Take Advantage of Drop Shipping
With election season, and in turn election mailings, in full swing across the country, it’s more important than ever to know how you can maximize your postal discounts. Over the course of the past few eBulletin’s, we’ve discussed how certain services, such as DSF2® processing and mail piece tracking can play a role, and this month we’ll highlight another component that has the potential to be a game changer: Drop Shipping.
Seasonal mailings, such as political and holiday mailings, are generally high-volume, concentrated mail. If you find yourself doing mailings of 5,000+ pieces in a localized area/region, it could be worthwhile to Drop Ship the mail to a National Distribution Center (NDC), Sectional Center Facility (SCF), or even Destination Delivery Unit (DDU). Drop Shipping is an extension of the workshare program with the USPS® that you are familiar with today. It takes it a step further than just preparing your mailing in presort sequence order and in the correct trays/sacks/pallets by then transporting the prepared mailing to a facility closer to the distribution area of the addressed pieces.
Drop Shipping provides two primary benefits:
- Improved speed of delivery by bypassing processing on USPS equipment. This can be a critical component to campaigns with tight Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and/or in-home dates.
- Additional postage discounts through destination entry discounts. As of the writing of this piece, the current discounts are approximately:
- NDC – $.02 per piece
- SCF – $.03 per piece
There are a lot of things to consider when determining if a job should be drop shipped or not, such as your proximity to the entry point, cost to transport, etc. But luckily BCC Mail Manager™ has a way to help with our “Show Summary/TDM Estimates” checkbox on the Presort Information window where users would typically enter their Class of Mail, Piece Type, Piece Dimensions, and so on.
When selected, the user will then be shown a window with a breakdown of potential qualifying locations, the piece count for that location, total potential discount, and estimated transportation costs that BCC Software has negotiated with our partner, Direct Logistics.
When using drop shipping, you will find ways to streamline your decision-making process, either on a client-by-client basis, or by utilizing minimum thresholds. With the integration with Truck Direct Mail (TDM), all your drop shipment mailing information can be automatically uploaded to TDM’s online dashboard, making the process as seamless as possible.
This feature is exclusive to our BCC Mail Manager and BCC Mail Manager Full Service™ customers and comes with your base license subscription. Additional BCC Mail Manager options, such as palletization, could be needed per DMM drop shipment requirements.
If you would like to learn more about our integration with Truck Direct Mail or how to set up a Drop Shipment, please contact your Key Account Manager or BCC Software’s Customer Support team. You can also find a ton of great information on Truck Direct Mail, including Frequently Asked Questions, on our BCC Customer Portal.
