THE KEY TO Comailing Feb 1, 2008 12:00 PM
, BY TIMOTHY GABLE
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Postage rates, which we all know keep going up, represent 45% to 65% of a catalog's costs. What's the best way to reduce your postal bill, short of slashing trim size and cutting down your paper weight? Comailing, which is emerging as the cheapest and most efficient bindery tool to cut costs.
The process, which uses demographic binding to mass customize books, begins at the list house, where the names are commingled and prepared for a demographic bind with one zip stream.
This procedure requires that the catalogs share a common owner or very close integration between mailers. But there is much to consider before taking the plunge into comailing.
For starters, you need to pick the right partner. Usually catalogs will not want to compete in the mailbox, so you have to weigh the risk of mailing with a like merchant. If the partner does compete in any way, what are the chances that you will lose sales?
It's worth noting that as comailing gains in popularity, printers are increasingly offering to broker the comail and handle all of the coordination.
You also have to make sure that the savings with comailing are substantial enough as both a percentage of postage and in real dollars to offset the added hassles. If the savings are not guaranteed and the partner pulls out, you could wind up with a drastically higher postal bill. (You can negotiate up front a modest breakup fee to any party failing to complete the comail.)
So you'll need to get a quote for savings expected and fees charged for the comail. This is a relatively new process, so the prices have not been firmly established. Some printers take a share of the savings, while others use a run fee to compensate them.
The most reliable method to establish savings? Run the postal qualification and the postal estimates with the comail and without the comail.
Timing is another factor with comailing: You must consider how close the match is to your in-home dates and if the mail tape due date will be adjusted earlier. Most contact strategies have fixed dates, and an adjustment of more than a few days will affect the sales curve tail of the previous contact.
For instance, holiday-oriented programs will affect the selling days before an event. You don't want to miss the prime date to get your catalog in front of a customer because of a comail.
COMAILING TECHNICALITIES
The bindery usually wants mail tapes a few days earlier than with a non-comail. That's because the more pockets being used on a bindery line, the slower the line runs, so the bindery needs to compensate. Binderies also want to build a cushion to avoid a problem if one partner is late; this gives some slack in the system.
With comailing you are sharing the bindery line with one or a few partners, so pockets may be at a premium and need to be rationed. You will need to determine the number of pockets available for your title. If the pockets are less than you need, you will have to opt out of the comail or slim down your versioning.
If you are testing and are sending a book using the nth-name selection method, you may want to create a test panel using a bulk mail center (BMC) or sectional center facility (SCF) split. Then the test can go as a separate zip string and not be bound on the same line.
Then there's the size of the forms printed for the bindery. Depending on the final trim size, you may need to pre-trim forms prior to bindery.
Offset presses with a long cut-off produce forms that are 10-7/8" high. If your partner is printing gravure and the final trim size is 10-1/2" high, the printer may require all of the offset forms to be pretrimmed to avoid a slowdown in the bindery.
As the tapes are prepared for a comail, the production of the catalogs must be aligned. The catalogs to be comailed must have the exact same trim size, and the inkjet area (the customer addressing area for the back cover and the order form) must be precisely the same for each catalog mailed. This requires coordination between graphic artists at the catalogs to be comailed.
After designers have created the artwork, you have to send a sample with the inkjet areas to the bindery customer service representative for approval. It is best practice to send all pieces at the same time so the bindery can approve placement of the inkjet areas.
It's actually a good idea to follow this practice even when not comailing, since the bindery has the greatest constraints of the catalog production process.
You also have to look at the page count difference between the largest catalog and the smallest. The difference, depending on the weight of the paper, cannot exceed 44 pages, although this page differential varies by bindery and should be confirmed at your bindery.
In practical terms, the potential mailers need to assess the page counts for each book. If, for example, the page count range is greater than the maximum variation, the mailers may need to exclude the outlier, either the smallest or the largest book, from the cobind. Both catalogers should analyze the potential loss of savings to exclude either book and maximize the postage discounts.
