Royal Mail Discounts

Mailsort

There are some excellent postal discounts to be had by using Royal Mail's Mailsort services. In order to achieve maximum mailsort discounts, each record must be sorted into one of 1400 'selection areas'. Once printed and stuffed, each letter must then be sorted into bags destined for the corresponding selection area.

W8Data will sort your records to produce all the printed reports, produce the Royal Mail bag labels and to maintain sortation throughout the job and send output the sorted data on disk or by email for you or your mailing house to use.

Choosing the correct Mailsort service

  • Mailsort 1400 is suitable for mailings of 4000 or more. There are three Mailsort 1400 service levels.
  • Mailsort 1 is ideal for the most time sensitive of mailings. This service offers next day delivery and a discount of up to 14.4% off standard first class post.
  • Mailsort 2 is a 2 - 3 day service offering a discount of up to 13% off normal second class post.
  • Mailsort 3 is by far the most economic method of posting. With discounts of up to 24.6% off normal second class post, this service is ideal for non-urgent mailings with a delivery time of up to 7 days.


Remember that any Mailsort service is limited to mailings of 4000 or more letters or 1000 packets. Mailsort discounts achieved will vary from mailing to mailing. The eventual discount will depend on the following factors:

  • The size of the mailing

The larger your mailing, the higher the discount you are likely to earn. A 4000 mailing using Mailsort 1400 class 3 would usually earn discount of around 15%. Whereas a mailing of 30,000 plus would be 22-24%.

  • The distribution of the mailing

If the 4000 mailing is all going to the same town, you are very likely to earn maximum discounts on your mailing, whatever the size. Just a few letters to a wide range of sortation areas will earn a considerably lower discount.

  • The quality of you data

If there are a lot of addresses with missing postcodes or mis-spelled address elements, these records will not be incuded in the mailsort sortation. This means that you will earn no discount on these records which will then severely effect your overall discount. It is essential that the quality of the data is assessed prior to Mailsort being used, with cleaning the the Royal Mail's own Postal Address File being a minimum requirement.

Mailsort 700 CBC

Mailsort 700 CBC works in much the same way as Mailsort 1400 with two added advantages. Using Mailsort 700 CBC will earn you an additional 2% discount. The second advantage is particularly useful to catalogue marketers. The Mailsort 700 CBC service offers a standard price right up to 100g. This can result in massive savings if your catalogue and inserts weigh more than 60g!

The following extra limitations apply if using Mailsort 700 CBC:

  • Items must not exceed 100g
  • Items must be no larger than 240mm x 165mm.
  • The minimum posting is 10,000 letters.
  • Items must be able to bend (no pens or CDs can be mailed).
  • Items must be less than 5mm thick.
  • Items must not be polywrapped.

There is more info available on the Royal Mail Website, but if you'd like to discuss Mailsort and see what might work best for you, contact us. W8Data can help you decide how to get the most from your data.

Walksort

If you send large volumes of mail throughout the UK, or if you send bulk mail to specific areas or locations, then Walksort can save you money. If all your addresses have accurate postcodes and you do some of the sorting normally done by the Royal Mail, you could save up to 36% off full business postage costs.

With W8Data to help, you could save up to 36% if you're looking to post large volumes of mail.

Because you can choose when you want your items delivered, you can allocate resources to handle extra business. The options are:

  • Walksort 1 – for items to be delivered next working day
  • Walksort 2 – for items delivered within 3 working days

The minimum mailing size for Walksort® is 4,000 letters (1,000 large letters or A3 packets) for national mailings. However, if you’re mailing to and from a specific postcode area, the minimum mailing size is 2,000 letters. For example, if you were to mail letters from within the CB postcode area, to within the CB postcode area, the minimum mailing size would be 2,000 letters. There is no maximum limit.

There is more info available on the Royal Mail Website, but if you'd like to discuss Walksort and see what might work best for you, contact us. W8Data can help you decide how to get the most from your data.