Zairmail, an online mail-on-delivery company, announced yesterday that it is working with Xerox Corp. to create the first large-scale mail-on-demand system.
Zairmail will use Xerox print production and insertion sites in North America to enable Zairmail customers — businesses, political organizations and consumers — to send postal mail overnight via desktop computers.
“Zairmail's relationship with Xerox creates the infrastructure to bridge the digital divide between Internet and offline communications,” said Wilson Zehr, CEO of Zairmail, Portland, OR. “Direct mail campaigns that typically take several weeks can be produced online in a matter of hours and in many cases, delivered overnight using First-Class postal mail services.”
Xerox, Stamford, CT, will partner with Zairmail in its Zairmail Express Direct offering, which allows users to log on to their account, compose messages directly or upload messages using desktop publishing tools and submit the messages to Zairmail. Then, Zairmail produces the mail piece at one of its production facilities and enters the mail into the postal system close to the destination delivery point for, in many cases, overnight delivery.
Now, Zairmail can submit the print jobs to the appropriate Xerox facility. Xerox then prints the required job on high-speed color or black-and-white digital printers and presents the finished job to the postal service.
Before the arrangement with Xerox, Zairmail had four production facilities: Portland, OR; Dallas; Toledo, OH; and Rochester, NY. Zairmail now expects to have 22 facilities running within the next year.
“Zairmail has capitalized upon an overlooked opportunity: business and consumer print communications between online and offline customers,” said Mike Massey, vice president at Xerox Business Services. “As these groups converge, companies like Zairmail are finding that Xerox provides the best digital printing technology and services to complement their goals.”
