Preparing Election Season Mailings with BCC Software

As discussed in the June 2020 PostCom bulletin, election mail is expected to see a real increase in the coming months. In fact, according to Daniel Bentley, USPS® Election Mail Program Manager, “absentee balloting will easily double in 2020 [as] many states are scrambling to prepare for the new realities of the COVID-19 crisis in an election year.” In an attempt to limit the spread of COVID-19, many states have increased vote-by-mail initiatives while also reducing physical polling places, and 5 states currently have mail-only elections.

With this in mind, BCC Software wants to ensure you have the tools to effectively handle the increase in political and election mailings. Below is a thorough list of instructions for each of our products and how to properly prepare these types of mailings.

BCC Bulk Mailer®

To set up Political or Election mail in Bulk Mailer, use the Mail Sort wizard:

• Navigate to the Sorting Preparation page
• Under Advanced Document Settings Options, select Political Mail or Election Mail
• On the Intelligent Mail® Settings page, select the Full-Service Intelligent Mail setting, Address Change Service Type, and IMb Tracing settings as appropriate for your mailing

When the sort is complete, the first page of both the Mail Sort Summary report and the Postage Statement indicate that the mailing is Political Mail or Election Mail. If you use Mail.dat®, the Mail.dat files include the correct CCR and CPT. If you use Mail.XML, it will reflect these settings for a mailing after a sort is completed.

For more information, see https://portal.bccsoftware.com/Support/knowledgeBaseContents.aspx?id=KA-03388

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BCC Architect

To set up Political or Election mail in BCC Architect, use the PRESORT Agent Wizard:

• Navigate to the Sorting Preparation page
• Under Advanced Document Settings Options, select Political Mail or Election Mail
• On the Intelligent Mail Settings page, select the Full-Service Intelligent Mail setting, Address Change Service Type, and IMb Tracing settings as appropriate for your mailing

When the sort is complete, the first page of both the Mail Sort Summary and the Postage Statement indicate that the mailing is Political Mail or Election Mail. The Mail.dat files include the correct CCR and CPT values.

For automated sorts that use a presort template via the BCC Architect API, prior to running the sort, edit and update the template using the Presort Wizard to reflect the appropriate Election or Political Mail settings. You can set the Mail_Content property of an automated presort to indicate Political or Election mail.

This property is documented here:  https://portal.bccsoftware.com/Support/knowledgeBaseContents.aspx?id=KA-03430 or in BCC Architect Developer Guide.

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Track N Trace^®

New IMb Political Mail Service Type IDs (STIDs) for Letters & Flats are effective as of July 27^th, 2020 with USPS and will be available in BCC products around June 12^th, 2020. These unique STIDs will be added to Informed Visibility Mail Tracking and Reporting, which is utilized by Track N Trace. Ballot Mail STIDs remain the same, which were effective as of 8/20/2018.

How the new STIDs impact you:

• For customers accessing TNT™ through BCC Mail Manager®, Just select the correct service(s) in the TNT Wizard. Full BCC Mail Manager instructions are listed later in the document.
• For BCC Bulk Mailer and BCC Architect customers, the new STIDs will be available for selection with the July release version of those products.
• For customers uploading their mailings directly to Track N Trace, please contact support at (800)-624-5234to add the following STIDs to your data feed:

• First-Class Mail® Political Mail:
  • Basic or Non-automation with IV MTR: 727
  • Full-Service with IV MTR: 747
  • USPS Marketing Mail Political Mail
    • Basic or Non-automation with IV MTR: 728
    • Full-Service with IV MTR: 748

For more information regarding the new Political Mail STIDs, please visit: https://postalpro.usps.com/IMb_PoliticalMail_SvcTypeIDs_July2020

For more information regarding all other STIDs, including Ballot Mail STIDs, please visit: https://postalpro.usps.com/node/6411

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BCC Post-Presort

To add the correct CCR values for Political and Election Mail to the selected job in the MAILdb™ main window, do the following:

• Navigate to the MPU/Component editor via the Job Menu>Editing functions
• Select your desired components to add the value by Right-clicking and choosing “Add/Remove CPT Characteristics”
• “Add” the correct value (Election Mail – C or Political Mail – C) and confirm the dialogs

For more information regarding Election Mail in Post-Presort, please visit: https://portal.bccsoftware.com/Support/knowledgeBaseContents.aspx?id=KA-03164&p=2

For more information regarding Political Mail in Post-Presort, please visit: https://portal.bccsoftware.com/Support/knowledgeBaseContents.aspx?id=KA-03170&p=0

{
  “addressTable” : “XXXXXXXXXXXX”,
  “presortName” : “Test_Political”,
  “streamList” : “ALL;ALL ALL”,
  “fields” : {
    “imbDigits” : {
      “mailerID” : “000944”,
      “service” : [
        “FLS”,
        “DCM”,
        “PLM”
      ],
      “confirmLocation” : “ALL”
    }
  }
}

Please contact Customer Support for more information on how to modify your jobs to claim the correct services, or check out the Knowledge Base article located here: https://portal.bccsoftware.com/Support/knowledgeBaseContents.aspx?id=KA-03434