The USPS Holiday Season is Here! Let’s Give Thanks!

As we are in the thick of the holiday season with the increase in USPS holiday mail, our hearts are filled with warmth and joy over here at LetterStream. This time of year allows us to reflect on the abundance of blessings that surround us, from the meaningful connections we’ve forged to the challenges we’ve overcome together. As we are navigating our busy season with the increase of USPS holiday mail, we can’t help but reflect on how thankful we are for being able to still produce fast, perfect mail for our customers after all of these years.

In the spirit of gratitude, we invite you to join us in appreciating the moments that make this season so special. Here are a few ways we are truly grateful this holiday season and every day:

Expressing Thanks for Team Collaborations

LetterStream’s success as a printing and mailing company is a testament to the incredible team that works diligently behind the scenes. This holiday season, we extend our deepest gratitude to each team member who contributes their unique skills and perspectives, fostering an environment of creativity and innovation. Together, we’ve achieved milestones and faced challenges head-on, emerging stronger and more resilient.

As a team, we just held our Q3 Bonus Party and Thanksgiving Dinner. Our theme this year was, indeed, gratitude. Every quarter we do a bonus party for our staff because we want to let them know how grateful we are for the hard work they do, the mail they help produce and their dedication to not only LetterStream as a company but to our customers that we work with daily. It’s our way to say “thank you” to them each quarter.

This bonus party felt a little extra special this year. As a company and as individuals we have so much to be grateful for and we not only wanted to showcase that at our dinner but it’s also something we are remembering and practicing for the rest of this quarter (and beyond).

Appreciating Our Loyal Customers

To our valued customers, we want to express our heartfelt appreciation for the trust you’ve placed in us over the last 20 years. Your unwavering support has been the driving force behind our commitment to excellence.

Our loyalty and commitment has always been about treasuring people. In fact, that is our top core value; “we believe in the tremendous value of people and that all should be treasured.” With that said, we are excited to continue our growth into 2024 while finding new ways to continuously improve our processes to help add value and ease for our customers.

This holiday season, we celebrate the relationships we’ve built and look forward to continuing our journey together in the coming year.

Reflecting on Community Engagement

Beyond the office walls, our commitment to gratitude extends to the communities we serve. Whether through charitable initiatives or local partnerships, LetterStream is dedicated to making a positive impact.

This year we contributed donations to the different Maui wildfire relief efforts to help individuals and animals affected by the fires. We are also currently participating in the St. Mary’s Food Drive and Toys for Tots program to help those in need.

This holiday season, we encourage everyone to find opportunities to give back to those in need. Not only does it bring joy to those who are less fortunate but it also helps build the collective strength that comes from supporting one another.

First-class mail on top of Certified Mail envelopes with Christmas decor around it for usps holiday mail

Counting Our Blessings in a Digital World

In a fast-paced, digital age, taking a moment to unplug and appreciate the simple joys can be transformative. Even though we are a SAAS company, we still encourage everyone to embrace the beauty of simplicity through meaningful in-person connections.

Maybe that looks like sitting down with someone for a meal or coffee, bringing in donuts or cookies to team members as a small token of appreciation, writing a handwritten note, or giving a nice card. Maybe it’s as simple as telling someone that you appreciate them or saying “thanks for being such a great help and I’m so thankful we worked on this project together to get the job done.”

Recognizing the power of personal connections in an increasingly virtual landscape is so important to remember.

All-in-all, let’s come together to celebrate the spirit of gratitude this holiday season! We are so thankful for the relationships we’ve cultivated, the challenges that have shaped us, and the opportunities that lie ahead. As we express our gratitude, may we inspire others to do the same, creating a ripple effect of positivity that extends far beyond the holiday season!

And, just a friendly reminder to check the USPS website or our blog post for the postal holidays schedule so you can plan your USPS holiday mail and printing and mailing needs accordingly.

Remember: There is always something to be GRATEFUL for.

