How to organise your business mail

If documents are misplaced or arrive late, they impact potential deals or even lead to fines. And that's just the receiving part. Failure to send out mail on time can lead to negative outcomes and sending out the wrong mail can hurt your brand's image. That's why we prepared this guide on how you can organise your mail more efficiently.

It can be a challenge to organise your post, as business traveller Steve Morley-Ham found out before we helped him. This is a cautionary tale that illustrates some of the challenges of managing business mail.

Get help from mail experts

If your business is constantly struggling to organise its mail, it may be best to seek outside help. Establishing an effective process for your business mail can transform an otherwise costly and inflexible service to one that can be managed with ease. One way mail experts do this is by streamlining everything, like high-volume send-outs so that only one department takes care of all mail-related concerns.

Considerations for business mail management

Business mail management can be time-consuming, expensive and if an effective process isn't in place, it can lead to the delay or loss of mail items. For companies reliant on mail, it's imperative that a system is in place. If you're looking for ways to transform how your business processes mail, take the following into consideration.

Mailrooms

A mailroom is crucial to streamlining all your mail needs. This is a dedicated space where you will receive, distribute, and send out post and parcels. Having this space, the size of which will depend on the size of your business, will make it easier for you to track your companies post. This is a simple yet effective way to organise your mail that also means your staff won't be inundated with mail at their desks. However, it is not always feasible for businesses to dedicate a space to a mailroom, particularly given the recent trend of remote working and shared working spaces.

Mail redirection

Mail redirection is a necessity for some businesses. It ensures that specific mail items gets to where they need to be and is beneficial in a variety of business scenarios, such as the following:

1. Moving company premises - if your business is relocating, mail redirection is a must-have. Although you can update your new address with your contacts, you never know what mail could get missed if it's sent to your old address.
2. Travelling business - If as a business either you or your employees regularly travel, redirecting mail to them as they travel will speed up the time it takes for them to action important mail.
3. Multiple business offices - when a company operates from multiple locations, you may have a central hub that you receive all of your mail to. This can lead to the delay in mail that would then need transporting to another office. Mail redirection can help to divert the mail to where it's meant to go, reducing the time it takes for mail to get to where it needs to be. 

Outbound mail tracking

Given the advances in technology and availability of same day and next day deliveries, consumers expect packages to be delivered at their convenience and without delay. Consideration for this is particularly important for e-commerce and dropshipping businesses. Having the ability to track your mail items and feed back this information to customers is a necessity for any good customer service system.

Mail disposal

Documents or letters that no longer serve any purpose should be disposed of so they don't clog up your mail room or your employee's workstations. Yet, businesses should also have a system that ensures your employees are disposing of mail that contains confidential information properly, as this could lead to legal action. Destroying certain information earlier than necessary is against the law in the UK. One effective way to organise the disposal of confidential mail is to have a dedicated bin. This will ensure that any disposed mail that does contain confidential information can be double-checked before being shredded. In cases where specialised disposal is required, make sure you call a reputable company to do the job. 

The UK Postbox solution to business mail

As stated in the first section, we highly recommend that you seek expert help to streamline your business mail process. We've developed a solution that helps to keep your mail organised, accessible and efficient. We offer the following services within our advanced mail management app to support businesses:

1. Access any inbound mail and read it online.
2. Forward on any important mail to somewhere else.
3. Store important mail on your account for easy access.
4. Scan mail contents, ready for you to action.
5. Upload a letter and request that we send it on your behalf.
6. Track your mail within the UK Postbox app when selecting this postage option. We use third party mail carriers to deliver mail, so any information will be fed directly from them.
7. Securely dispose and recycle of mail items that are no longer needed.
8. Add a 'named person' to your account, such as your PA or receptionist. A named person can take action on behalf of the business, provided that they meet the identity criteria, and we receive confirmation from the business.
   

If you'd like to learn more about our business solutions, visit our business address page where we explain our service in detail.