How to Print Bulk Mailing Labels That Machines Read First Time

The size of a mailing label follows the piece it goes on. A letter or flat takes a label of 3 by 5 inches or smaller, and a parcel takes 4 by 6 inches, the size carrier thermal printers produce. These are the sizes on our menus today:

Premium mailing labels print in black or full color on 14 face stocks, from uncoated paper that takes a pen to white vinyl, clear and fluorescent red, with square corners or a 1/8 or 3/8 inch radius. Standard production is 3 business days.

Printing a mailing label with us takes five steps, and the list does most of the work.

• Pick the size: 3 by 5 inches for a flat, 4 by 6 for a parcel, or any size you measure.
• Pick the face stock: uncoated if someone writes on it, semi gloss or hi gloss for color, white vinyl for rain and cold docks.
• Build the artwork: fix the logo and return address, and leave the name, street and city lines as fields wired to your spreadsheet columns.
• Send the list: a CSV or Excel file with one header row, one record per row and ZIP codes stored as text.
• Proof and print: choose straight to production, a free online proof or a next day hardcopy proof, and the run ships after 3 business days of production.

Printing one or two labels yourself works on paper sheet labels through an office laser printer. Past a few hundred pieces, having the addresses imaged with the label is faster.

Variable data printing means one label file and one spreadsheet produce thousands of labels that are all different. The artwork prints once per impression. The fields inside it change every time.

Think of the label as a form. The logo, the border, and the return address are fixed and never move. The name, street, and city lines are placeholders wired to columns in your list. When the job runs, the press images record one, then record two, then record three, in the order the rows sit in your file. No plate is remade between them, which is why a run of 5,000 unique addresses costs the same to image as a run of 5,000 identical ones. You can see the whole merge in the diagram above.

What the merge needs from your file:

• One header row at the very top, with nothing above it. The header cells become the field names.
• One record per row, and each address line in its own column. Name, company, street, suite, city, state, ZIP.
• ZIP codes stored as text. A spreadsheet that reads them as numbers deletes the leading zero, and every address in New Jersey prints wrong.
• No merged cells, no blank rows in the middle, no totals row at the bottom.
• A final proof taken from the first, middle, and last records. The end of a list is where the bad data hides.

Two things the press will not do for you. It does not deduplicate, so the person who appears twice in your spreadsheet gets two labels. And it does not fix an address: standardizing to USPS format, flagging undeliverables, and adding the Intelligent Mail barcode all happen to the list before the merge, which is what our variable data printing service and mailing services handle together. If the list itself is still a question mark, start with building or renting a mailing list, and if the piece is a card rather than an envelope, the address side layout rules tell you what has to stay clear.

Label pricing is driven by quantity, face stock, and the cut. Standard labels start at $23.88, premium shipping and mailing labels at $29.16, and premium address labels at the same $29.16. Die-cut labels start at $93.37, because a custom cut carries a tooling step that a rectangle does not. Match those against the pieces they go on: printed envelopes start at $142.99 and direct mail postcards at $89.68.

Now the part most label pages leave out. If the carrier is an envelope you are already sending to press, print the address block on the envelope and skip the label. You save the label, the peel, and the person doing the peeling, and the result looks better because there is no visible square. A label costs money twice: once to print and once to apply.

Labels earn their place in four situations. The carrier cannot be printed, which covers poly mailers, kraft boxes, and tubes. The stock was bought blank and plain, so a printed return address label is the only branding it will get. The mailing is urgent and there is no time to reprint envelopes. Or the address has to survive weather that ink on kraft would not. Compare the addressed options in the address label range and the envelope range before you commit, and start your artwork from a correctly sized blank template so the die and the safe area are right from the first draft.