SMALL BUSINESS

Postage Discounts: Some companies cringed when U.S. postal rates went up this year. But a new survey shows that 54% of small businesses in the country don’t know about existing postal discounts that could reduce their mailing costs by 20%.

In fact, a third of the businesses said they didn’t know about the postal rate increase that took effect this year, according to the survey by Gallup and Pitney Bowes, a mail systems and technology company based in Stamford, Conn.

The study found that top management generally ranked the mail room as last in terms of importance, even though most small-business mail is outgoing invoices and checks. Also, only 34% of the respondents said they were using postal discounts.

Pitney Bowes says mail room costs for most small businesses will rise by 20% this year.