This is a tricky question that has caught a lot of our customers out so we will try and help you to figure out what is best for your own specific circumstances.
On the one hand it can be difficult to send bulk mailings out to mailhouses because their definition of “bulk” mail is likely to be vastly different to yours. For them “bulk” might be volumes of more than 5000 items in one go and sure they will take on your job but it is likely that this will take a lower priority than their higher volume customers and they will charge you an arm and leg for their services.
On the other hand let’s say for arguments sake you had a mailout of 2000 envelopes to send out, unless you have had experience doing this before, it is likely that you will severely underestimate the true costs of doing it yourself.
First off you have the cost of printing the material and unless your business has spent 10’s of thousands on high speed low cost machines this is likely to cost you far more than to outsource in ink or toner and don’t forget you will need to get envelopes printed as well with your company logo and return address.
Secondly and far more significantly, unless your business is lucky enough to have specialised equipment you will have to sit down and fold all of the paper and stuff it into the envelopes ready to present to the Post Office. Now, statistics show that the average person working flat out can fold and insert 100 envelopes per hour so in this case that is 20 hours of staff time doing the menial and unfulfilling task of folding and inserting envelopes. If you factor in $30 per hour for your staffs time, this has cost your business more than $600 assuming that they are very fast at inserting the envelopes.
Outsourcing is starting to look like a better idea even if the cost is slightly higher than these numbers because you can’t forget about opportunity cost here, what else could they be doing that is far more productive for your business if they did not have to spend two and a half days stuffing envelopes?
There is a third alternative however, Everyday Mail heard this issue time and time again from our customers which lead us to establishing our boutique mailhouse at www.everydaymailing.com.au which is designed to cater for the jobs that are too big to do in house but really too small to send to the larger mailing houses.
So there you have it, everything that you need to know in order to make an informed decision if you should do your bulk mailout in house or outsource it to a mailhouse. If there are any mail related questions that we can assist you with even if it is outside of our core mail courier service we are happy to point you in the right direction so click here to contact us or call on 1300 624 562
