The Borough of Basingstoke and Deane Saves Thousands in Labour and Postage with
In-House Mailing Services
In 2004, the Gershon Report, commissioned by Labour, called for greater government
efficiency and pinpointed specific ways that information technology could be used
to reduce costs. In response, the borough of Basingstoke and Deane saw an opportunity
to move their Electoral Services mailings in-house, modernise their processes and
save money. What had been an expensive job with a lengthy turnaround when sent to
an external print and mailing house became a half-day’s work for their internal
team.
Required Repeat Mailings Add Up to Big Costs
Every year, the borough sends out the annual canvass mailing to update their voter
registration records. By law, they must send this to every registered voter in order
to update their voting registry. They send this mailing to each of the more than
70,000 registered voters in the borough. Those who do not respond to the first mailing
get a reminder mailing. A final reminder mailing is sent to those registered voters
who remain unresponsive. All together, these three mailings involve about 110,000
pieces of mail.
Each of these mailings cost several thousand pounds and was reliant on the availability
of an external print house. The borough’s first step was to set up an internal print
shop. They purchased two Xerox laser printers and a PFE MaxiMailer to handle the
production end. But the print shop was only half of the solution. They would need
some way to bring mailing services in-house as well. This way, they could increase
the accuracy of their mailings and take advantage of Mailsort and Walksort discounts.
Postal Mail Sorting Saves Thousands
Walksort organizes a mailing into the order that the postperson will deliver it.
For large saturation mailings like the borough was doing, this represented an important
savings. All 70,000 mail pieces in the initial mailing were delivered to just a
few Postcodes, the perfect mailing for Walksort. But putting it in order by hand
would be a tedious and time-consuming task.
For this, borough Production Officer Ben Naylor turned to Bulk Mailer 5 software.
Bulk Mailer 5 is an address management program able to automatically sort a mailing
list and cleanse addresses so that they follow standard formatting and have accurate
Postcodes. With the Walksort add-on, mailings that saturate a small area, like those
the Basingstoke and Deane borough were sending, are sorted in the order in which
they are delivered. By doing this, the borough saves Royal Mail time and effort,
and Royal Mail reciprocates by giving Walksort mailings a significant discount.
“The cost savings are huge. We can’t believe how much we’ve saved,” says Naylor.
Fast Production Time Allows for Additional Projects
The time savings turn out to be significant as well. Once Naylor receives the data
files, he only needs four hours of preparation before he is ready to print. Most
of that time involves cleaning a Microsoft Excel file by hand. Once the Excel file
is ready, Naylor imports it into Bulk Mailer 5. The file is cleansed, sorted and
used to create mail piece templates. When these mail pieces are printed, EFI Fiery
FreeForm, a variable data printing application, adds a background image. Because
this image is added as an overlay at print time instead of when the document is
created, printing remains very fast.
This new print process is on-demand and has a quick turnaround. It has allowed the
borough to produce a number of additional mailings during the year, such as one
promoting travel tokens for the elderly. The Basingstoke and Deane borough sends
about six of these additional mailings each year, each with a circulation of between
1,000 and 10,000 recipients.
With this new software handling the details of the mailing, Naylor has been able
to streamline his data management operation. The voter registration files are stored
as multiple Excel spreadsheets, due to size limits. So Naylor imports multiple files
into his mailing list, cleans the addresses, sends the mailing and exports the data
back to Excel files. The processed voter registration files that he sends back to
his supervisors in the borough are cleaner than those he received.
Naylor thinks other boroughs could benefit from his improved printing and mailing
process, though they would need their own print room. There are other ways to take
advantage of the borough’s investment, though. “We’re actually selling our services
to other boroughs,” says Naylor.