Publishing Mail

You can tailor Publishing Mail by selecting from the following options:

Format

Delivery speed

Volumes

Preparing and presenting your mail

You have two options if you wish to sort your mail:

• Low Sort (up to 88 ways) - only available for large letter size and addresses must be printed with a machine-readable font and not available with 250k, premium and profile rate cards.
• High Sort (up to 1,525 ways)

Types of mail containers to use
Depending on the type of mail you send, you could use one of the following containers:

• Trays
• Bags
• ALPS
• Unbagged

To take advantage of Publishing Mail, you need to have an account with Royal Mail.

Need to set up an account?

If you don’t already have one, you can contact our Business Centre on 08457 950 950*. Lines are open 8.00am to 6.00pm Monday to Friday.

To access Publishing Mail you will need to fill out the Publishing Mail application form. You can request this when you contact the Business Centre or alternatively you can request it from profile.pricing@royalmail.com.

Already have an account?

If you already have an account, contact a member of our business team on 08457 950 950*. They will tell you how to add Publishing Mail to your account. It will speed things up if you can have your Royal Mail account number to hand when you ring us. If you have an account, you can also apply online at profile.pricing@royalmail.com

Many of our customers have account managers. 

If your business has a Royal Mail account manager, contact yours and ask about how Publishing Mail can work for you.

What happens next?

• We’ll send you an application form.
• Complete the form and return it to us, to the address on the application form. It must be accompanied by a sample of the publication you wish to mail.
• Once we have verified your publication (usually within five working days although new accounts may take longer) we will issue you with a periodical code that you can use to manage your orders through our Online Business Account service.

If you want to apply for a Profile Price, we will have to analyse your mailing line listing to ensure there are sufficient items going to qualifying postcode areas. You'll need to complete a second application form and forward this to us, along with your mailing list. To request an application form, go to profile.pricing@royalmail.com.

There are a few things we’ll want to see before you can start using Publishing Mail, principally to make sure that our criteria are fulfilled and that everything will run smoothly.

• We’ll look at a sample of your publication and let you know if it will work with Publishing Mail. (What we’re doing is verifying that it fits the category of a magazine, newsletter or journal. Catalogues, brochures, directories and exhibition guides are not accepted as Publishing Mail).
• Your publication must be published and issued via your Publishing mail product at least twice a year.
• At least one-sixth of the periodical should be editorial content. See product specification for full details.
• The title will be clearly visible on the front cover – as well as at least one of the following: the date of issue, the month, season or issue number.
• Each posting will be made up of at least 1,000 large letters, A3 packets or packets and to achieve Price Profile discounts, it is a minimum of 3,000. In certain circumstances, it’s possible to send out smaller numbers, but mailings of fewer than 1,000 items will be charged as 1,000 standard publishing mail items but there’ll be no further discount. 
• Your mail-piece can contain more than one item, but it is subject to certain terms and conditions.

That’s it. If your publication qualifies, we will issue you with a periodical code that you can use to manage your orders through our Online Business Account service.

For full details, see the product specification and terms and conditions in our product documentation section.