The USPS Wants Your Business
Print Official USPS postage using your PC at home. Free trial worth $80 available.
Direct mail is alive and well and the U.S. Postal Service wants to help you send more of it. That's the message U.S. Postmaster General Jack Potter brought to attendees of the Chicago Association of Direct Marketing's DM Days last month.
"We're interested in every dollar," he said. "Gone are the days that we are going to sit on our monopoly." Toward that end, the USPS has done things like enhance its Web site, to allow more companies to do business with the postal service online. And it's installing numerous self-service postal centers around the country, including 24 in the Chicago area. The automated kiosks will allow users to do 80% of what they can do at a post office without human intervention.
A customized mail initiative, to help mailers utilize more unusual and creative formats, already has been successful for some companies, such as Krispy Kreme. The doughnut chain saw an impressive 11% response rate for people bringing a doughnut box they received in the mail into a retail outlet and making a purchase. The postal service also is working to become more fiscally sound by trying to attain pricing flexibility.
"We need to be able to project costs and adjust rates on an annual basis," Potter said, noting that this would avoid the "rate shock" that hits many mailers when postal rates go up. The ability to make infrastructure changes is also needed, he said, which may include closing some post offices that are inefficient. The USPS now has some 2,500 post offices that serve fewer than 200 people, and more than 4,500 that make less than 200 deliveries a day. Hard copy direct mail is here to stay, Potter said, "because it works." Business-to-consumer direct mail sales in 2003 generated $423 in revenue, and are projected to hit $577 billion by 2007, an 8% annual growth rate. Potter doesn't believe predictions about the end of paper catalogs. he pointed out that many online orders are generated by those who receive print catalogs.
According to USPS research, 44% of direct mail is read by customers, and only 6% of advertising mail is considered "objectionable." Mail is intrusive, he conceded. But in the eyes of most consumers, unlike telemarketing and spam, mail is not "obnoxious. That's the advantage we have."
Print Official USPS postage using your PC at home. Free trial worth $80 available.
COPYRIGHT 2004 PRIMEDIA Business Magazines & Media Inc. All rights reserved.COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group
Direct mail is alive and well and the U.S. Postal Service wants to help you send more of it. That's the message U.S. Postmaster General Jack Potter brought to attendees of the Chicago Association of Direct Marketing's DM Days last month.
"We're interested in every dollar," he said. "Gone are the days that we are going to sit on our monopoly." Toward that end, the USPS has done things like enhance its Web site, to allow more companies to do business with the postal service online. And it's installing numerous self-service postal centers around the country, including 24 in the Chicago area. The automated kiosks will allow users to do 80% of what they can do at a post office without human intervention.
A customized mail initiative, to help mailers utilize more unusual and creative formats, already has been successful for some companies, such as Krispy Kreme. The doughnut chain saw an impressive 11% response rate for people bringing a doughnut box they received in the mail into a retail outlet and making a purchase. The postal service also is working to become more fiscally sound by trying to attain pricing flexibility.
"We need to be able to project costs and adjust rates on an annual basis," Potter said, noting that this would avoid the "rate shock" that hits many mailers when postal rates go up. The ability to make infrastructure changes is also needed, he said, which may include closing some post offices that are inefficient. The USPS now has some 2,500 post offices that serve fewer than 200 people, and more than 4,500 that make less than 200 deliveries a day. Hard copy direct mail is here to stay, Potter said, "because it works." Business-to-consumer direct mail sales in 2003 generated $423 in revenue, and are projected to hit $577 billion by 2007, an 8% annual growth rate. Potter doesn't believe predictions about the end of paper catalogs. he pointed out that many online orders are generated by those who receive print catalogs.
According to USPS research, 44% of direct mail is read by customers, and only 6% of advertising mail is considered "objectionable." Mail is intrusive, he conceded. But in the eyes of most consumers, unlike telemarketing and spam, mail is not "obnoxious. That's the advantage we have."
Print Official USPS postage using your PC at home. Free trial worth $80 available.
COPYRIGHT 2004 PRIMEDIA Business Magazines & Media Inc. All rights reserved.COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group
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