United States Postal Service

Unwanted and undeliverable mail benefits no one. For marketers, it’s an unnecessary expense; for consumers, it’s an aggravation; and for policymakers, it’s viewed as counter to environmental stewardship. The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) recently announced an ambitious public goal to significantly reduce unwanted and undeliverable mail. Its efforts hope to save one million tons of carbon dioxide in five years. Each organization in the direct marketing community can and should support this effort. Listed below are several tips you can implement to help. To clean your lists of unwanted mail: 1. Run your prospecting lists against the DMA’s Mail Preference Service monthly, or

In a presentation at the American Catalog Mailers Association’s inaugural National Catalog Advocacy & Strategy Forum in Arlington, Va., last month, David Mastervich, manager of sales strategy for the USPS, reeled off a series of statistics from the Internet marketing research company comScore to bolster the U.S. Postal Service’s claim that catalogs are still a relevant and effective marketing tool. * 98 percent of households collect, assess and sort their mail daily; * 77 percent sort their mail immediately; * on average, consumers receive three to four catalogs a week; * on average, people spend about 30 minutes engaged with their catalogs;

Simply put, the U.S. Postal Service can’t afford to have catalog businesses continue to go under. Consider the following: * catalog postage accounted for approximately $3 billion in revenue for the USPS in its 2007 fiscal year, 4 percent of its total revenue; * 21 percent of all priority mail revenue is catalog- or Internet-purchased merchandise; and * catalog transactions generate reply mail between companies and their customers, thus increasing volume for the USPS. With the USPS recognizing this fact, it’s begun to shift its practices toward creating a partnership with catalog mailers, in the hopes of securing profitable futures for both

Although there were many representatives and speakers in attendance from the U.S. Postal Service at the American Catalog Mailers Association’s recent National Catalog Advocacy & Strategy Forum in Arlington, Va., they all had one common theme to communicate: The USPS is committed to environmental stewardship and sustainability. And the agency provided some numbers to back up those claims. * Advertising mail (i.e., catalogs, direct mail) represents only 2.4 percent of the nearly 246 million tons of municipal solid waste created annually; * more than 35 percent of this advertising mail is recycled; * more than a half billion packages and envelopes provided by the

In a presentation at the inaugural National Catalog Advocacy & Strategy Forum in Arlington, Va., on June 26-27, hosted by the American Catalog Mailers Association (ACMA), Senior Vice President of Customer Relations for the USPS Steve Kearney (and the former vice president of pricing and classification) said that although postal rates won’t decrease in the future, there’s a silver lining for the 70-plus in attendance — mostly catalog marketers: A special prospecting rate specifically for catalog mailers is a possibility. After much prodding from the audience, led in particular by Lawrence Davis, vice president of marketing at Ross-Simons Jewelers, and Chris Bradley, president

Editor’s Note: This is the second of a three-part series on becoming more adept and adapting to the multichannel world. Part one appeared in our February issue, and part three will appear in our September issue. The world of direct marketing is changing quickly. Whole new analytical tools, benchmarks and ratios have become commonplace in measuring success. You must think cross-channel if you’re to be customer-centered. And above all else, if you’re a stand-alone cataloger or retail store operator, the corporate atmosphere is forcing you to rethink your internal culture. The opposite of a multichannel approach is a channel-centric one, where one channel dominates

To our readers, this is a personal and highly opinionated message from your industry publication’s editor-in-chief. We at Catalog Success strive to bring you objective and implemental money-making ideas, and it’s quite rare I’d ever outwardly promote anything, although you’ll notice that in the past few editions we’ve been aggressively promoting an exciting upcoming seminar we’re co-presenting with F. Curtis Barry & Co. (see the Ops Tip of the Week for further details). But I want to take a time-out from our usual efforts to plug something special here that’s also in your best interests. Specifically, it’s an upcoming postal event in Washington,

A recent report from the U.S. Postal Service offers direct mailers 10 tips on how to optimize the use of their lists, whether they be their own housefiles or rented lists. 1. Match products or services to customers’ wants and needs. Segment your list based on customer buying patterns to allow for customized offers with any direct mail campaign. 2. Select new lists or media that fit the profiles of existing customers. Search for new prospects based on the profiles of your current best customers, the report advises. Scour the Web for new and emerging lists. 3. Maximize personalization of your communication and offers.

The U.S. Postal Service recently promised to delay the required implementation of the Intelligent Mail Barcode (IMB) for all letters and flats until May 2009 and will allow mailers to continue to access a yet-to-be-determined automation price by using POSTNET barcodes until May 2010. The USPS also said the two options it proposed for using IMBs — basic and full-service — will have separate prices. The announcement came in response to a barrage of comments from mailers opposing the original January 2009 requirement to use IMBs only (i.e., no POSTNET barcodes allowed) to qualify for automation prices. The USPS published its proposed IMB requirements

If you mail at automation-discounted postal rates, your catalog will have to meet a host of new requirements next January, including the USPS’s Intelligent Mail Barcode (IMB). The USPS last month issued its proposed rules on the requirements that go along with automation rates starting in January 2009. It goes beyond the IMB, although that in and of itself is a significant change. The Postal Service’s proposed rules would no longer allow the POSTNET barcode, which has been in use for nearly two decades, to qualify for automation discounts beginning in January 2009. It’s not clear what will happen to pieces