Design of a mail piece is critical to postage savings.

Barcoding the piece gives you the greatest postage savings because the post office can sort the mail with machines. There are several common errors in design of a mail piece that could end up increasing postage costs:

• Not enough room for barcode and set backs required by the post office. You need 4 inches or larger from the right edge and 2 inches or larger from the bottom edge for the address area. The right half inch and bottom 5/8" is a set back for the barcode.
• Having return address too low on the mail piece, at a level near the delivery address. Machines will read both and the conflict will make the piece undeliverable.
• Not having a proper permit or postage displayed on your piece. Especially non-profit organizations.
• Non conforming aspect ratio. Your mail must be a rectangle. Length divided by height must be between 1.3 and 2.5. Pieces that fall outside this ratio will cost significantly more to mail. Also, round and other shapes are unmailable.

Addresses

If you have a list to be used, you should have an Excel file with FIVE columns: Name, Address, City, State, and Zip. Having a separate first and last name and/or a Company address or secondary address is OK.

Additional Charges

Expect additional charges for addresses with separate house numbers, street suffixes, etc., or for mail merge projects.