Junk Mail

I know we all hate to get junk mail. You go to the mailbox and there you have bills (the ugliest form of junk mail) and real junk mail. I mean how many times does that credit card company need to send an application to me anyway? No I am not looking to buy a new car and for heaven sakes would the politicians just GO AWAY!

Many, many years ago I was on the other side of the mailbox. I worked for a market research firm. We did lots of things but some of our most prominent things we did was research people that had just bought a new car to see how happy they were with the experience and the car. Also we did a lot of political research. That included all forms of things including walk lists, mailings, get out to vote, exit polling, signature validation on petition drives, you name it. Some of our stuff was done with phone surveys but a lot of what we did also made use of “junk mail.”

Well here I am again, this time working for a cause. The group is trying to get a membership drive going for child abuse prevention so they can carry on their programs. The group is trying to get out a 3,000+ piece mailing. Now that does not sound real terrible but in reality it is a bunch of work.

To help offset costs they have many pieces of paper that are going into each flyer. The workers need to gather all the pieces of paper, put the outside mailer paper on that has the groups information and also the mailing permit number on it, and fold things in half. Then comes a staple to hold the flyer together. But of course a staple is a bad thing for post office automation machines. So the next step is to take one of those tiny return address labels and cover up the staple. Why a return address label? Well it is about the cheapest and easiest thing to use. Then comes the job I was doing, peel off the mailing label and stick it on the flyer.

Of course nothing is as simple as it seems. The mailing was expected to contain on zip code. This is important because with such a good size mailing they are getting a discount in postage based on the fact that the zip codes are pre-sorted. Well only having one zip code is pre-sorted, right? So I went through all the labels and picked out the ones from a different zip code, applied those labels to a flyer and set them aside for who ever to deal with them.

Next I went crazy with laying out the flyers, pealing the labels off and affixing them. I was going along like a mad man, peel, stick... peel, stick, etc. And then, after a bit of work... I had one blank page that used to contain 30, yes only 30 labels. Boy talk about time consuming. I have put in just over 4 hours of work on this project and have probably only done about 20 percent of the mailing. Add to that the going on 5 hours of work each my two friends that talked me into helping out with this cause have done and we have legitimately done 20 percent of the mailing. I sure hope they have a lot more help because this all needs to be done by the end of the month.

Then comes the fun. They need to introduce the 3000+ piece mailing to the post office. I remember how much the post office LOVES it when you do that. If you have not followed the protocols to the letter the entire mailing will be rejected. Also it does not help that the protocol changes depending on who you introduce the mailing through. Or you may get a much higher percentage of undeliverable than is normal. Of course being a non profit organization they have to account for everything including pieces of mail that were not delivered.

I sure wish this group well on their worthy cause but I must say, I am glad I am no long in the “junk mail” business. I get enough of it, I sure do not need to contribute to the mess.