mailing services
United Printing & Mailing’s in-house mailing services are sure to make your direct mail marketing project go smoothly. Within our direct mail services department, we even have a branch of the Phoenix post office on site to help ensure your project goes out on time.
Throughout the entire mailing process, we stand guard over each step in the development of your direct mail project. We have planned, created, printed and now the last step is at hand—the actual mailing. Again, we apply years of experience and the latest technology, and we pride ourselves in implementing our mailing services to process your mail quickly and affordably. A typical mailing goes through the following three steps to automate your mailing, allowing us to get you the best possible postage rate.
1 - CASS Certification
CASS (Coding Accuracy Support System) is a mailing service that checks your mail list against the United States Postal Service's national database to ensure that each of the addresses are deliverable. Duplicate addresses are also removed, or "de-duped," during this certification process. After verifying the addresses, the system presorts the mail list, breaking it down into tiers based on zip codes and supplying the criteria by which the mailing is sorted. This breakdown determines the postage rate at which each tier will mail. Each of your mailing lists must be CASS certified before it is used in order to earn your reduced postage rate.
2 - Addressing
In our mailing services department, we operate high-speed inkjets for quick, high-quality addressing and barcoding of your mail. If your needs exceed standard addressing and barcoding, we also have a complete laser-imaging department with capabilities for merging address and personal data for window-envelope mailings and for personalizing mail pieces with variable data.
3 - Sorting
Sorting is an important part of our direct mail services. As your mail comes off the addressing machines, it moves onto a conveyor where our staff manually audits its zip code sequence and packages it into one or two-foot mail trays. While sorting, our mailroom staff examines the address quality, removing any pieces with erroneous, incomplete or missing addresses. The trays of mail are sleeved and coded with a barcoded facing slip. This coding is based on the criteria established during the CASS certification. The trays are carefully housed in cages so your mailing stays intact until it is inspected by the USPS.
the usps stamp of approval
We work so closely with the USPS that their employees actually maintain an office within our facility! Having this office onsite allows United Printing & Mailing’s mailing services to keep up with the most current postal regulations and, most importantly, verify your mail on-site using the MERLIN system. Once your mailing is verified and approved by our on-site USPS staff, its completion is documented with a stamped "3602 Affidavit of Mailing" report. We keep a copy of this document for our records and provide you with the original, stamped report—you'll know it's the original by the red seal!
Merlin Barcode Verification
A component of our on-site USPS office is the MERLIN barcode verification system. "MERLIN" (Mailing Evaluation Readability Lookup Instrument) refers to the piece of equipment used by the USPS to automate the process of the physical verification of mail. It verifies the readability of barcodes and confirms that barcodes are prepared properly and that the correct postage is being used. United Printing & Mailing is one of only three direct mail service facilities in Arizona certified by the USPS for outside verification of mail using MERLIN. The USPS requests that all mailings of more than 10,000 pieces be verified using the MERLIN device. Additionally, spot-checks are performed on mailings less than 10,000 pieces. Having MERLIN on-site allows our mailing services to bypass the need for verification upon delivery to the US Post Office.
Call United Printing & Mailing today at 1-800-645-6659 and let our direct mail experts help you with your mailing services so you can make the flexible, versatile, cost-effective and easy-to-use characteristics of direct mail work for you!
|
