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People have been predicting the demise of direct mail for the better part of a decade now. And it’s true that the current economic situation has hurt both mailers and the postal service. But as individual sectors of the economy are beginning to emerge from recession, advertising trends show that direct mail is far from obsolescense. For example, political parties are gearing up for a year of intense contests in 2010, with spending on political ads projected to reach $3.3 billion, just shy of 2006’s record of $3.4 billion. And while television will account for the largest cut of that action, at about two-thirds, the second largest player in the field will be direct mail, with an estimated $650 million in revenue from election season. This puts direct mail far ahead of newspaper, radio, online and outdoor advertising. Credit card issuers were hit hard by our latest recession. As an industry that relies heavily on direct mail, their advertising cutbacks alone had a huge impact on postal revenue. Many voiced the opinion that once economic situations improved advertisers would shift focus from direct mail to other media, such as online advertising. But Bank of America and Chase are both ramping up their direct-mail campaigns, with increases of 77 percent and 65 percent respectively in the volume of mail they’ve sent out from the beginning of the year to the end of the third quarter. UPS is eager to get into direct mail as well. The shipping company has launched a pilot program called UPS Direct to Door that will deliver unsolicited coupon packets to its customers. The idea is similar to a Valpak mailer, but will feature more upscale and nationally available retailers. While using its own network of drivers cuts the postal service out of the transaction, UPS’s experiment with Direct to Door shows that the company recognizes the value of putting something tangible in a potential consumer’s hands. Indeed, approximately one-third of all the world’s mail is direct mail sent and received within the United States. Though the numbers are down, and other media are in the spotlight, the day of the advertising mailer is not yet over. Direct mail is still a relevant, cost-effective way of getting a message to your customers. The mailers mentioned here understand that.  First Stamp Ask an American to name a person responsible for creating the modern postal service, and “Ben Franklin” is the answer you’re likely to get. But while Franklin, our first postmaster, deserves credit for establishing an effective postal system early in our history, the creation of the USPS is not an example of Franklin’s famous capacity for innovation. The innovations that would shape the postal service into what it is today began a little less than a century after Franklin’s time, brought to the world by an English schoolmaster. Sir Rowland Hill was knighted for an idea he had back in 1837, when he figured out that postage could be sold in advance on strips of adhesive paper. Hill’s invention goes much deeper than the postage stamp, though. To even arrive at the idea of a stamp, Hill had to completely restructure the way postal systems operated at the time. Before prepaid postage stamps, postage rates were charged based on size and distance. Letters were mailed loose, and rates would rise with each page added, or for each mile farther from its sender it had to go. Possibly the worst part of this whole deal was that the addressee had to pay the postage upon receipt. As a result, mailing a letter wasn’t very cheap back then, or very secure or reliable. But the industrial revolution was going strong, and transportation was improving rapidly with the spread of rail systems and steamships. This improvement in transportation efficiency combined with rising literacy rates created a situation in which an efficient, affordable postal system could thrive. Hill devised a new system of postal rates based on weight, in which a half-ounce letter could be mailed anywhere within Great Britain for a penny. That postage would be paid by the sender in the form of postage stamps. Hill also suggested a paper cover for correspondence, to which the stamp could be affixed. This, of course, evolved into the modern envelope, offering greater security in addition to a place to put the stamp. Another of his ideas was to install letterboxes on all houses for the delivery of mail. The world’s first postage stamp, the Penny Black, was issued on May 1, 1840, in Great Britain, and with it Hill’s postal rates and other ideas were implemented. By 1847 the United States followed suit and issued its own stamps, and in 1860 some 85 countries had issued stamps as well. |
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