How To Prepare For Mail Slowing Down This Holiday Season

The holidays are almost here—cue the festive lights, family gatherings, and, of course, the inevitable mail slowdown. Yep, as we head into the busiest time of the year, USPS, FedEx, and UPS are bracing for a tidal wave of packages and letters. Whether it’s holiday cards or businesses sending out year-end notices, the mail system is about to get busier than ever.

Now, we’d love to tell you that your mail carrier will power through the season with ease, but the truth is, things might start to feel like you’re stuck behind holiday shoppers on Christmas Eve. So, what does that mean for your business? Let’s take a closer look—and most importantly, figure out how you can avoid getting caught in the holiday mail storm.

Why Does Mail Slow Down During the Holidays?

It’s all about volume. USPS anticipates handling over 12 billion mailpieces, including close to a billion packages, during the holiday season. Yes, you did read that correctly. And that’s not counting all the letters, postcards, and business mail like invoices, statements, and end-of-year notices. When the system is overloaded like that, it’s no surprise things start to move at a snail’s pace really making living up to the name of sending snail mail.

It’s like trying to funnel a river through a garden hose—it’s bound to overflow and slow things down. That’s why it’s so important for businesses to plan early and stay ahead of the holiday rush to hopefully help avoid holiday mailing delays.

What Does This Mean for Your Business?

Here’s where it gets real: If your business relies on getting mail out on time—whether it’s invoices, contracts, or HOA annual meeting notices—you can’t afford to let holiday mail delays bog you down. As mail carriers juggle the extra load, what normally takes just a few days to deliver might start showing up fashionably late.

This could be a big deal if you’re sending time-sensitive legal or financial documents. An invoice that arrives two weeks late doesn’t just delay a payment; it can mess with your entire cash flow. And if you’re handling important contracts or compliance documents, missed deadlines could cost you a lot more than just frustration.

Long story short: Don’t wait for the holidays to sneak up on you—plan ahead and stay ahead.

How to Stay Ahead of the Holiday Slowdown

The good news? There are ways to make sure your business mail stays on track, even when carriers are overwhelmed. Here are a few strategies to keep things moving smoothly:

1. Plan Early, Send Early

The earlier you can get your letters mailed, the better. If you’re planning a big mailing—whether it’s holiday promotions or year-end statements—send them earlier than usual. Trust us, your future self will thank you when your mail sails through before the holiday bottleneck hits.

2. Consider Faster Mailing Options

If timing is critical (and it often is), upgrading your mailing services might be the way to go. FedEx Overnight and 2Day are the fastest options when it comes to sending mail quickly. First-Class Mail and Certified Mail services are usually given priority, meaning your documents have a better chance of reaching their destination on time but it’s not a guarantee. In fact, Certified Mail can actually take longer than what the USPS says. If you wondering how long Certified Mail takes, you can read more on that here. Yes, it might cost a bit more upfront, but when deadlines are looming, peace of mind is worth it.

3. Let the Pros Handle It

This is where we come in. If the thought of juggling large mailings during the holidays feels overwhelming, why not let someone else handle the logistics? We specialize in printing, inserting, and mailing business documents, so you can focus on running your business—or, you know, sipping some holiday eggnog. Literally, we handle all of the printing and mailing for you. We’ll make sure your mail gets out on time, no matter how busy the season gets. All you have to do is upload your documents and we handle the rest. You can even upload early and schedule out for future mailings.

4. Track Your Mail

If your mail absolutely must arrive by a certain date, tracking is your new best friend. Services like Certified Mail and FedEx 2Day come with tracking options so you can monitor the progress of your mail and keep your clients informed every step of the way. If using LetterStream you can send mail online and then with a Certified Mail Electronic Return Receipt or FedEx 2Day signature you can easily track it right from inside of your account without having to enter in a tracking number.

Don’t Let the Holidays Derail Your Business

The holiday season isn’t just about giving—it’s also about dealing with a lot more mail. But with carriers moving slower under the weight of extra deliveries, businesses need to stay on top of their game to avoid delays. By planning ahead, upgrading your mailing options, and outsourcing to the pros, you can keep your business running smoothly through the holiday chaos.

At the end of the day, it’s all about making sure that when you send physical mail online that it doesn’t get stuck in the seasonal slowdown. So, let’s keep things moving—before the rush sets in.

