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Want to squeeze every advantage you can out of the new postal rates?

Change the contours on your mailing pieces. The prices that go into effect next month are based on shape more than weight.

For example, some catalogers are switching from flat-shaped catalogs to slim jims, putting them in the less-expensive letter category, according to Ted Lebow, vice president of operations at Vertis Communications.

But beware: They may not be what they're cracked up to be.

“The rumor about slim jims is that they're not working well on letter-sorting equipment,” says Jerry Cerasale, the Direct Marketing Association's senior vice president for government affairs. “This may not be a long-term solution.”

The USPS acknowledged as much in March when it announced it was revising standards for folded self-mailers, booklets, and folded booklets mailed at automation and machinable-letter prices. The reason? These pieces have been known to jam equipment or get damaged during processing.

Then there's non-flat machinables — the pieces used widely by nonprofit groups to send bulky premiums. They're expensive because the USPS doesn't want to handle them.

So what do you do? Try something else.

Some fundraisers have been retooling their mailings so they can qualify for automation discounts, reports Tony Conway, executive director of the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers. “My impression was that last year's rate increase really hammered that class. For the most part, folks scrambled to get out of it and tried to find different ways to package their material. I've heard of various types of packaging that allow the materials to no longer be considered non-flat machinables but just regular flats.”

Otherwise, mailers are trying to make the most of what they have to save a buck in postage.

“There's nothing new in this rate increase that creates any work-sharing opportunities, so our approach is to concentrate on what we've been doing, and that is a great amount of co-mailing,” says Joe Schick, vice president for postal affairs at Quad Graphics.

Co-mailing? That's the grouping of several catalogs into a single mailing so that each participant shares the presort discounts.

“Co-mailing is really popular right now,” says Mary Ann Kleinfelter, vice president of marketing at L-com Inc., a small direct marketer of cable connectivity products. While much of the firm's business is conducted online, it also markets by mail.

Then there's drop shipping. DMers can get a $42-per-thousand discount if they deliver their mailings directly to postal sectional center facilities and $33 per thousand if they drop them off at bulk mail centers, notes Debora Haskel, Iwco Direct's vice president of marketing.

Not that everyone is happy.

“I think we were all expecting a plain-vanilla increase at least this first time under the new law,” Schick says. “We didn't plan for this.”

Haskel says last year's rate hike caused “a lot of people to reduce flat-size pieces to letter size, and we would continue to recommend letter size — it's a better value.”

She adds that the best value can be found in “commingled drop-shipped letter-size standard mail that qualifies for automation discounts.”