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.