Ready to make sure your business mail stays on track this holiday season? We’re here to help you navigate the busiest time of year without skipping a beat. Sign up for a free account and start sending letters or your bulk mailing ASAP here.

LetterStream is a printing and mailing company, offering bulk printing and mailing services for businesses of all sizes from those with small business mailing needs to Fortune 500 companies.

Get to Know LetterStream’s Pricing to Send a Letter Online

A quality we really pride ourselves in over here at LetterStream is understanding that transparency is a key component when it comes to choosing a solution to print and mail out your letters, along with one that fits seamlessly into your budget.

Recently we received an excellent question from one of our valued customers. They were asking about the monthly and yearly costs associated with our services. Although our pricing is pretty simple, we figured it would be beneficial to break it down a bit more here on the blog for our current customers and potential new customers to help alleviate any confusion.

So, let’s dive into it.

Our Pricing Philosophy: Free Access, Only Pay for Mailings – What?!

We’re extremely proud to offer a straightforward pricing model for our services based on USPS mail prices. If you’re wondering about the price to send a letter through LetterStream, keep on reading.

Our basic services come with zero monthly or annual fees – that’s right, it’s absolutely FREE to access our website and experiment with all the mail-making features.

And no, this isn’t a joke, we promise. You only incur costs when you have a specific mailing job. So, if you don’t send mail in a given month, you won’t pay a dime. It’s really that simple.

Mailing Costs: Affordable and Customizable

Ok, let’s talk about the price of mailing a letter and the costs associated with it. When it comes to printing and mailing online, we keep the costs simple.

For instance, sending a one-page letter printed in black ink on 8.5″ x 11″ and mailed via USPS First-Class Mail starts at $1.13 each. Similarly, if you want to send Certified Mail via the USPS, those start at $7.34. You can also send USPS Certified Mail with an electronic mailing receipt for an added price. If you’re looking for super fast delivery that’s where FedEx 2Day comes into play and starts at only $13.50. We also have cheaper options where you can easily send a postcard that will cost you a mere $.78.

Basically, it’s a pay-as-you-go system, ensuring that you only pay for the mailings you send.

Try Before You Buy

We encourage you to give our print and mail services a try – for free! Here’s an extra perk we forgot to mention. No credit card is needed to experience the full functionality of our website. It’s so simple to take advantage of our easy-to-use interface, explore the advanced features, and see if LetterStream meets your needs.

We purposefully designed our pricing model with simplicity, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness in mind.

Additional Features

Now that we’ve covered our free pricing subscription (again mailing cost and service of sending a job only), let’s dive a little bit deeper. We take pride in offering more than just mailing services. Our platform is equipped with several additional features to enhance your experience when you sign up:

Trained AI Chatbot to answer questions 24/7. Although this one is available on our website in the bottom right-hand corner even if you aren’t a member.
Traditional help pages and videos are instantly available.
Multiple-user access.
Various user-access roles.
Reporting offered by user, department and job type.
Mailing jobs guaranteed to go out on time.
Easy-to-use interface.
Different types of perforated/perf paper to select from.
Return envelope options.
Can accommodate all types of jobs, including Fist-Class Mail, Certified Mail, FedEx, Postcards, Registered Mail and Flats.
Easy-to-use ‘Search’ feature to find any job or recipient that you’ve mailed to.
And, of course, our extreme commitment to excellence to serve our customers.

For an added cost, here are some more advanced options that can be accessed:

Load a document of variable page count per recipient and we’ll sort it out for you.
Address List Cleanup to help reduce undeliverable mail.
Ability to send an email copy in addition to a letter for $0.20.

If you’re visiting us for the first time and want to get in on all the cool features we offer and to help you get your mailings out the door, then comment below for a new customer promo code to get $10 free added to your account to test out sending a letter online.

To learn more about Certified Mail prices, First-Class Mail prices and other services we offer, click here.

Is it Time For a New Mailroom?

In an ever-changing world, the importance of looking for ways to improve our current situation is key. When we strive to make our lives better, our relationships better, our environments better and our jobs better, well…it tends to make everything better, generally speaking. This applies to all areas of life, including the workplace.

On that note, let’s get a little bit more specific about the workplace and jump into talking about improving your current mailroom situation, shall we? In fact, let’s get even more specific and break it down to talking about your in-house mailroom. Meaning, as a business or company you internally print and send out letters to your customers. Maybe you’re an HOA (homeowners association) who needs to mail out important information to your community. Maybe you’re a law firm that needs to mail letters to clients. You get the idea.

