6 Popular Services That Define Fulfillment & Shipping

Businesses spend a considerable amount of money to bring a product to market. From conducting extensive consumer research to paying for expensive manufacturing costs, businesses ride the razor-thin line between making a profit and falling deep into the black. When the time comes to fulfill product orders and then ship the products thousands of miles away, the razor-thin product margin gets obliterated.

This is why working with a fulfillment and shipping company can help your business sit on the right side of the razor-thin profit margin line.

At Complete Mailing & Printing, we offer six popular services that define fulfillment and shipping for our customers.

eCommerce

Because of the tremendous growth of online sales, many fulfillment centers offer an eCommerce fulfillment service that allows your business to link directly to an online shopping cart. An online shopping cart automatically processes product orders via a warehouse management system (WMS), which ensures each order is processed according to a customer’s location information. A web store provides your company with a convenient virtual warehouse, along with access to other online sales portals such as eBay and Amazon.

Retail

If your company is looking to grow sales, one of the most effective strategies involves reaching out to big box stores like Walmart, Best Buy, and Home Depot to reach your sales goal. Big box brick-and-mortar retailers remain viable sales channels for most types of consumer products. Because of strict guidelines, a fulfillment and shipping company such as Complete Mailing and Printing ensures each of your products contains the correct routing guides and instructions for shipping

Multi-Channel

Multi-channel means a fulfillment and shipping company has the capability to meet product requests through a wide variety of different sales channels. Your company can meet product requests through traditional sales channels such as direct-to-consumer (D2C), as well as leverage the power of selling products to retail outlets through business-to-business (B2B) sales channels.

Subscription

Also referred to as auto shipping service, subscription box fulfillment relies on a company handling orders that occur on a regularly scheduled basis. One example of this type of fulfillment and shipping regards the Dollar Shave Club, which sends razors to customers every month. This type of fulfillment and shipping service requires a business to be experts at batch shipping, which includes handling rapidly changing orders each month.

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing via sites like Kickstarter and IndieGogo has emerged as a popular way to ship products to consumers. Many of the products are gifts sent as a thank-you to customers for donating money to a charitable cause. Unlike most fulfillment and shipping orders, orders typically are large, one-time orders completed after a crowdsourcing campaign.

Long-Term Warehousing

Amazon has revolutionized the product chain management model by creating long-term warehousing. The result is fulfillment and shipping companies that specialize in handling orders that help customers avoid paying Amazon’s long-term storage fees. Also called FBA Prep Services, long-term warehousing is an especially important fulfillment and shipping service for companies that manufacture high-end products such as furniture.

How do Custom Mail Services Let Business Owners Focus on Their Business?

Twenty-four hours is not enough time for most business owners to get what they need to get done in one day. The key is to get more out of less, which is otherwise known as increasing productivity.
As a small business owner, you can implement several strategies to maximize productivity. One common strategy for business owners is to incorporate the latest advanced technological tools into their business operations. Another strategy is to recruit the most talented associates to get more out of less. However, another strategy for enhancing productivity does not receive as much attention, but it should.Custom mailing serviceslet business owners focus more on running their businesses.

What Are the Types of Custom Mailing Services That Allow Business Owners to Focus on Their Business?

Complete Mailing & Printing offers several custom mailing services that help business owners focus more on running their businesses.

Bulk Mailing

Organizing a bulk mailing campaign is both costly and time-consuming, especially for small business owners that wear several hats while managing their businesses. Bulk mailing represents one of the most important custom mailing services offered by Complete Mailing & Printing. Whether you want to send out hundreds of invitations to a special event or a large number of business cards to introduce your business to the community, allowing Custom Mailing & Printing to handle your bulk mailing responsibilities allows you to focus on other business responsibilities.

