Patent ID: 7221996

Claim:
A system for combined mailing (co-mailing) of a plurality of diverse publications to a plurality of recipients, comprising: a bindery, the bindery creating a plurality of first publications and a plurality of second publications, each of the plurality of first publications identified with one of the plurality of recipients on a first list, each of the plurality of second publications identified with one of the plurality of recipients on a second list; and a co-mailer, the co-mailer combining the plurality of first publications with the plurality of second publications to form the plurality of diverse publications, the co-mailer comprising: a co-mailer merge and sequence module that merges the first list and the second list to create a merged list, the merged list being used to determine a mail rate for each of the plurality of first publications and each of the plurality of second publications; a co-mailer control module that communicates with the co-mailer merge and sequence module to merge each of the plurality of first publications and each of the plurality of second publications on a merge stream and into the plurality of diverse publications based on the merged list; a printing device that receives the plurality of diverse publications merged and places the mail rate on each of the plurality of diverse publications; and a sortation device that receives the plurality of diverse publications from the merge stream and sorts each of the plurality of diverse publications by the mail rate.