Anyone Have A Postage Meter In Their Home Office?
for all your marketing needs....
Is this something you experienced investors use or do you think its just not worth the small $17/mo fee from Sam's. I know you can download postage via a phone line. is it worth the convenience?
Thanks,
Ginnie
Hey,
Sounds like a waste of money, unless you are doing huge mailings (in the thousands) each week.
Put the stamps on yourself; it doesn't take that long.
I have thought about having the postage pre-printed on my postcards, but I will wait until I have them reprinted to make up my mind.
Bruce,
tell me about having your postage preprinted on your postcards. Do you just go somewhere, like Office Depot and have them printed, but then take the lot of postcards to the PO and tell them you have "x" number of cards?
Thanks!
Ginnie
Hey,
You go to the Post Office and open any account and then you can have a printing company preprint some number on the postage part of the postcard (I guess you could use letters, but I have not looked in to it).
The way the guy at the PO explained it (and you can look on their website), it is how postpaid envelopes work.
Because they are pre-printed, I think they would look better.
You can buy pre paid postcards at the post office. They are cheap too. I think last I looked they were about $0.29 each. You just run those through your printer to put your message on them and dump them in the mail box.
You can also order USPS personalized envelopes. They actually have your company name and address and postage pre-printed. Looks like USPS charges a markup of 4 cents for this. Here's the order form:
http://www.usps.com/forms/_pdf/ps3203x.pdf
One thing to keep in mind is that metered postage on an envelope is a sure sign to the recipient that your letter is "junk". It will often end up in the garbage. I use live first class stamps on all of my letter mailings.
This is not an issue with postcards, however, as they don't have to be opened to be read.
Jason
[addsig]
One more thing I meant to mention...
If you are doing a lot of mailing, I think it is worth looking into finding a mailing service who takes care of printing, preparation, and postage for you. These can typically be found in the yellow pages.
Very quickly your time as an investor gets to be worth more than what you can pay someone else to do the grunt work of your mailings.
Jason
[addsig]
One more thing I meant to mention...
If you are doing a lot of mailing, I think it is worth looking into finding a mailing service who takes care of printing, preparation, and postage for you. These can typically be found in the yellow pages.
Very quickly your time as an investor gets to be worth more than what you can pay someone else to do the grunt work of your mailings.
Jason
[addsig]
thanks guys! good info
Ginnie
I had one for a while and it is convenient. But they really burn you on the charges for ink cartriges. I don't think it saves any money and may actually end up costing more than stamps. You have the postage cost, +machine rental, +ink, etc.
I do a lot of mailings around 300-600 per week so I bought a folder $129, bulk envelopes and paper. I use a laser printed and I hire a hich school kid to stuff the envelopes. I do not send postage paid envelopes
Response rate has been 3-9 percent so I am happy