By Monica Lundquist, Window Book, Inc.

In Part 1 of this series, we told you about PostalOne!^® and electronic postal documents, and explained what Mail.dat is and how it facilitates electronic documentation. In this article, we share real life examples of the efficiencies this can produce.

In order to add new business and retain existing customers, direct mail production houses must meet increasingly tight in-home deadlines for large and complex mailings.  Mailers can save time, increase processing speed, and lower postage rates on these mailings by investing in postal automation software, which allows them to process presort data both from Mail.dat and non-Mail.dat files. This involves educating customers on the absolute necessity and relative simplicity of mailing information such as the Mail.dat files.  Chances are, the presort software you or your clients are currently using can produce Mail.dat files, or can be upgraded to add this functionality. 

Mail owners who want their mail processed quickly and accurately can avoid production snafus by providing their mail production houses with mailing information in Mail.dat format.  By presenting data in this industry-standard format, mail owners are more likely to see their mail delivered promptly and at a reasonable cost.  Virtually all major presort software vendors create or offer an option to create Mail.dat files.  Companies who subcontract their data processing to list services providers should know that most vendors typically offer the Mail.dat service.

Gene Kryczka from DIS Direct describes the impact Mail.dat has had on his mail production company’s phenomenal growth:

“When I started here six years ago, DIS Direct was processing 25 million pieces annually, and right now we’re doing over 700 million!...Without Mail.dat, we couldn’t make our statements fast enough to keep up with our growing client base or to secure this tremendous amount of new business.” 

Gene Kryczka, VP of Postal Affairs and Distribution, DIS Direct

Gene stated that if they did not receive customer data in the Mail.dat format, it would require an additional 10-12 people, and much more time, to manually input the same data.  By educating their clients on the benefits of Mail.dat, DIS Direct now receives 99% of their customer data as Mail.dat files.  Using post-presort software to process these Mail.dat files, DIS then generates the relevant mailing statements faster and with greater accuracy.  Without the ability to process Mail.dat files, large mail houses cannot produce statements and other postal documents fast enough to keep up with a growing client base nor have the ability to accommodate new business.

Process a greater percentage of your mail from Mail.dat files 

When your customers give you their presort data in Mail.dat file format, you can reduce the cost and time it takes to process the associated postal paperwork by as much as eighty-three percent over manual data entry. With Mail.dat and the appropriate software, mailers report that two people can now accomplish what they formerly needed twelve people to do.  Free up your most valuable assets—your employees—to be able to concentrate on other value-added services for your company and your customers.  Also, with the right post-presort software you can edit Mail.dat files and easily generate professional postage statements for all of your mailings.

With Mail.dat, mailers can not only generate postage statements that actually reflect a day’s mailing, but they are also in a better position to deal quickly with last-minute changes or circumstances.  Say, for example, that you do not get the final counts on a mailing until the end of the day.  With Mail.dat, you can tag only what is going to be mailed that day, and print the appropriate statements.  If last-minute work comes in, the software adapts to changes in the hardware configurations or schedules in order to get jobs out or make last-minute changes. 

Without Mail.dat, you would never be able to process statements in time for postal verification.  Not only is it more efficient than non-Mail.dat processing, but it also allows you the speed and flexibility to deal with increasing volumes, which often come in the form of last-minute jobs.  When done by hand, processing statements for postal verification may not occur fast enough to get the mail out the door in time.  Mailers need to be able to accept these jobs to keep existing customers or capture new business, and Mail.dat makes it possible to meet seemingly impossible in-home deadlines on last-minute jobs with speed and accuracy. 

Mail.dat provides you flexibility

For many years, large mailers have used Mail.dat files for transportation planning and to create postage documentation that describes what is actually mailed.  After presort, larger jobs are often split up into multiple drops or require spoilage adjustments—as a result, the original postal paperwork generated by the presort program does not accurately reflect the job that is actually mailed. 

These mailers bring the Mail.dat files generated by the presort program into post-presort software in order to edit the data electronically and produce statements that reflect the final mailing.  Your post-presort software should be able to reduce the postage by the exact amount of the spoilage as detected by intelligent inserters.  If spoiled pieces are reprinted and mailed in a later mailing, your post-presort software should allow you to remove the spoiled pieces from the original postage statements and provide you with documentation that justifies this reduction in postage, which can be substantial!  

“Mail.dat has assisted Alltel in saving approximately $175,000 annually in postage by providing a standard format for exchanging postal data between our systems to accurately account for pieces spoiled during production.” John Carter, General Manager, Alltel Output Processing

In Part 3 of this series, we will explore more of the flexibility that Mail.dat can provide.

Click Here for Parts 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Monica Lundquist is Postal Affairs Manager for Window Book, Inc.  She can be reached at mlundquist@windowbook.com.  Window Book has been helping clients manage their operations more profitably since 1989, and is the leader in mailing and shipping software for Lettershops, Corporate Mailers, Service Bureaus, and Mail Owners.  Window Book’s best-in-class postal solutions include: Intelligent Mail Full-Service, PostalOne!, eDocs, Mail.dat, Mail.XML, FAST, Bound Printed Matter, post-presort data management, entry planning, drop shipping, postage accounting, postal documentation & statements, meter and stamp management, Express Mail^® and Priority Mail Open and Distribute, New Commercial Plus rates, eVS, Delivery Confirmation™, and manifesting shipping system.