Schedule Your Mailings And Enjoy The Holidays

I Love LetterStream!!!!

One of the many little-known features of the LetterStream website is the ability to schedule a mailing to go out on a specific date. It’s a handy feature to be familiar with when you have a mailing that needs to be sent on a date that coincides with a vacation you’re planning, or an upcoming holiday.

Imagine creating a mailing, scheduling it for a future date and taking off for vacation. While you are sitting on the beach one evening an email arrives from LetterStream letting you know that your mailing went out according to plan. Ah, now that’s what I call a vacation!

Scheduling is fairly simple; after your job is created, click the “Edit” button under the options column on the job listing page. Then choose the option called “Change Scheduled Date” and enter the date you want your mailing to be delivered to the Post Office. We’ll take care of it from there.

Keep in mind, the schedule tool is for delaying a mailing for a specific date. If you need your mailing to go out the door faster, choose the expedite or rush option for faster processing.

Eliminate Returned Mail with LetterStream Return Mail Processing

Return Mail Is CostlyAs part of our goal to be your very best mail room, we have added Return Mail Processing (RMP) to our already rich line of mail room services.

In a blog post earlier this year we showed you how you can reduce the amount of return mail that you receive by cleaning up your address data with our CASS and NCOA tools. Now we are offering a way for you to completely eliminate your return mail by using the LetterStream Return Mail Processing Center as your return address.

This will eliminate the labor you currently spend on processing returned mail and it will keep a permanent record of each piece of mail returned. Imagine when a client of yours says they didn’t get a letter or bill that you sent, being able to see that the mail piece was returned. Then, instead of sending the same bill to the same address, you could work to capture a better or more complete address from your client.

To implement return mail processing we simply swap out your return address with ours, keeping your company name attached for recognition by your clients. Undeliverable mail will then be returned to our RMP by the USPS instead of to your office. We will make a record of which pieces are returned and electronically flag them in your account on our website. Returned mail pieces will be highlighted in your mailing history for instant identification.

Return Mail Processing

This same highlighting will appear on addresses of returned mail when you are searching for mail pieces by recipient name or address. With our handy “show only returned mail” feature, you can see how much returned mail you have by date range, sender, job type, or nearly any other identifier that our system allows you to search on.

Return Mail Search Function

Return Mail Processing might not make sense for you if you have less than a few returned pieces per month, but if you see that stack of returned mail piling up, wondering if you’ll ever have time to figure out what’s going on, now might be the time to see how LetterStream can help.

We have a special roll-out promotion price of $59.00 per month plus $0.10 per returned piece. That’s an insanely good deal, so take advantage of it before we figure out what we’ve done. 😉

Happy Veterans Day!

On that day let us solemnly remember the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly, on the seas, in the air, and on foreign shores, to preserve our heritage of freedom, and let us reconsecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain.

-Veterans Day Proclamation by Dwight D. Eisenhower

 

Veterans Day Stamp

 

Happy Veterans Day from LetterStream!

 

Even though the Post Office is closed today, we are open and able to process and mail your critical correspondence.

New LifeShow Slideshow. (Say That 10 Times Fast)

LetterStream lobby slideshowWe’ve found an innovative way to show off photos and display our logo in our company lobby. Since the price of a mounted flat panel HDTV was less than a custom made sign, we decided to opt for technology and electronics over old-fashioned plastic cut-out letters. Turns out the technology is pretty amazing, especially when combined with LifeShow.

We created a slide show of various pictures of certified mail, registered mail, trays of mail, post office locations, blue collection boxes and a host of other mailing related products with our logo intermixed. Then, via LifeShow we have shared the slideshow on Google+, Facebook and most importantly the flat panel in the LetterStream lobby.

The craziest part!? We are even able to share it in this post!

Use your arrow keys to scroll through our collection of mail related photos (you might need to click on the image first to get it rolling).

You can now pretend you are sitting in the leather overstuffed chairs in our lobby, listening to our peaceful background music, knowing that behind the lobby wall, we are printing and mailing your letters, documents and postcards for you.

If you have fun photos of mail that you’d be willing to share, send them our way and maybe they’ll make it on our slideshow!

LetterStream Uses Same Help Page Software As Pandora

24/7 Service button

Our IT crew is always working on things to make creating and managing mailings as simple and as easy as possible. However, due to the complex nature of mailings, there’s occasionally the need for a little assistance.

