Franking VS Hybrid Mail & Direct Mail
If you've put your business through a cost-cutting exercise recently, you'll probably have looked at your franking costs. But, unfortunately, hidden charges and fixed contracts are the name of the game, and sending franked mail can leave you with quite the headache. And quite the bill to boot. Good thing it's not your only option, then!
On this page, we will explore the costs associated with franked mail and highlight two much simpler, faster, and cheaper alternatives that you can instantly implement in your business. And all this without any hardware or software investment, no additional labour costs and no consumables to consider. Sound too good to be true...well, read on, and all will be revealed!
Costs Associated with Franking
When it comes to creating and mailing post, your business likely faces many costs. Machine costs, contract terms, franking ink prices, postage rate update costs, material costs, print costs, storage costs, postage costs, labour costs… and the list goes on! There's an awful lot to consider. But, of course, there are often ways to reduce costs within these elements. For example, reducing the size, weight, postage class, paper quality and so on can create savings. However, the reality is that your fixed overheads and labour time will remain pretty constant.
Will a Mailing House Save You Money?
Yes! When you manage your mailers through a mail house, you'll most likely see reductions in all your costs. Not only will you cut your postage costs thanks to the fulfilment's house cheaper rates for bulk sending, but your print, materials and labour costs too. That's because a mail house will provide everything you need, from start to finish. Think paper. Think ink. Think envelopes or packaging. Think all the labour as well; folding, insertion and sortation are all done for you. So you don't just save money here, but time too. And the price of a mail house solution should always include any franking or other postage costs, saving you another headache. Personalisation isn't a problem either. You can personalise more than just names and addresses with clever direct mailing; you can personalise the text body or image content too.
With a decent database, clever printing, smart feeding and Pick & Pack facilities, our Mailing House can automate nearly all mail requirements and make your mailer relevant and specific to the exact individual who receives it. Franking can do a lot, but it can't do that!
The Key Mailing House Services
To replace franking in your company, the two key services we provide are Hybrid Mail and Direct Mail. When you compare either service to franking, they knock them out cold! Often clients combine our Hybrid mail and Direct Mail services, depending on their requirements, namely their quantities.
What is Hybrid Mail?
You have likely heard of Direct Mail, but maybe not Hybrid Mail. Hybrid Mail is effectively like franking but without the fuss! It enables you to deliver your business mail from home, the office or even on holiday with the click of a button! No internal equipment is needed, no expensive consumables to purchase, and no labour time lost. Our revolutionary new Hybrid Mail system saves a fortune compared with franking, OBA, and traditional post. You simply create a document, select print, choose 'Hybrid Print' from the printer options, review the document and click print. Then, at 3 pm each day, your documents are downloaded, processed, printed, enclosed and posted.
How Does Direct Mail Differ?
The end result doesn't differ at all - we will cost-effectively deliver your post to your recipients with no work on your part needed. However, you place the order with us for direct mail rather than printing directly from your device. We recommend direct mail over hybrid mail when the volume per job exceeds a 1,000 quantity. Typically direct mail is utilised for larger marketing campaigns, and Hybrid Mail is used for communicating with your existing client base.
How much can you save with Hybrid Mail?
We have created a Savings Calculator to find out how much money your business will save on postage. Simply fill in the table according to a typical day, week or month in your business, and see how much you will save.
Why Choose Flow Fulfilment as your Mailing House?
At Flow, there are no hidden charges! Instead, each aspect of a mailer is priced at a set rate, dependent on volume. To that end, we measure everything. You can get a page count on your print. You can get envelope usage numbers. You'll know how many items have been posted. You'll know what they were and exactly how much they weighed. And if you've already made up your brochures, letterheads, envelopes or product, we can store them in our warehouse for you. With our Pick & Pack services, we'll incorporate a database for your product, so we know when to reorder stock from you and how much we have in the warehouse.
Or if you're just in the planning stage, we can help you there too. Our in-house design team is pretty special at creating compelling artwork for your business.
Flow's mail house solution isn't like any other. As our clients will testify, we save businesses like yours plenty of time and huge amounts of money every year. Not only that, we can provide you with so many business-building services, all under one roof.
We're honest people with a heck of a lot of experience, and we won't ever mess you about. If a cheaper way to send your mailer surfaces, we'll get you benefiting from it right away. You really will get the best job at the best price with Flow. So if you'd like to talk about improving your current mailing solution, reducing your franking costs or creating your next mailer from scratch, contact us today. And if you have a campaign already in mind, we are here to help you.
