1. business and industrial

11/30/2004
How to Grow Direct Mail Production Volume by 2800% in Six Years
Window Book Speaks with DIS Direct about their Success
Between 1998 and today, DIS Direct, LLC grew from mailing 25 million to 700 million pieces
annually. A direct mail production house, DIS Direct operates out of two facilities—a web
printing plant in Itasca, IL and a full service finishing and mailing operation in Addison, IL.
Wanting to learn what had fueled the tremendous growth of their partner and client, DIS
Direct, Window Book, Inc. spoke with , and Director of IT, Jeff Schullo. In the fact-filled
interview below, DIS Direct explains how they automated their mailing operations and
formed effective partnerships with customers, vendors, and the U.S. Postal Service to build
a solid foundation that would support their record growth. Do you also want to know why
Mail.dat files make a key difference to DIS Direct, how to convince customers to provide
presort data as Mail.dat files, and what to do with Mail.dat to make it work for you? You’ll
learn all of this and more below.
WINDOW BOOK (WB): What are the most essential services you provide to your clients?
GENE: DIS Direct’s most essential service is meeting nearly impossible mail dates and
quantities and getting these mailings out better than anyone else in the industry.
WB: What do you think enables DIS Direct to do that?
GENE: A few things give us the edge: (1) being authorized by USPS for Optional Procedure,
which speeds verification for our complex mailings; (2) having Window Book’s DAT-MAIL™
software, which we find essential for participating effectively in Optional Procedure; and (3)
working with a very proactive Post Office in Addison, IL.
WB: How does your partnership with Window Book affect your relationship with the Post
Office?
GENE: If we didn’t use Mail.dat® and DAT-MAIL, we wouldn’t be able to do what we’re
doing—it would be virtually impossible! The automation that both provide allows us to do
the work of 11-12 people with only 1-2. There’s that much work that comes through if you
have to manually enter it!
WB: So we’re talking about a savings of at least 10 workers? That’s just under a half
million dollars in savings if you consider their salaries and benefits.
GENE: Yes, it’s that much in my belief. Because we’re going to hit 700 million pieces this
year and given the number of clients that we have, plus the fact that most jobs have
multiple versions, we’re saving that much.
WB: Describe one of those complex jobs that Mail.dat makes simple?
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GENE: For example, a 1-million piece job doesn’t just require one postage statement—it can
require 50 statements covering multiple drop ship destinations and many pallets for SCF
drops. This is the saving grace of Mail.dat and Window Book—we’re able to handle that a
lot better because DAT-MAIL works with the presort data from a Mail.dat file to produce the
necessary postal paperwork, and I don’t have to enter it all in manually.
WB: Does every client give DIS Direct their presorted addressee data as Mail.dat files?
GENE: Yes, 99% of our customers give us Mail.dat files.
WB: That’s a huge percentage! You know, although it is one of the unique benefits of DATMAIL—that it handles both Mail.dat and non-Mail.dat presort data—it’s still easier to process
a Mail.dat file. Can you tell us how you lobbied your customers successfully to get them to
give you almost everything as Mail.dat?
JEFF: It took a while. Gene had to do a lot of educating to work that out. One of the things
you have to make clear to clients is that with the short time frames they give and the
variety of mailing jobs that they’re sending, we require certain tools, like DAT-MAIL. And, in
order for us to make use of those tools, we have to have information presented to us in
certain formats—in this case, in the industry-standard Mail.dat format.
By and large, all the major software vendors for presort software either include the ability to
produce a Mail.dat file or they have an optional module to create these files. And, frankly,
it’s just not that difficult to generate a Mail.dat any more. For clients who are
subcontracting their data processing to list services, typically those vendors provide that
service. We’ve been pretty successful at obtaining data as Mail.dat, and, matter of fact,
we’re kind of surprised when we don’t get one.
WB: What else sets you apart? You’ve said that reaching certain in-home mail dates and
being able to do so with high volumes of mail, quickly, distinguishes you in the industry.
Clearly that is attributable, in part, to your success in teaching customers the value of
providing you with Mail.dat files. What other services distinguish DIS Direct?
JEFF: We pride ourselves on handling a lot of different configurations of mail pieces. Our
shop is very modular, so we’re able to combine different processes in order to smooth out
the production line. We receive everything from a virtually finished product that we just
need to personalize with our ink jets to a flat sheet that needs cutting, folding, gluing shut
to meet the Postal standard, and personalization (both top and bottom). We provide the
data processing, finishing and personalization for all of that, in-line. We’re a full-service
organization from printing all the way through mailing, and we handle logistics also. Data
processing is also a very important part of what we do.
GENE: We also offer mail consultation to the customer prior to mailing to help them
determine the best possible way to mail, be it the class of mail, whether they want to go
with a stamp or an indicia…. We help develop in-home dates and ship dates. We help
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determine if pieces are automatable and, if not, what a client can do to make their mail
automatable. All of these services drive the cost of the mailing down and increase customer
satisfaction.
JEFF: Of course, one of the biggest assets that we have in terms of getting the job done for
our clients is Gene. His level of expertise and influence in this area is well known, and we
leverage that for our customer’s benefit. Plus, Gene has established a wonderful
relationship with the Postal Service, which allows us to head off problems proactively.
WB: Should a problem arise or a change be required late in the process, how do you adjust?