Digital Printing

Printing up flyers, brochures, invitations, and advertisements can consume a considerable amount of time for business owners. The effective alternative to do-it-yourself printing involves hiring Complete Mailing & Printing to handle all your printing needs by using digital technology. You meet the demand for large printing orders, such as flyers that promote an anniversary sale, in just a small fraction of the time it takes you to complete the printing process on your own. In addition, digital printing services present a much higher quality type of correspondence, which enhances the image of your business.

Eliminate Address Mistakes

Sending out hundreds, if not thousands of printed correspondence costs you plenty in postage. Mailing out written correspondence that goes to the wrong addresses quickly ramps up your postage costs. Hiring Complete Mailing & Printing to handle your bulk mailing projects saves you both time and money because we utilize tools that eliminate address mistakes. The most important tool is called Coding Accuracy Support System (CASS), which is a software program that discovers and automatically corrects address mistakes.

This includes eliminating duplicate addresses. For example, your business should send just one brochure to a household in which the owner goes by two different names.

Detect Change of Addresses

Saving time by utilizing custom mailing services involves catching address changes before you send out printed correspondence. Since more than 20 percent of the American population changes addresses each year, you should consider hiring Custom Mailing & Printing to detect every change of address. We have access to the National Change of Address (NCOA) database, as well as use the most efficient software to review the millions of Americans who have relocated over the past year.

As a business owner, your role is to juggle many responsibilities at the same time. Delegate one of the time-consuming responsibilities by allowing Custom Mailing & Printing to handle your custom mailing services.

Digital Printing Services Will Help You Plan a Perfect Wedding

Murphy’s Law states that “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” Event planners understand fully well the implications of Murphy’s Law, especially event planners in charge of organizing and managing weddings. However, digital printing services can ease the angst caused by a band backing out or receiving the wrong number of chairs for a wedding dinner. With a seemingly never-ending number of items on a wedding planner's to-do list, digital printing services can alleviate an overcrowded work schedule.
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Digital printing refers to a process that includes applying toner or liquid ink over a wide range of printing surfaces. Because the process does not require the use of expensive and cumbersome plates, digital printing helps wedding planners save both time and money when organizing their big events. Create a digital template for a type of printing request, and return to the template to make changes in just a few minutes whenever necessary.

Digital printing produces a much higher quality product, as well as offers design flexibility and makes it easier to fix mistakes.

The following five digital printing services will help you plan a perfect wedding.

Invitations

Making a positive first impression for a wedding starts by sending out stylish invitations. Digital printing creates an invitation that presents visual appeal, while at the same time allowing you to present more information in regards to the big day. This type of digital printing service also works flawlessly with custom mailing services such as bulk mail.

Menus

As with invitations, wedding menus often change on the fly, sometimes up to the last minute before the big event. Using digital printing services allows a wedding planner to make last-minute changes to menus, whether the changes concern an entree or the presentation of a different salutation. Event planners also have much more flexibility to change the size of a wedding menu by working with digital printing services.

Business Cards

As a wedding planner, you have to stay in close contact with many people, from the caterer of the special event to the photographer who captures the magic of the big day. Staying in contact with other professionals is best done by handing out business cards designed and printed with digital tools. The flexibility of designing business cards with digital printing tools is especially important if you decide to change your logo or slogan.

Seating Cards

If the wedding you are in charge of planning includes a sit-down meal, you must create cards to organize seating arrangements. As with most other components of planning a wedding, the names of attendees can change up to seconds before the couple walks down the aisle. Digital printing tools enable you to make name changes quickly to accommodate last-second requests. You also can quickly change table numbers as well.

Same-Day Service

None of the previous four types of digital printing services would be possible without same-day service. You need to work with a business that offers same-day service for any type of digital printing request, from increasing the number of invitations to creating a different design for the wedding menus. Same-day service for digital printing services should include a turnaround time for any request of just a couple of hours.

