And then, the telephone became popular, FedEx and UPS became inexpensive and affordable and more dependable. Postal workers began to "go postal", the postal service began to lose money and salaries and benefits were cut. The worst came around Thanksgiving last year when they said they were closing down thousands of post offices and around the country and they began issuing pink slips to hundreds of thousands of postal workers.
How does all of this affect your business mail needs? If you are a small business owner, you are likely to see prices rise for for your postal needs. Perhaps it's time now to take a second look at your business mail needs and find cheaper, more reliable ways of getting your mail around.
The first thing you can do to help cut down on your business mail costs would be to review your mailing list and see how current it is. Perhaps there are people on there who are really not interested. You could send a postcard out to everyone on your mailing list and ask them to tell you whether they wish to stay on.
Whenever you need to send products to your customers over the mail, try not to use overnight delivery. It costs a lot of money. Instead, advertise longer delivery periods. Your customers will still only get their deliveries when they are told they will, and you'll save a bundle.
If you want to send brochures and flyers to your mailing list, you may consider sending virtual ones out instead of real physical ones. They'll help save the environment, too. All you need to do is sign up for MailChimp or AWeber for one of their e-mail marketing programs, and they will design a really attractive looking flyer or brochure for you and send it out. All you need to do is to send postcards out to your mailing list and ask everyone if they would like an e-mail opt-in.
It will be an added bonus that they'll give you their e-mail IDs, too.
Private electronic mail by companies like Zumbox is really taking off now. You get to send your promotional material to customers' virtual e-mail boxes, and it'll be cool.
