More Postal Pain-Relieving Tips Offered at DMALI Meeting

During its monthly luncheon in Plainview, N.Y., on April 19, the Direct Marketing Association of Long Island (DMALI) focused primarily on the catalog/multichannel business’s issue du jour: postal.

Perry Fernandes, general manager of the PSI Group division of Pitney Bowes, and Vito Fortuna, a U.S. Postal Service marketing strategist, provided details on the upcoming postage increase and offered some less-recently-pubicized strategies for marketers to mitigate it.

Fernandes offered the following tips to lessen the burden of the increase.

* Consolidate mailings or mail streams when possible

* Design letter-size pieces to avoid non-machinable surcharges

* Change flat size pieces to meet letter size dimensions

* Alter parcel size mail pieces to meet flat size dimensions

* Pre-sort mailings of 500 pieces or more

* Utilize standard mail instead of 1st class

* Print Duplex to save on printing costs

* Drop Ship

Fortuna focused his discussion on two areas:

1. Pay closer attention to undeliverable mail. By investing in better address hygiene, marketers will not only reduce their postage costs, but can also increase revenue by getting responses from recipients that had been undeliverable in the past.

2. Understand consumers better. This will result in better targeting and higher creativity and relevance in mail pieces. A 0.5 percent lift in response would wipe out the upcoming increase in postage.

The next DMALI meeting, which will focus on integrated marketing, will be held on May 17th. For information, go to www.dmali.org .

Peter Stein is director of business development for Canterbury Graphics Strategic Marketing, and is secretary of the DMALI. He can be reached at (203) 563-9233.