They're also problem-prone. Envelopes get stuck in the printer. When labels are used, they have to be individually stuck on envelopes, which then must be sorted into ZIP codes for mailing. Church workers eased the load of mass mailings by purchasing SmartMailer from Pitney Bowes. A mailing for 2,000 that used to take her four to five hours can now be done in less than an hour.
Time is money, but wasted postage is also costly.
SmartMailer helps save money by ensuring that each record on the database has a U.S. Postal Service deliverable address. That virtually eliminates returned or misdirected mail, says Tim Bates, vice president of marketing for Pitney Bowes. The system also helps organizations presort mail to take advantage of postage discounts. And the software has a duplicate detection feature that eliminates embarrassing and costly double mailings. Johnson Ferry Baptist combined SmartMailer with a Pitney Bowes AddressRight Printer, which prints a bar code onto each piece of mail, thus ensuring faster delivery by the Post Office and eliminating the need for labels.