USPS Loyalty Program Doesn’t Beat Savings with Shipping Software

As the old saying goes: membership has its privileges, and the shipping business is no different. In order to generate more business via the organization’s Click-N-Ship online program, USPS has recently rolled out a loyalty program. With the rollout, USPS is looking to capitalize on the growing trend of people turning to the internet to ship packages, rather than waiting in line at the Post Office. However, while this new rewards program may incentivize people to safely ship more from home, it won’t make much of a dent for the savvy shipper looking to save the most amount of money on labels.

The Details of the New USPS Loyalty Program

The USPS rewards program kicked off on August 1st. From that day forward, any users who buy labels online via Click-N-Ship will earn credit that accumulates when they spent a certain amount. Customers can then apply that credit to any future Priority Mail and/or Priority Mail Express labels they purchase on the platform, but can’t convert the credit to cash.

As per the program, Click-N-Ship users earn $40 credit on every $500 they spend on Priority Mail and Priority Mail Express labels. In addition, if they register for a Click-N-Ship business account, USPS will gift them a one-time $40 bonus credit for the first $500 they spend.

Lastly, if users ship between August 1st and September 30th, they will earn an additional one-time $20 credit when they spend up to $500.

Online Shipping Software is Still the Best Way to Save Money on USPS Labels

While this new rewards program might seem like a good way to save money to most, it’s not the best way to save on shipping labels. Loyalty programs aside, online shipping software companies still provide the deepest discounts on USPS postage available. If you ship out lots of packages, the amount of money you’ll save with discounts from USPS shipping software far exceeds the amount of credit you’ll earn from the USPS loyalty program. This is because while shipping software offers discounts such as USPS Commercial Pricing, Click-N-Ship offers no discounts on postage whatsoever. Whatever you’d pay to ship a package at the Post Office is exactly what you’ll end up paying with Click-N-Ship.

A Quick Example

To show why saving money with online shipping software is still a better deal than the USPS loyalty program, let’s run through a quick example. For the sake of easy math, let’s say you need to ship 100 packages from Los Angeles (90036) to New York (10001). Each package weighs 5 pounds, and has outer dimensions of 10x7x4″. In this particular case, we compared our favorite third-party shipping software Pirate Ship to Click-N-Ship to see which option was cheaper. Here’s what we found:

• Pirate Ship costs $9.56 to ship the package via the specially-discounted service Priority Mail Cubic. $9.56 multiplied by 100 packages comes out to a total cost of $956.
• Click-N-Ship costs $26.70 to ship the package via weight-based Priority Mail at the Retail Rate. $26.70 multiplied by 100 packages amounts to a total cost of $2670. That’s almost tripling your expense compared to when you use shipping software to ship the same package!

When you ship under the new USPS loyalty program, you would, of course, receive a $40 credit for each $500 you spend. In this case, you would receive the $40 credit a total of 5 times, which would bring the $2670 price tag down $200 to $2470. Assuming you ship within the next few weeks, you’d also get a $20 welcome bonus. This would bring your total expense with Click-N-Ship down to $2450…which is still nearly $1500 more than it would cost to ship these packages on third-party shipping software.

So, if you’re looking to save money with the new USPS loyalty program, look elsewhere. When it comes to using third-party shipping software to buy USPS postage online, the numbers speak for themselves.

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