop printer. You’ll pay a smaller monthly fee (currently $19.99/mo) than you would with a meter, but you buy the postage online, eliminating trips to the post office. And they don’t mark up the postage price. However, you or your employees will still need to do the manual preparation of mail pieces, and your time is the most valuable resource that also needs to be included into the calculation. Therefore, you might want to consider the next method.

Use a Mail House to Automate Your Mail Process

There are plenty of mailing services out there that will gladly mail your documents for you. Some of them require a monthly fee, but there are others, like DocuSend, that offer an all-inclusive price that covers materials, processing and postage without monthly fees. With DocuSend, you’ll only pay $1.19. So for only $0.46 more than the current $0.73 postage rate, your documents will be in the mail within two business days. This cost per piece already includes labor and materials, as opposed to the costs incurred when handling mailings in-house. Guaranteed, it’s more cost effective than doing it yourself!

When doing your mail house research, make sure you’re not required to sign a contract, and check to see if there are minimum quantity requirements. Read the fine print, because the low price they promote may be tied to a high volume of mail. Whether you're sending invoices, marketing materials, or important communications, with DocuSend, automation doesn't mean compromising on quality or incurring hidden costs.

Different services have different ranges of additional tools and features they offer to clients. DocuSend's cloud-based mailroom doesn’t require additional fees for essential tools and features but provides them at no extra cost. It’s one of the ways it helps you use the full potential of what technology has to offer to send your mail more easily and for less.

Every DocuSend user has a personal portal at their fingertips. Going to your portal, you can generate detailed reports on your mailing activities. The portal shows expenses on your mailings and helps you with tracking the mailing dates and status of every document sent. You'll have complete visibility unless you select the HIPAA compliancy option.

To process your order, DocuSend uses tools like address cleanup and NCOA (National Change of Address) database updates. These features ensure that you can keep mailing lists up to date and accurate, reducing the risk of returned mail. According to USPS statistics, the postal service processed 28.3 million address changes in 2023. Having this option is advantageous for businesses, as it saves them costs associated with bill resending.

The bottom line on postage is this:

It’s important to keep your customers happy by providing them their important documents via postal mail, so do your homework before you commit to a mailing process. There are services available that will not only simplify your mailing activity but will also save you both time and money on postage and resources in the long run. Just remember to be diligent and factor in all your actual costs before making a change. It’s your business that will benefit.