What You Don’t Know About New USPS Requirements Can Actually Hurt You

Did you know that the USPS® announced at MTAC (Mailers' Technical Advisory Committee) in February 2012 that they plan to retire the POSTNET barcode in January 2013?  This means starting January 2013 you and your partners in the Postal industry will no longer be able to claim automation discounts using POSTNET. You will need to use Intelligent Mail Barcodes (IMb) to qualify for automation discounts. It was also announced that in January 2014 only Full-Service IMb mail will qualify for automation discounts. 

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Get Intelligent Mail Barcodes by Jan. 2013, Or You Will Be Out of Business

Are you still asking yourself what the United States Postal Service® (USPS) Intelligent Mail® Full-Service option will do for you? Is it worth investing money in new technologies for discounts of $3/1000 mailpieces for First-Class Mail and $1/1000 for Periodicals and Standard Mail? How long will it take to get my ROI to justify the expenses?

If so, you are asking the wrong questions. Instead of wondering how long it will take to get your ROI to implement IM Full-Service, you should join the band wagon as soon as possible and start using IM Full-Service if you want to stay in business; Currently you have the options to use POSTNET, IMb Basic or Full-Service to qualify for automation discounts. Starting January 2013 – which is right around the corner – the USPS plans to stop offering postage discounts for POSTNET. You will need to use IMb to qualify for automation discount effective January 2013 AND in January 2014 only Full-Service IMb will qualify for automation discounts.

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What is Mail.XML™?

Let’s face it, before either one of us understands what Mail.XML is, we first need to ask and answer “what is XML?” Gathering data from some of my more technically inclined friends, I was able to come up with some pretty good information. And because I understood it, you should have no problem with it either. XML stands for Extensible Markup Language, and is often defined as “a human-readable way of describing data or structured data.” It also means that you can extend a specification with fields - without necessarily impacting your communication software. XML is the current standard of communication between two or more computers over the internet and is the Business-to-Business communication and automation standard.

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Three (More) Things to Know About Mail.XML™

In the previous article we began exploring the basics of Mail.XML. And now that we understand that it is a messaging protocol that enables two-way communication between parties in the mailing supply chain and is designed to increase efficiency and lower costs by removing many manual data entry processes and enabling quick, near real-time communication between business partners, we can begin to look more in-depth at this latest specification from the International Digital Enterprise Alliance (IDEAlliance®) by asking a few more questions.

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Three Reasons Why You Should Use Mail.dat®

Mail.dat is an industry standard database file set that consists of detailed presort mailing information based on specifications set by the International Digital Enterprise Alliance (IDEAlliance®) (http://www.idealliance.org/maildat). It is a group of files that combines information from a number of sub-files to provide a detailed summary and description of a presorted mailing. Mail.dat is created during the presort process, either by presort software processing name-and-address lists or by MLOCR (multiple line optical character reader) machines. No matter how the sortation is performed, the details that make up the mailing are recorded in the Mail.dat file set for that job.

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Mail.dat® File Validation: How to Make Sure Your Files are Valid

Mail.dat files are valuable tools for mailers, mail service providers, logistics companies, and the United States Postal Service® (USPS®). Mail.dat files contain virtually all the information regarding a specific mailing with the exception of names and addresses. Mail.dat files may be used to communicate information about mailings, edit and manipulate mailing information, analyze mailings for drop shipping or other work-sharing discounts and combined mailing opportunities, and to facilitate the generation and transmission of postal documentation. As valuable as this tool is, however, it is not much use if the Mail.dat file is not "valid".

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Three questions about Mail.dat

The United States Postal Service® (USPS®) will eventually require all the mailers to submit Postage Statements and mailing documents electronically instead of hard copies. This means mailers must use the PostalOne!® system to transmit all the required mailing documents electronically. Mail.dat is one of the data file types mailers can use to send electronic files to the PostalOne! system. Now, let’s review some fundamental questions you may have about Mail.dat.

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Mail.XML™ & FAST

Mailers using Mail.dat can continue to use it as a database, but use Mail.XML™ for communication,automation or business to business processing and get answers in near real time from other parties.

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Mail.XML™ - A Present and Future Tool

Mail.XML™ is a mailing industry standard specification for light-weight transactions between participants in the mailing process. The Mail.XML™ specification, as with the mail.dat specification was established and is maintained by IDEAlliance.

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