4 Custom Mail Services That Boost Small Business Productivity

Small businesses operate on razor-thin profit margins, which means owners often look for ways to increase sales while decreasing costs. One of the most effective ways to increase profit margins involves implementing strategies to boost productivity. Getting more out of less is one of the greatest benefits of custom mail services​

Boosting productivity helps small businesses optimize the use of limited resources, which increases profit margins. It also leads to higher customer satisfaction rates that translate into developing a larger base of repeat customers. Since small business owners typically work long hours, a more productive small business helps owners achieve a better balance between work and personal life. Perhaps the greatest benefit of boosting small business productivity concerns discovering innovations that help grow sales.

Let’s take a quick look at four custom mail services that boost small business productivity.

Digital Printing

Digital printing is highly regarded for helping small businesses save money on mailing costs. However, converting your mail operation to all digital printing also boosts productivity. You can meet the demand for large batch orders, such as end-of-year mailings, in much less time. Another large batch order that benefits from the speed of digital printing systems is business cards, which present a positive first impression to prospective customers, as well as act as a practical way for current customers to contact a small business to address an urgent matter.

Another benefit of digital printing is the process produces a much higher quality product, whether the product is a batch of custom-made flyers, brochures, or invitations.

Bulk Mailing

Bulk mailing represents a type of custom mailing service that is ideal for boosting productivity. You send out more letters, flyers, brochures, postcards, and business cards in bulk to receive a lower rate per each piece of correspondence. Signing up for a bulk mail rate plan saves a small business a substantial amount of money, which allows owners to divert financial resources to other projects.

To keep the cost of bulk mailing as low as possible, a small business owner must accurately target the right recipients.

Create Accurate Addresses Lists

Despite a lower rate per item, a bulk mailing campaign still puts a dent in a small business budget because of the high cost of postage. This means small businesses should take advantage of a custom mailing service such as Coding Accuracy Support System (CASS), which recognizes and then corrects any incorrect addresses. Merge or purge software is another type of custom mailing service that boosts small business productivity because the system automatically identifies multiple names for the same person. For example, a recipient named Richard also might receive mail under the name Rick.

NCOA

Several studies indicate that more than 20 percent of Americans move at least one time a year. Small businesses that need to remain in touch with mobile customers cannot afford to send mail to an address a customer no longer calls home. The solution to sending mail to customers who have moved is called the National Change of Address (NCOA) processing service. NCOA updates weekly to identify families, businesses, and individuals that have changed addresses, whether the new addresses are located five blocks away or across the country.

5 Types of Events That Benefit From Digital Printing Services

Event planners have highly stressful jobs, from planning multiple course meals to taking last minute reservations, it seems like every day event planners come up against some type of tight deadline. With the often overwhelming number of responsibilities, even the most organized event planners have a difficult time keeping everything together. The search for streamlining the job of an event planner just got much easier with digital printing services.

Five types of events benefit from digital printing services:
·         Weddings
·         Graduation Parties
·         Business Conferences
·         Real Estate Open Houses
·         Business Anniversary Celebrations

What is Digital Printing?Traditional offset printing requires the use of printing plates to create an impression on a piece of stock paper. On the other hand, digital printing represents a printing method that moves a digital image directly to the surface of a wide variety of media. For example, you can digitally capture an image from a website and send it to a digital printer for processing. Without the need to use printing plates, you spend a small fraction of the cost required to use traditional offset printing equipment and materials.

You can create images with a desktop publishing program that transfers the images to a high-volume digital printer to complete a custom mailing order.

The five types of events mentioned above benefit from three specific types of digital printing services.
Business CardsDigital printing is an especially cost-effective method for bulk orders such as business cards. For instance, if you are the event planner for a real estate open house, you include your business card with each brochure that you send out to residents of the area where you have a home for sale.

Invitations

Designing, printing, and sending hundreds of wedding invitations can put a dent in the wedding planning budget. Digitally printing hundreds of wedding invitations costs a small fraction of what you can expect to pay for traditional offset printing. The same principle applies to the invitations sent out for graduation parties and business anniversary celebrations.

Last Minute Service

All five of the events listed above benefit from receiving last-minute digital printing services. Unlike traditional offset printers, digital printers are ready to go at a moment’s notice to handle any size order. If you receive 30 last-minute reservations for a business conference, you can digitally print seating charts within just a few seconds of receiving news of the additional reservations.