JEFF: I can honestly say that Window Book’s software opened us up to handling such
circumstances.
WB: What, in your day-to-day use of DAT-MAIL, do you find most helpful in providing these
essential services and dealing with change?
GENE: Well, the main thing is the ease with which we can use DAT-MAIL to generate
postage statements for so much volume and so many complex jobs. When I started here,
we were doing 25 million pieces annually—that was 6 years ago—and right now we’re doing
over 700 million! Without DAT-MAIL, we couldn’t make our statements fast enough to keep
up with our growing client base or to secure this tremendous amount of new business.
JEFF: It also helps us track all that mail. Our record keeping is much better with DATMAIL! Gene can now keep excellent track of everything we’re mailing.
GENE: Once a month, for our biggest client, I total up what they have spent on their
permits by going to your Period Report and running it for the proper date range—it prints
out everything that they mailed. This is important when a customer is spending megamillions per month. They can then use the data to reconcile their postal CAPS account,
making sure the Postal Service is withdrawing the right amounts from their permit accounts.
WB: You can even use DAT-MAIL to generate a CSV or XML file should your customer want
that data electronically to import into their accounting systems and avoid re-entering data
from a piece of paper or PDF.
GENE: Yes, that’s true. Thinking back, we originally started with the cheapest of your
programs, which was the Mailer’s Edge Pro. After that, we went to Post Master and, later,
we graduated to DAT-MAIL.
WB: So, in 1998, you guys were using Mailer’s Edge just to avoid hand-writing statements
and to be able to key in the data instead?
GENE: We started with Window Book in order to gain new clients. They didn’t want to deal
with a ‘Mom and Pop’ shop. They wanted to deal with someone who was professional. And
right off the bat, when you see the statements coming out of the WBI program, it’s very,
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very professional. That, in itself is a selling point. Take someone who doesn’t know much
about statements, for instance: if they look at the statements that we produce versus those
that are hand written by another company, even if theirs are just as good otherwise, that
customer will see that the other companies’ work doesn’t look as professional as ours.
That’s where we started from.
JEFF: And in an industry where perception is at the forefront of everything, that perception
of professionalism is important.
GENE: One of the other things that’s very important for us: we might have a mailing of 5
million pieces going out, so we make up a master statement and every day we mail
different variations of it. Sometimes we don’t get the final counts until about 5 minutes
before the postal verifier walks in. So somebody here just goes into DAT-MAIL, tags what’s
going out that day, and then it goes out. If you had to do this by hand, you’d never be able
to do it!
WB: It’s not just that you save 10 people entering the data manually, it’s that you can’t do
things that old way and grow? It’s obviously played a significant role in allowing you the
flexibility and the speed you need to handle this increasing volume. How intertwined are
your use of this kind of automation software, particularly DAT-MAIL, and your growth?
JEFF: Well I think one of the key words that you used was flexibility, as indicated by our
modular concept on our production floor. It’s also indicative of the way we handle incoming
work. We do get last-minute work, which everybody does, but because we are of a size
that allows us to be able to modify our configurations and schedules to get these lastminute jobs—large last-minute jobs—out, or to make these last-minute changes as
required. And, of course, DAT-MAIL is a big part of that, and it’s in keeping with our
general philosophy of bending over backwards for our clients.
JEFF: We feel like you guys are really a partner in a lot of ways. One thing I wanted to
make sure I mentioned in this interview is the level of support we get—it’s fantastic. I know
I can always get a hold of someone. Lately, they’ve been able to actually dial into our
system, go live to troubleshoot and diagnose problems. I think we get the proper attention
because, oftentimes we’re under the gun.
JEFF: Now we’re up to the latest and greatest version of DAT-MAIL, and we’re constantly
updating it from your web download, which is another great feature.
GENE: Also, we’re participating in a modified PostalOne!® program, manually entering data
into PostalOne! based on the statements from DAT-MAIL. I have one client who has 35
different versions and often mails all 35 versions, every day, all week long. When we give
this to the Post Office at the end of the day, with DAT-MAIL, we can hand them just one
statement rather than 35, which saves them a lot of time.
WB: How does it benefit you that the Post Office only has to enter one?
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GENE: Well, giving people what they need to do their job more easily breeds a lot of good
will. The statements from DAT-MAIL allow the Post Office to handle larger volumes, faster.
Plus, if they can process that one job faster by receiving one statement versus 35
statements, then they can handle the other mail that we may be entering right behind it.
In fact, it’s easier for the Postal Service to come in here to do 8-9 million pieces in one day
than it is for them to process mail from some much smaller accounts that require a lot of
hand-writing and recalculation. At the end of the day, USPS is in and out of DIS Direct in 2
– 2 ½ hours! When you make things simpler, you make things better for everybody.
Window Book is the premier shipping and mailing software partner to lettershops,
corporate mailers and fulfillment houses, providing the crucial bridge between clients’
internal systems and the USPS. Contact Elizabeth Badavas, Marketing Manager, (617)3954542 or marketing@windowbook.com. DIS Direct is a direct mail production house,
offering a wide range of innovative printing ideas and reliable mailing options targeted to
improve market response and increase sales. Contact Gene Kryczka, Vice President, Postal
Affairs and Distribution, (630) 705-1590 or gkryczka@disdirect.com.