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Once a mailing has been enclosed, there are one or two more processes to complete and several options to consider before a mailing is finally collected for delivery by Royal Mail.
Most high volume mailings take advantage of the discounts available through Royal Mail's Mailsort scheme. In summary, these provide the mailer with the opportunity to make significant savings by pre-sorting mail using the services of a mailing house.
There are three different Mailsort options available, each with different levels of postal discount:
Mailsort 1 - for delivery the next working day.
Mailsort 2 - for delivery within three working days.
Mailsort 3 - for delivery within seven working days.
The amount of savings will be dependent on other factors such as the quantity to be mailed and the amount/sophistication of pre-sortation undertaken.
- The choice of Mailsort option will have been decided at an early stage and will be included in the mailing specification. The supplied mailing file(s) will have been data processed by a bureau or by Thamesdown to ensure that addresses are sorted into pre-defined delivery selections. Throughout the entire mailing process it is critical to maintain Mailsort order so that when mail comes off the production line it can be efficiently bundled, bagged and labelled in accordance with Royal Mail specifications.
- This sequence is also maintained for other postal discount schemes such as Walksort and Presstream.
- You can be assured that completed mailings are immediately despatched. The volume of our daily output means that Royal Mail collects from TMS three or four times a day.
- Some mailings can benefit from selecting a Mailsort 3 (Deferred Delivery) option. This has the advantage of a delivery no later than the fourth working day. Mailings need to be prepared and lodged with Royal Mail at least seven days before an agreed commencement date - in effect, this means that Royal Mail are given more time to distribute mail bags to their sorting offices prior to the release date.
- Once your mailing has been finally completed, one of our Account Managers will be in contact to confirm the despatch dates and also advise you of the quantity of any 'overs' for which we provide one month's free storage . After this period we can recycle or destroy any 'overs' no longer required.
- If required, you can use Thamesdown to receive and data capture any postal returns from your mailing. This requires our return address to be printed on the back of the outer envelope so that Royal Mail can forward to us any mail which they have been unable to deliver. The quantity of returns will be partly dependent on the cleaning and screening routines used to prepare the mailing (see data processing). Despite these precautions, it is inevitable that you will receive some returns which should be data captured and then flagged/input into your mailing file or database to show the reason why the mail has been returned (e.g. moved, gone away, deceased etc).
- The insertion of mailing 'seeds' are an important method of monitoring the quality of the mailing output and the delivery performance of Royal Mail. 'Seeds' are a small quantity of client specified names and addresses which are added to the mailing file as part of standard Mailsort processing. Unless the seeds are part of Mailsort processing they will be treated as ordinary second class mail and will be delivered more quickly - thus giving a misleading impression of the actual timing of delivery for the mailing.
- If you have any concerns or queries let us know straight away - it is always easier to provide accurate and speedy responses at the time of the mailing rather than days or weeks later. Finally, you may also be asked to comment on the standard of service from your mailing house through QMP's annual survey of client satisfaction.
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Royal Mail Link
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