So how does talking about your current in-house mailroom relate to improving your current situation? Good question. Running your own in-house mailing can come with a lot of responsibilities, time and struggles if we’re being honest. It comes with added roles within the organization that probably have nothing to do with your product or service. Remember someone internally has to do the physical work of printing and mailing the letters.

If you are managing, dealing with or struggling with your in-house mailroom, we have some ideas to help you find a better solution for it.

Mail is mission-critical

First off, let’s call it what it is. A mailroom is mission-critical, meaning it’s very important…just like your internet access is super important. However, your company didn’t build its own internet company to get internet access into the building, did they? No, your company found another company that offered that service and said “Here, you handle this, while we handle what we are experts at.”

So, the question is, “What’s up with your mailroom?” “Why do you have one?” “Is there a visible career path beyond the mailroom?” Basically, why have an internal place to do mailings when you can have a company that specializes in it do it for you?

Your first thought might be that you have a mailroom because again, mail is mission-critical and it must go out ASAP. To that, we completely agree. However, why do YOU have a mailroom? You said MAIL is critical and MAIL must go out but, you didn’t say your mailroom is mission-critical, did you?

On that note, let’s get you introduced to the mailing industry experts. Hi, we’re LetterStream, a print and mail online service that a large number of companies are turning to in order to free up their time spent on mailing jobs.

Freeing up time away from handling their company mailings, people are able to find new jobs with their current employer, doing truly mission-critical work within the company; mission-critical work that provides growth an opportunity beyond being the chief of the mailroom.

The Mailroom Manager

So, how can they do that? Well, let’s unpack the roles and responsibilities of a Mailroom Manager because these roles can essentially all go away.

Mailroom Manager Roles and Responsibilities

Keeping informed of new and emerging printing and mailing technologies.
Creating connections in the printing and mailing industry to know where to purchase equipment and supplies.
Negotiating with vendors each year who constantly want to increase their prices.
Reviewing contracts every couple of years on printers, folders, tabbers, inserters, and postage meters, to name a few.
Staffing your department with people to make sure that the mission-critical mail can always go out.
Managing people and processes each and every day to keep employees productive, accurate and motivated.
Dealing with suboptimal equipment that struggles to produce in the key moments when you are counting on it the most.
Arguing with service vendors who don’t show up when expected or who don’t solve the problem that you’re dealing with.
Justifying the office space your team needs to store supplies, stage equipment, and create a mailroom that can produce the mail volume when it is needed.
Being called into meetings to discuss what went wrong when one of your internal customers didn’t give you the instructions you needed to be successful.
Driving to the Post Office to drop off mail, get supplies or have a face-to-face meeting about why, despite everything being done perfectly, the mail clerk decided to reject your mailing.
Studying the latest, and ever-changing Domestic Mail Manual, to know what you can and can’t continue to do and how you need to make sure your postage meters and rate charts and price structures are all updated.
And finally not getting the credit for the heroic effort you put forth day after day. And let’s face it, mail is extremely important and you are so good at your job, that you may be too valuable for anyone to move you out of that role.

Your new non-mailing job

It might be time to take those skills that you are developing and find a way to participate in your organization in areas that are both mission-critical AND a core product or service that your company needs. But how do you do that when you are needed to get the mail out? It’s easy! You find someone who can do your job as well as you can. May we propose that the answer is to send the mail to a mailroom that is turn-key and ready to go?

Consider an expert print and mail company

There are probably several good printing and mailing companies around who’d love to take on your mail projects. While we might propose any decent mailing company can help take the responsibilities off of your plate, it’s actually an excellent mailing company that would also keep you from being sucked back into your current situation. Meaning, that many companies bring print and mail back in-house because their former vendor couldn’t perform.

But trust us, there are plenty of high-performing print and mail vendors, so before being tempted to believe you are the only company that can make mail correctly, you owe it to yourself to look around.

On that note, our shameless plug is to contact us, LetterStream. Actually, you don’t even need to contact us. Just go to LetterStream.com and use the promo code “MyNewMailroom2023” to get $10 of free mail to test out what LetterStream can do for you. We send everything from First-Class Mail, Certified Mail with an Electronic Return Receipt (USPS tracking and signature), Registered Mail and even FedEx letters to invoices and postcard printing and mailing.

Trust us, we will be fast. We will be accurate. We will be committed to supporting you never having to utilize print and mail services internally ever again.