With so much gratitude and appreciation,

The LetterStream Team

New Printing and Mailing Updates

Wow, can you believe we’re officially in Q4 of 2023?! I’m sure you’re like us where each year you think, “Where has the time gone?” but this year feels like it’s going especially fast…wouldn’t you agree? With that being said, we’ve made a lot of new updates to our website, along with printing and mailing updates and processes over the last few months (well years even but that’s a blog post for another day) and we wanted to share some of them with you.

What LetterStream’s Been Up to With Printing and Mailing Services

Let’s get into it, shall we? Let’s fill you in on what the mailing experts have been up to over here at LetterStream over the last few months.

Our production team is always busy serving up fast, perfect mail. Our customer support team is rocking it by giving nothing short of mad customer love. Our IT department just keeps making magic happen. Our marketing department has been revamping and reorganizing our online presence and our accounting team just keeps being awesome at what they do best.

Now, let’s get into the specifics of what we’ve been up to behind the scenes for you, our awesome clients, new and old to LetterStream. Keep in mind, we try to keep our updates subtle, so they don’t disrupt your normal processes when creating jobs to send your letters.

Quick Updates to Help You Send Mail Online Include:

Re-named #9 envelope overprint
Added the correct artwork/thumbnail for our flat-sized envelope
Turned on user-created endorsements for our flat-size envelopes
Improved access to our BAA (Business Associates Agreement) for HIPAA clients. We now use DocuSign to get our BAA to you and back in record time.

More In-Depth Updates

Let’s get into a bit more detail for some of the bigger updates we’ve been working on and have finally launched.

New Chatbot on LetterStream

We added a new chatbot to our website. This one we are super excited for and it’s going to help with quick answers to just about any question you may have.

Our new Chatbot is not like the others. It is an extremely fast, highly intelligent AI that can actually get you help faster than if you were talking to a human. Now, of course, our customer support is still available to provide mad customer love to our clients, but the Chatbot will help to answer most questions instantly.

Read all about our new Chatbot here.

FedEx 2Day

We did it, finally! We turned on FedEx 2Day letters for users that have been active for 6 months or more.

Currently, we offer the standard FedEx 2Day letter option. This will get your FedEx envelope delivered by 5 P.M. on the second business day from when it was mailed.

To learn more about the new FedEx 2Day or to see the step-by-step process on how to mail your documents via FedEx through our online portal, click here.

Improved Help Articles

Our customer support team has not only been busy providing customers with the best support possible, but they’ve also been busy improving some Help articles to make it easier to find questions to answers you might be looking for.

We have a plethora of articles that have recently been updated but here are a few to reference below:

Welcome to the Team!

We are beyond excited to announce that we recently added a new member to our customer support team who has been such an incredible asset to us. If you happen to reach out to support and get a reply from her, be sure to say hi! Welcome to the team, Morgan!

Well, that’s the not-so-quick update we have for you in regard to what’s been going on here at LetterStream lately. Keep in mind that we’re currently in the holiday season, so be sure to prepare accordingly for closures coming up. Here is an overview of the 2023 USPS (United States Postal Service) and LetterStream’s Holiday Schedule.

2019 Baja 1000

Baja1000 (3)

Racing through Mexico!

Given today’s headlines it might sound treacherous to drive to Mexico; but how much more so, to make it a thousand-mile road trip through the country. And let’s add a twist of only traveling on unpaved and primitive roads.

Well, Dennis our Technical Services Manager is doing just that this weekend. But because Dennis loves a good challenge, he’s making the trip in a Volkswagen bug.

Dennis is racing in the 2019 Baja 1000, a grueling 1000 mile non-stop road race on nearly impassible roads in a car that’s over 50 years old and has a fraction of the horsepower of any modern car.

There are two things you should know about Dennis. First, he can fix anything (which LetterStream really benefits from and I’m sure his race team does too) and second he has a heart the size of the entire Baja Peninsula. Dennis has joined up with another Dennis, Hollenbeck, and his team to race Class 11 car 1121 through a brutalizing 1000 miles of dust and boulders. But car 1121 isn’t just a race car, it is owned and operated as an extension and fundraising arm of Real Life Ministries an organization that serves the less fortunate ones in Mexico.

