United States Postal Service Full Service Approved
Highlights
- 1960 rates
- 50-year throwback
- Google is rumored
In an effort to stimulate mail volume, the Postal Service announced today that they will be cutting postage back to its 1960 rate of 4 cents for a first-class letter, a reduction of a whopping 40 cents. According to Postmaster General Jack Potter in the USPS press release, the 50-year throwback pricing is currently an experiment set to end at the beginning of July, but could be implemented permanently if mail volume increases significantly enough.
The new pricing policy is expected to result in an increase in postal revenue of at least 12 percent if volume increases according to initial projections. While this wouldn’t cover the losses of the last couple of years, Potter was quoted as saying it is, “a step in the right direction.”
Postal representatives also hinted that if the price cuts do not work as expected, they could throw in the towel altogether on delivering mail and selling out to the private market, much like the Dutch postal system. Google is rumored to be interested in making a deal, after having run out of online companies to buy.
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Highlights
- National Change of Address
- Move Update
- Presort Discounts
If your company is looking for an economical way to continue doing mailings in-house without the expense or effort of keeping up with presorting software, give us a call. We’ll be happy to show you how well mail can keep working for you, the in-house mailer.
At iPresort, we offer the same data services to in-house mailers that we perform for our turn-key customers. Not only do we keep up with the latest software updates, our mailing experts also keep abreast of the latest developments with postal regulations, ensuring that our customers always get the best postage rates as well as the mailing options that best suit their needs.
Even companies that already have presort software can benefit from our data services through our experience in working with the post office. And while many software companies offer basic presorting software for the occasional mailer, we use more comprehensive mailing software, so we have several options on what kinds of mail we can do, from basic postcards to dimensional mail.
We will also help you to meet the new NCOA Move Update standards, as this is typically not included with basic mailing software. Move Update is now required to receive any kind of discount on postage.
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Related Posts:
Highlights
- Political parties spending more on mail
- Credit card issuers ramping up mail
- 1/3 of world's mail is U.S. direct mail
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.