Ready to send more mail without creating bottlenecks?
The sad reality for every business sending high-volume correspondence is that they experience the same problem.
Mail volumes go up → inefficiencies creep in → mail operations slow down.
Deadlines are missed. Costs spiral out of control. Your team spends more time fixing issues than they do actually mailing.
Here’s the thing.
Many of these inefficiencies can be solved before they even happen. By streamlining targeted mail marketing campaigns with processes that were designed for volume, you can avoid operational bottlenecks before they occur.
Let’s dive in.
What you’ll pick up:
- Why Do Bottlenecks Happen with High-Volume Correspondence?
- 4 Examples of Mail Operation Bottlenecks
- Targeted Mail Marketing Avoids Bottlenecks
- How to Avoid Mail Operation Bottlenecks
Why Do Bottlenecks Happen with High-Volume Correspondence?
Here’s the hard truth that every growing mailing operation comes to realise…
It’s easy to process and mail a handful of letters each month. You could even send hundreds with relative ease. But once your mail volumes reach thousands (or tens of thousands) each month, the inefficiencies start to mount up.
A data file that needs to be reformatted. An address list with invalid records. Proof waiting approval in someone’s inbox.
Individually, these things are “minor” delays. Add them together though and your whole operation begins to crawl.
Research highlighted by Hatch Tribe reveals that 58% of all business bottlenecks are actually caused by inefficient systems instead of high work volumes. This means that your bottleneck isn’t caused by having too many pieces of mail to send. Instead, it’s caused by how you’re sending that mail.
When targeting specific market segments with direct mail marketing campaigns, operational delays have added consequences. You miss optimal delivery deadlines which leads to wasted postage dollars and lower response rates.
Successful high-volume mail programs know that the key to avoiding bottlenecks is to use a professional bulk mail service that reduces manual handling and streamlines your process from data through to delivery.
It’s really that simple.
4 Examples of Mail Operation Bottlenecks
Before going through how to avoid bottlenecks, it’s important to take a look at where they typically occur.
Dirty Data & Invalid Address Lists
Sending mail to bad addresses won’t just cost you extra on postage. When mail can’t be delivered you’re forced to manually process returned mailings and start that part of the project over. If your mailing list isn’t validated prior to going into production you’re already behind schedule.
Solution? Use address validation & deduplication software before any campaign hits production. It’s the easiest way to remove unnecessary manual workload.
Manual Processes That Can’t Scale
If your mail house can manually process, sort and mail 500 letters, congratulations. You’re about to have a big problem.
When mail volumes take off, every process that can’t be automated becomes a bottleneck. Manual data entry, proofing campaigns one-by-one and hand sorting letters are enormous time sucks. Every single time a process is done manually, there’s risk for error.
At scale, automation isn’t just nice to have. It’s required.
Poor Coordination Between Teams
Your marketing team designs the campaign. Operations convert it to a print file. Someone else manages your mailing list. Nobody communicates with each other.
Sound familiar? Broken or non-existent communication between different teams working on the same campaign is a leading cause of missed deadlines for targeted mail marketing.
Where work is handed off from one team to another, it tends to pile up while the next group scrambles to catch up.
Targeted Mail Marketing Avoids Bottlenecks
Here’s a fun fact that may seem counterintuitive…
Targeted mail marketing is one of the best ways to reduce operational waste from your business correspondence.
How?
Targeting drastically reduces the number of mail pieces you need to send by qualifying your recipients before you ever print. That means smaller mailing lists, less wasteful print jobs and fewer undeliverable mails clogging up your production process.
Imagine pouring 50,000 pieces of mail into your sorting machine. Now scale that back to only 10,000 because you’ve targeted the right recipients. Then imagine how much less work that is on your operations team.
This is why direct mail proves so successful. Statistics from the DMA show that 73% of consumers would rather receive a piece of mail than hear from a brand digitally. When that direct mail is well-targeted, your response rates skyrocket.
Helping your operations team work smarter should always be a goal of marketing.
Build targeted mail marketing campaigns into your operations workflow from day one. Don’t tack it on as an afterthought or “nice to have” at the end. Make targeting your audience the foundation of every campaign you send.
How to Avoid Mail Operation Bottlenecks
Finally, the good stuff. Let’s talk about what you can actually do to remove bottlenecks from your high-volume mail operations.
Start with Clean Data
This should go without saying, but it still needs to be said. Clean your mailing lists. Every. Single. Time.
There isn’t a single mail house on the planet that enjoys receiving improperly formatted data files with invalid mailing addresses. Don’t make their job harder by skipping this step.
Automate Everything
Look at your mail workflow and ask yourself one question.
Is there any reason a human has to do this?
If the answer is no, automate it. From data formatting, to print file preparation, to sorting by postcode for delivery. The less manual handling involved in your process, the faster your campaigns will run.
Centralise Your Workflow
Stop scattering mail production and fulfilment processes across different teams and software solutions. When everyone is jamming away in their own little silo, miscommunication is inevitable.
Take control of your mail workflow by using a centralised platform for your entire team. Everyone works off the same system with clear visibility as to where each campaign is in production.
Outsource to Professionals
You don’t need to run a mail operation in-house to get professional results. In fact, when it comes to bulk mailouts, outsourcing is often more effective than trying to do it all yourself.
Outsourcing your production and fulfilment to a specialised bulk mailing service takes the headache out of processing and mailing your campaigns. Your team can focus on what they do best… and leave the printing, sorting and postal lodgement to the experts.
Measure Your Performance
Don’t fly blind. Invest the time to track how your mail campaigns are performing. From mail deliveries to RTS percentages. Use that data to optimise future campaigns.
Successful mail programs are constantly improving.
Wrapping Up
If your mail programs aren’t streamlined for high-volume correspondence, running more campaigns will inevitably lead to bottlenecks and frustrations.
Successful bulk mailing campaigns aren’t about throwing more work at the problem. They’re about creating processes that work smarter.
By cleaning your data before every campaign, automating what you can, centralising your workflow and tracking your results, you’ll remove the bottlenecks holding your mail operations back.