What Are the Benefits of Digital Printing Services for Event Planners?Event planners who have not turned to digital printing services should get on board today, and here’s why.

Flexible Design Options

Digital printing services have evolved from offering limited design options to giving graphic designers and digital marketers maximum flexibility to change designs on the fly. Design flexibility is especially important for sending out invitations for special events, such as holiday parties. Creating multiple designs for one batch of party invitations enhances the appeal of attending the event.

Budget-Friendly

Digital printing services do not require paying set-up fees like the ones charged for traditional offset printing machines. Event planners can print as many invitations, business cards, and wedding announcements as they want, without incurring additional fees. If you hire the right company for digital printing services, you might be able to bundle features such as including the costs of shipping brochures with the overall cost of a mailing campaign.

Better Quality

First impressions matter for event planners, and the best way to make a positive first impression for your next event is to impress with high-quality digitally created brochures, invitations, or business cards. Recipients of digitally printed items associate the high quality of what they receive with the high quality of your special event.

Can I Use Custom Mail Services to Handle Monthly Bulk Mailings?

Bulk mailings represent an effective way for your organization to save money in mailing costs, while still reaching your target audience. The question is not whether you should get the most out of your business marketing budget through bulk mailings. Instead, the question is should your organization do-it-yourself or outsource bulk mailings to a business that specializes in providing custom mailing services?

At first glance, the answer to the question is to handle bulk mailing projects in-house to save even more money. However, first glances are not always the best indicators for making the right business decisions. Although your organization can save money by doing bulk mailings in-house, the potential to make one or more mistakes can quickly cost you more money than if you outsource a bulk mailing project.

What is Bulk Mailing?

Bulk mailing represents an affordable mailing system that leverages the power of sending out hundreds of letters, flyers, brochures, postcards, and business cards to receive lower per-item rates. Taking advantage of bulk mailing rates can save your organization a considerable amount of money that you can allocate to other types of marketing initiatives.

To keep bulk mailing rates as low as possible, your organization must accurately target the receivers of your correspondence. As with irrelevant emails that get immediately sent to the trash bin, printed marketing correspondence sent to the wrong target audience ends up in a physical trash can. The key is to update your mailing lists constantly, which is one of four custom mailing services that benefit your bulk mailing program.

What Are the Four Most Popular Custom Mailing Services for Bulk Mailings?

Using one or more of the following custom mail services can enhance the performance of your bulk mailing campaigns.

Obtain Correct Addresses

Even if you run bulk mailing campaigns, your organization still has to pay for postage. What is the most influential factor that drives up the cost of postage for bulk mailings? The answer is sending correspondence to the wrong addresses. One of the most important custom mail services is called Coding Accuracy Support System (CASS) which represents a software program that automatically corrects any incorrect addresses.

Digital Printing

Using a digital printing service lowers the production costs of correspondence by requiring fewer types of raw materials to send a finished product. Digital printing also is much more accurate, which lowers the amount of waste discarded because of printing errors. If your organization runs frequent bulk mailing campaigns, a digital printing service does a better job of helping you maintain pace with production requirements.

Eliminate Duplicate Addresses

Sending the same type of correspondence more than one time to the same address is another costly mistake committed during a bulk mailing campaign. A merge or purge duplicate address tool identifies multiple addresses for the same person or business. For example, churches often have multiple addresses that identify different departments. Another common mistake is sending the same type of mail to the same person who goes by two different names. For example, your organization has to send just one letter to a household where a Jim and a James are the same person.

Access to the National Change of Address Database
​Residents in the United States are a highly mobile group, with an estimated 20 percent of the population moving each year. How does your organization keep up with such a highly mobile base of mail recipients? The answer is to gain access to the National Change of Address (NCOA) database. NCOA updates every week to identify the individuals, families, and businesses that have moved across town or the United States.