USPS Continues Experimental Market Tests

The U.S. Postal Service filed with the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) a notice that it intends to conduct a test of another experimental market-dominant product. The experimental product is the “Mail Works Guarantee.” The top advertisers in America represent $90 Billion in total expenditures for media advertising. The USPS share is currently 3.1% or about $3 Billion annually which represents a huge revenue potential for the Postal Service. Thus, this new product will be offered to a group of companies who spend a minimum of $250 Million annually on advertising as identified by Advertising Age magazine and for whom mail is not currently a large part of their advertising mix (postage is less than 0.36 percent of the company’s total spending on advertising). These companies will be offered a postage-back guarantee to test advertisements for their products through First-Class Mail and Standard Mail. The market test will begin on or shortly after May 16, 2011. During the Mail Works Guarantee market test, 16 initial companies will be offered a postage-back guarantee to test the effectiveness of advertisements for their products using First-Class Mail and Standard Mail.

Source: PRC

Techie News

Related to the USPS summer promotion of their mobile barcode discount, it is estimated that more than 50% of computing devices sold globally this year will be non-PC devices like smart phones and tablets. For b2b marketers, this means that using mobile marketing technology will be critical to avoid being left behind. Mobile devices are being used more frequently for checking emails, so marketers need to make sure that they are optimizing the customer experience so that they are more likely to view rather than delete the emails you send to their mobile devices. It is possible to code your emails so that they render properly on different mobile devices. Proper coding ensures that the email will be correctly framed, whether it is read on an iPhone, Android or other device. When an email is not optimized, customers will still be able to see it but they will probably have to scroll up and down or sideways to see all of it. Have you tested using QR codes in a print or direct mail campaign? Take the Chief Marketer survey here.

Source: Mobile Weblog

No Five-Day Postal Delivery Anytime Soon

Five-day mail delivery, if it ever happens, is a few years down the road, according to the chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission. PRC Chairman Ruth Goldway commented on five-day delivery as a guest on a podcast [Listen] with Gene Del Polito, the president of the Association for Postal Commerce. It’s not likely Congress would act to remove the six-day requirement in 2011 or 2012, Goldway told Del Polito. It’s possible farther down the road. Admitting that she is no expert when it comes to Congress, Goldway said it appears that outside of Sen. Thomas Carper (D-DE), there isn’t strong support for five-day delivery on the Senate side. The House side also seems to favor six-day delivery, she said. The Postal Service won’t save nearly as much money as it thought, Goldway said during the podcast. If the Postal Services goes ahead with it, it could have serious problems with different constituencies that would get very disparate service.

Source: Multi-Channel Merchant

Sunday Delivery Stopped?

For 81 years, postal authorities have served the large Seventh-day Adventist population of Loma Linda, CA, forgoing Saturday service — their Sabbath — and delivering mail on Sundays. That has changed. The 15 mail carriers serving Loma Linda’s 8,000 homes made their final Sunday delivery. Loma Linda is one of only three communities in the country with Sunday delivery. The other two, Angwin in Northern CA and Collegedale, TN., will continue Sunday service.