Today is a sad day for me because I am losing two of my mailing mentors.  Burns Mailing & Printing, Inc. started as printers in 1981 and in 1991, we added mailing to our services.  Being new to the business, we relied on two very knowledgeable United States Postal Service employees, Sheila Kirton and Tony Maples.  They have advised us on many things and co-hosted mailing seminars with us on numerous occasions.  The USPS is not immune to the economic down turn and so cuts are being made at the USPS.  Both of their jobs are being eliminated so Tony is taking retirement and Shelia is taking another job within the USPS as Post Master in Careyville, TN.  Tony has plans to keep busy as he is the Pastor of a local church and Shelia’s job will be a promotion.  We are happy for them but sure hate to lose them at our local USPS.

To Shelia and Tony we say thanks for all of your help, customer service and friendship. We wish you well and much success. You will be greatly missed by many.

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This is an excerpt from USPS®  Deliver® Magazine who kindly gave me permission to use in this blog.

“It’s likely you’re trying to produce more with less budget these days.  So it’s tempting to think about cutting expenses by simply going with the lowest-cost print provider. But, in this competitive market, that could be a mistake.

Sure you might save a few bucks in print fees, but what you could lose is far more valuable.  Today’s printers do much more than simply put ink to paper.  They are marketing consultants who use their knowledge and experience in creating and mailing printed materials to help their clients get the most out of their campaigns.

Printers are on top of the latest mail printing trends and efficiencies, which uniquely qualifies them to point out costly mistakes.  They also can manage or influence many campaign elements outside the printing realm to help you reach optimum ROI.

Printers are also at the forefront of new technologies that let your direct mail pieces target customers like never before.  If you’re using variable data printing, for example, your printer can provide insights on which aspects of the piece should be personalized, as well as guidance on how to make your message relevant to your target.

They also sit on a gold mine of information about postal capabilities and service standards.  Printers understand mail piece design characteristics, preparation requirements and economics so well they can often help you cut prices simply by combining projects, whether it’s through co-mailing, co-palletization or merging your mail with other customers’ products.

Your production staff needs to communicate your project goals and time frame to your print company at the concept and design stage, as it may be able to bring added expertise to the table – literally.  Clifton, N.J., graphic communications company Sandy Alexander Inc. often invites its local USPS® representative to sit in on client meetings to help design the most compliant and cost-effecient mailers possible.

For maximum ROI, make sure your production folks choose printers that can achieve your strategic objectives by either improving the effectiveness of the mail piece or reducing the cost of creating and mailing it.  The good ones will know enough about our business and your business to ask the right questions and make sure you ultimately get what you’re paying for.”

Article by Tom Foti – Manager for Marketing Mail at the United States Postal Service®

I gave a presentation at the Association of Fundraising Professionals today at lunch.  This was one of the things that I encourage everyone to do is to sit down at the conception of the project with your print/mail company and plan the project to meet your objectives at the lowest possible cost.  At Burns Mailing & Printing, Inc. consulting is FREE to our customers.  We also offer FREE NCOAlink updates to our nonprofit customers who print and mail with Burns.

Yesterday I received a publication in the mail that did not have the addressing area at the top of the publication as specified in a directive that went into effect March 29, 2009.  The USPS will no longer accept mail that does not meet the new specifications. (I addressed this in an earlier blog) so the publication had XXX everything out and put it in the correct addressing area.  This made the publication look messy and the mailer of the publication look like they did not know their business.  Why go through all of that when you have a wealth of knowledge available with a good printer/mailer?

I would not expect too much help from the USPS® in regards to representative sitting down to discuss your project.  Unfortunately due to budget costs they are losing more and more of their knowledgeable staff.  At our local Post Office we are losing the only Mail Piece Design Analyst.  It seems there will only be one Mail Piece Design Analyst in the entire State of TN.  My advice is find a quality mailer/printer and let them work out the details for you.

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If your organization orders window envelopes in large quantities, you might want to check into the window envelopes that are now available for the Intelligent Bar-Code.  When the United States Post Office implements the discounts for the Intelligent Bar-Code the new window envelopes will be necessary because the window on the current envelopes are not large enough to accomodate the Intelligent Bar-Code.  So if you are ordering envelopes for the year or for 6 months, I would recommend that you switch to the envelopes that will accomodate the Intelligent Bar-Code.  At Burns Mailing & Printing, Inc. we are already using the Intelligent Bar-Code, even though we are not currently receiving discounts from the USPS.  According to our local USPS the rumor is that the discounts for Intelligent Bar-Code may be coming as early as September 2009.  Don’t quote me on that.

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Today is my first day back after a week at the beach with my family.  Time sure flies when you are having fun.  We wait all year for a vacation and the time goes so slow but when you get to the beach, it is over before you are ready.  We stopped in Alabama to buy peaches so that we could make peach preserves again this year.  Last year was our first year after Miss Nancy, who works for Burns, showed my daughter Joy and I how to make them.  Since then we have made plum and strawberry.  I have seven boxes of wonderful Alabama peaches just waiting to get a little more ripe and we will get started on the peach preserves.  If you haven’t read my blog about Crisco baby, it was an accounting of how my then 1 year old grandaughter got a bottle of Crisco and poured it in the kitchen floor while we were preoccupied with the making  the preserves.  We will be sure to put the bottle of Crisco higher up in the pantry and out of her reach.  She is soon to be two years old and is certainly living up to the terrible two reputation according to her Mother.  For me, anything she does is pretty much O.K. How can anything that cute be irritating?

Speaking of all things summer, my husband Ken, is very pleased with himself because he had ripe tomatoes  before the 4th of July.  He does have a knack for growing things.  He has a coffee plant that actually has coffee beans on it and last summer he grew a pineapple that was small but big enough to cut and have a few pieces.  Keep in mind that we live in  East Tennessee, not too far from the Great Smoky Mountains.  If you have never visited the Smoky Mountains, this is a good time.  It is the 75th year celebration of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  The most visited national park in the USA.

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