If you ever find yourself in a position of needing some help, please don’t hesitate to contact us in whichever way you feel most comfortable. There’s nearly always someone around during business hours who can readily pick up the phone and give you some old-fashioned customer service, and sending us an email is never a bad option either.

Now you have yet another way to get assistance from us. We’ve packaged up the most common questions we get asked into a brand new help system.

Since one of our frequently asked questions is “What does FAQ stand for?”, we simply call our page… “Help“.

The link to the Help page appears in the lower right-hand corner of every page after you have logged in, and is always available in the footer of our website as well.


The new Help page is packed with handy tips and instructions (organized by category), and a powerful search tool is available to help steer you in the right direction. In addition, we’ve included some short, easy-to-follow instructional videos packed with how to’s and product overviews.

LetterStream Help Page
LetterStream Help Page

Our phone number and email are handy on the right side if you can’t find exactly what you need.

Bottom line is, we are here for you. Phone. Email. Videos. Help Page.

Firing Patients With Certified Mail

Doctor using computer

Here’s an interesting topic. We talked to a medical professional the other day who needed to fire a patient and contacted us about using USPS Certified Mail to do it.

Firing a patient? What an interesting concept.

After some googling, we found that it is more common than you might think, and is even a necessary practice.

The American Medical Association website (www.ama-assn.org) states it very clearly in this article:

(Here is a PDF version of the article as well, as contents on the ama-assn.org website sometimes move around.)

Physicians need to fire patients for lack of payment, non-compliance and a host of other reasons.

We found a number of other websites that discuss the reason for using Certified Mail with Return Receipt for this delicate matter. A couple are shown below, however be sure to check your state’s laws before terminating the patient-physician relationship.

On a related front, it is also important to notify patients via Certifed Mail when your medical practice is closing or relocating. Since LetterStream is HIPAA compliant, we can help you with that or any other Protected Health Information (PHI) mailing.

Whatever the reason to communicate patient-physician matters, many articles point to the need to send the letter via USPS Certified Mail with Return Receipt. Both the LetterStream website and our sister site, OnlineCertifiedMail.com allow users to easily create, send and track Certified Mail.

Both sites maintain tracking information and signature receipts for immediate access longer than the US Postal Service.

New YouTube Videos On Making Mail With LetterStream

LetterStream-YouTube

We’ve published more videos on our YouTube channel to help you better understand some of the powerful features of our mail-making website.

The latest videos include:

  • Pre-Addressed PDF Demo – A quick overview of the mail creation process if you have documents that already contain the recipients’ mailing address on them. You might also refer to them as an already merged document.
  • Document PreFlight Demo – Learn how to use our PreFlight tool, which allows you to see the parts of your document that is visible through our windowed envelope.
  • Windowed Letter Demo – Learn to create a first-class or certified mailing using an address list and a PDF file.

If you are new to LetterStream, I’d recommend watching all of our videos (we try to keep them short and relevant) so you can see how easy it is to send your mail through LetterStream.

Help! I Need To Send A Mailing Out Fast!

LetterStream Flying Letters

Have a mailing that needs to go out FAST!?

Is TODAY fast enough? If so, we can probably help. If you need your letters mailed yesterday, we can almost do that too! 😉

Our process for creating and sending mail is blazing fast. The LetterStream website allows you to create a mass mailing of thousands of pieces in as little as two minutes. Trust us, we’ve timed it!

And once you get the mailing loaded and approved, we launch our team of experts to properly print, process and mail your critical documents.

We take the extra step of delivering your mail to a USPS distribution center to reduce the number of local post offices that your mail needs to travel to, further reducing the time in transit of your letters.

Ready to do it? You simply need a PDF version of your document and a mailing list or collection of addresses (saved as a CSV file).

Your job will move quickly through our production process. If you must have your mailing out the door today, choose to expedite your mailing so we process it first (extra fees apply).

As for the true speed of the LetterStream process, I think it is fair to say we can get most mailing projects out in a day. And if by chance it needed to go out yesterday, well, we will certainly try!

Here are some helpful videos from our YouTube channel to make the process even faster:

Many other job types and options are available, if you have little more time to log in and get creative.

"Office": A Funny Video From Domtar

We stumbled across this hilarious video from our paper manufacturer the other day.

It doesn’t have much to do with mail, but it points out some of the silliness of cutting too much paper out of your workplace diet.

Domtar has a whole series of videos titled “PaperBecause“. This little beauty is #112.

Check out the entire series at www.paperbecause.com.

If you’re interested in real paper mail, contact LetterStream for solutions in Certified Mail, First-Class, and non-profit mail.