So not only does Dennis get the joys of fixing even more things this weekend, he also gets the greater joy of participating in a journey to uplift the downtrodden and help shed light on a ministry seeking to do the same thing.

Dennis, we’ll be watching and cheering as you pound the rocky terrain of Baja Mexico and seek to make the world a little better for those around you.

Check out the following related websites:

Real Life Ministries. https://reallifeministries.org/ “committed to serving the less fortunate, tending to the sick, and providing shelter for the homeless. 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.”

Class 11 Car 1121. http://www.teamh12one.com/ “We are about Running the Race as it describes in Hebrews 12:one , “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us … run with perseverance the race marked out for us”.”

Baja 1000. http://score-international.com/ November 22 – 23rd 2019. View the livestream of the event at http://score-international.com/livestream-52nd-annual-score-baja-1000

Baja1

Update: November 25, 2019:

The Baja team fought a brutal battle, enduring one of the most difficult courses in the 52 years of the Baja 1000 history. And congrats to the team, for taking First Place in the group of Class 11 cars. How amazing, to punish the car and driver for over 36 hours of non-stop CARnage and still drive across the finish line. Great job team!

Baja4 Baja3

20% off Orange Paper and Postcards!

October Promotion

No tricks here, we are giving you a treat this Halloween season.
For the month of October, we will be offering 20% off all Orange 8 ½ X 11 paper and Orange Express Postcards.
You have a business to run and customers to keep happy, so we want to help you! For your festive holiday letters and notes look no further than LetterStream. For your fast mailing and printing needs, we’ll get the job done. Don’t wait until it’s too late and all the candy is gone, let us help you this Halloween season.

Welcome Ashlee, our New Customer Service Manager

Ashlee

Hold on, hold on, before you panic at this headline, Mike hasn’t left the LetterStream team. He is now our Director of Customer Experience. We figured that Mike could get a promotion if he could find someone just as awesome in customer service as he is. That said, we didn’t think Mike would ever get a promotion. Enter Ashlee. We aren’t sure how Mike did it, but he actually found someone who can bring help and joy to customers as well as he can. Ashlee has been with us a few months now, so some of you have already experienced her good nature, knowledge of our systems and overwhelming desire to help people out.

Ashlee has some 5-star training from Marriott hotels and resorts and has supported many different clients in an earlier payroll processing career. These experiences are quite helpful to her on the job, but nothing can compare to the enthusiasm that she has to be a part of our team and her tremendous desire to support all of our customers.

Next time you call in, be sure and say “Hello and Welcome” to Ashlee.

LetterStream Learns – Internal Training Brand

We had a fun day today. Well, we probably have fun most days, but today we launched our new internal training brand; LSLearns. LetterStream always wants to develop, and cultivate an internal culture of learning to go along with our already “fast and perfect mail” mantra and our “mad customer love” vision for customer service.

It is our belief that as employees grow and learn they start to discover their unique talents that can unlock a tremendous amount of capability. David, our President, is often heard saying that inside everyone is a hidden super power that can manifest itself in the workplace in amazing ways. LSLearns is an attempt to formalize our belief that people, when awakened in the right way, can do amazing things.

Some skeptics may say, “Ah, this is just an attempt to squeeze more productivity out of people”. We might respond; “Sure! Sort of.” After all, what’s wrong with more productivity? But “squeeze” probably doesn’t capture the essence of our training efforts, instead we might use the word “foster”. By creating training, learning and growing opportunities we allow our employees to decide how much effort to put into their own career development plan, and hopefully inspire them along the way to be excellent at whatever it is they are doing.

Leader of Leaders and Learner of Learners, Kay Coleman, helped us launch the day, and our new brand, by leading us through some activities to engage our minds in different ways. Kay has been an active learner, teacher and facilitator for most of her life, was Program Director with iLeadAZ – a program developed to lead school principals to greater success, and now provides consulting services to companies (like ours!). Thanks Kay, for coming along side us with our passion for learning!

Official USPS And LetterStream 2015 Holiday Schedule

We’ve updated our USPS Holiday Calendar with the latest information from the USPS. In addition, we’ve added important USPS early closing days which are not typically spelled out on the USPS Postal Holidays web page.

