In the fast paced, competitive world of marketing, you need to take advantage of any edge you can get. You need to make sure your marketing materials get to your clients and customers on time, in good shape and at the lowest price possible. Of course, you also need a commercial printing company that delivers quality work, on time.

Whatever Happened to First Class Mailers?

For many years, getting the best results from direct mailing campaigns meant using USPS First-Class. In more recent years, raising postal prices have forced many marketing firms to abandon the reliable and efficient USPS First-Class service in favor of other, less costly means of getting the word out to potential clients and customers. The USPS recently made moves to win back marketing firms’ business in 2014, cutting costs significantly for delivering specialty printing marketing and advertising products the first quarter. Some of the promotions you should be aware of include:

• QR Code Promotion: We’d all like to brighten up QR codes. Not only do they take up creative space, they’re just plain ugly. Now, the USPS is giving us an opportunity to do just that by letting us incorporate color into our QR codes. To sweeten the deal even more, the USPS offers a 2% discount on postage for mobile optimizing through March 31.
• Reply Mail Discount: Use first-class business Reply mail in your mailers and you’ll receive .02 credit on every mailer returned. This is a continuation of a similar promotion from last year. IF you participated in last year’s promotion and increase your reply mail in 2014, you will quality for an additional 01. credit.
• Marketing and Advertising Discount: USPS is offering a whopping 15% discount for First-Class mail consisting solely of advertising and marketing pieces for select clientele. If you did more than $6,000,000 in Standard Mail direct mailers between October 2012 and September 2013, you may qualify for these steep discounts in First-Class postage from mid February through June, 2014.
• Color Print:  From August 2014 through the ned of the year, the USPS is offering a 2% discount on First Class postage for four color printing statements and bills (Excluding pre-printed stock and inserts). The promotional is limited to IMB full service.

Check with UPS for even more Discounts for Marketers and Advertisers

These are just a few of many promotions the USPS is running in 2014 in an effort to win back business from marketing and advertising companies. It remains to be seen whether the USPS will make the kinds of inroads it hopes to make with marketers, but savvy  marketing and advertising firms will want to take advantage of the discounted direct postal rates while we have the opportunity.

We’ve known all along that we can count on USPS First Class for fast, dependable delivery. Now, we can take advantage of lower rates on a service that has long been proven to deliver higher return rates for direct mailers. Higher return rates at lower prices is a sure-fire formula for higher profits.