Business Print Shop Adds Mailing Services to its Product Line
Alphagraphics Seattle, one of the largest Alphagraphics business centers in the
United States, mails approximately 175,000 pieces of printed matter per month. Most
of these projects are mailings that fall between 1,000-5,000 pieces.
“Many big mailing houses will not touch a list with less than 10,000 pieces,” says
owner Chuck Stempler. “We can leverage our customers with 200-10,000 addresses with
the added benefit of offering a complete mailing solution. Our customers don't have
to go to multiple vendors to create the mailing piece and process the list. Since
we do all the work, the customer can save 1-2 days in total processing time.” Customers
“are excited to put it all in our hands. They say 'you can do that also? That's
great! When do we start?’ Offering a full line of printing and mailing services
has also been a great way to attract new business.
“Much of our business is eventually mailed,” Chuck says. "Offering Mailing Services
helps us ‘own’ the customer from end to end. It helps eliminate the customer’s stress
of producing a mailing in pieces with multiple vendors. A customer sends us their
database, and we handle the rest. It's one-stop shopping.” Offering Mailing services,
Chuck continues, “makes it harder for a customer to move to another printing company.
They can shop around, but very few companies offer all the services we can supply.
It follows the industry trend of a total solution company.”
Mailing services represent a growing percentage of Seattle Alphagraphics' sales.
“We billed about $10,000 in mailing services during March of 2005,” Chuck says.
Mailing services have become so popular, “we recently trained staff on the second
shift, so that at least one person trained in mailing services is on staff at all
times.”
With all the new business, Alphagraphics Seattle has recently purchased additional
machinery, including a new tabbing machine and a new printer. “The mailing machinery
is much more economical in comparison with other printing machines,” Chuck observes.
A new color printer could cost over $100,000. “We were able to add mailing services
to our business center for under $20,000, including equipment and software. The
overhead is minimal in space, equipment and personnel” — and the revenue potential
is great.
Alphagraphics Seattle has been using Satori Software Bulk Mailer 5 since 2004, having
previously used another system, SmartAddresser. Chuck notes that, “Bulk Mailer 5
is much more user friendly with its up-to-date user interface. And the contemporary
design with automatic notification of downloadable program updates is really helpful.
I particularly like the Move Update service. Overall, the general design of the
software is more natural and intuitive. It is very easy to follow for the casual
user.”
Support is much more effective too. In addition to powerful mailing and addressing
capabilities, it’s important that training new employees is also easy with Bulk
Mailer 5. According to Chuck, “It only takes 4 print runs, a few hours each, to
fully train an employee on all the equipment and software we use for mailing services
including tabbers, printers and Bulk Mailer 5.”
Satori Software's product support helps make mailing easy. Chuck rates the Satori
support team as excellent. “They always answer the phone and always have an answer
ready. It's a great base of knowledge we can access at any time. The sales staff
was helpful, diligent and made it an easy switch. The biggest challenge is understanding
postal regulations. You can't find a shortcut to learning them, but we've been able
to work with the post office, and now it's much more routine.”