What is co-mailing?

Answered by guest expert, Mark White. Mark is Vice President, Manufacturing for U.S. News & World Report. He can be reached at MWhite@usnews.com


Question:
What is co-mailing?

Answer:
Co-mailing, also called multimailing, is the process of combining different printed pieces (most commonly catalogs but sometimes magazines as well) into a single mail stream to maximize postal discounts for good sortation.

The service is usually performed by a printer, which presorts the different mail lists together, inkjet-addresses the various pieces and combines them into bundles on a special piece of a equipment called a multimailer, and then typically drop ships them to multiple postal facilities.

Here's an example: Suppose you publish a magazine that has three copies going to a particular postal carrier route; if another magazine in the same co-mail operation has two going to the same carrier route and another has one, together you meet the six-piece minimum for getting the discounted carrier-route piece rate.

Co-mailing also makes it easier to take advantage of postal drop shipping discounts, especially for relatively small lists and light pieces.
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