We’ve placed this information along with LetterStream’s holiday schedule on a Google Calendar so you can have all the information at your fingertips on your smartphone, tablet or Google account.

If you are already synced to the LetterStream calendar, awesome! Your job here is done. If not, see the instructions below.

One more important mention; most USPS retail counters close early on both Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, so make sure you call ahead and/or plan accordingly. In conjunction, LetterStream will also be closing early on both of those days.

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Click on the “+Google Calendar” button below to subscribe with your Google account.

(*Click here for instructions on how to sync Google Calendar with a mobile device.)

Merry Christmas And Happy Holidays From LetterStream!

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!

From your friends at

This holiday season we want to wish you lots of love, time with family, hot chocolate, and of course… all your mail delivered on time. We are thankful for your support in 2014, and we look forward to serving you well in the coming year as well.

Please note that according to the USPS, most post offices will be closing at 12:00 noon on Christmas Eve (Wed. Dec. 24th) and New Year’s Eve (Wed. Dec. 31st). Be sure to drop mail in blue collection boxes by noon on those days as well, as the USPS will be picking up mail early.

See LetterStream’s holiday hours below.

Happy Mailing!

-The LetterStream Team

LetterStream Holiday Hours

Do You Have A Backup Facility For Your Mailing Operations?

Critical Mail Backup

While most of our customers choose to outsource their entire outbound mail operations to LetterStream, there are some that are unable to reassign staff or who are hesitant to return leased equipment due to financial burdens that might be incurred.

Whatever the reason not to outsource completely, we have a solution in keeping with our mission of being the best mail solutions partner. We have created a hot backup mailing facility program to allow businesses to keep their own mailing operations up and running, and increase their speed and reliability by using LetterStream when more mailing power is needed.

The program is simple to implement and is fairly inexpensive considering you have all the power of LetterStream print and mail operations at your finger tips. This includes a fleet of high speed printers, a mail preparation and inserting department, and barcode tracking of every mailing project. LetterStream is fast and accurate, and our prime location in Scottsdale, AZ protects us from most of the world’s natural disasters and extreme weather. So if your operations are down because of snow or ice or flood or earthquake… chances are we are still fully staffed and fully operational, and can get your mail out the door and on its way.

For our east coast friends, LetterStream being in the MST time zone results in a few extra hours each day to get your critical mail jobs out the door. We can handle a wide variety of business and transactional mail including letters and flats, checks and invoices, and certified and registered mail.

Contact us to learn more about how LetterStream can keep your mailing operations up-and-running, in any situation.

"Business Closed"

Business Closed Google Image Results

I was shocked to discover that my business closed the other day. For some reason I had assumed I wouldn’t be the last to know.

Well, that’s not exactly how it turned out, but it sure threw me. I was tracking a test piece of USPS Certified Mail that I sent to my office. And right there in the USPS tracking history were the words “Business Closed“. Wow, what a bummer.

Business Closed Certified Mail Tracking Status

When I see the words “Business Closed” on a piece of mail it reminds me of “Moved – Left no forwarding”, or “No longer at this address” or “No receptacle”. Those words conjure up “Out of Business” and, well, “Business Closed“. After all, the screenshot above is what Google found when I did an image search for “Business Closed”. Looks like they came to the same conclusion.

Seeing those words on a piece of mail to my own office caused me to wonder what sort of financial position we must have been in to just up and close our doors in the middle of the night.

Turns out all is fine (except for maybe the choice of words the Postal Service uses when tracking Certified Mail). Here is the explanation for this new tracking status: “Business Closed” simply means that the mail carrier arrived outside of the normal business hours. In our case, the mail carrier attempted to deliver a certified letter on a Saturday when we were closed for the day (key word, ‘day‘).

So when you see the words “Business Closed” in your tracking history, simply translate it to “No one at the office today, will try tomorrow“. Personally, I was happy to know that I can continue showing up and writing little tidbits about First-Class and Certified Mail on this blog.

*To track a certified letter, go to www.LetterStream.com and find the “Certified Mail Tracking” section on the lower right side of the page.