Mailing/Fulfillment - Postal Trends

A USPS executive recently warned that the shift to more non-career carriers is likely to reduce the chances that mail with incomplete or incorrect addresses will be delivered correctly. Comments from both front-line employees and mailers confirm that the trouble has already started.

“Up until about five years ago there was always one carrier on one route meaning that every route was staffed properly,” a 27-year veteran letter carrier commented recently on my article "New Postal Hires Mean More 'Return To Sender' Mail." “Now, every day is nothing short of chaos.”

This week, Structural Graphics shows us how to take two tried and true marketing mediums and combine them to deliver the ultimate one-to-one experience—by embedding a touchscreen into a printed piece.

This week, Structural Graphics features a high-impact direct mail campaign that it produced for Mazda. This campaign was designed in conjunction with in-house agency, Garage Team Mazda. The result of the campaign was an impactful dimensional mail piece.

The USPS Office of Inspector General recently published a White Paper that summarizes focus group research asking the American consumer what they want from the Postal Service now and in the future. And more importantly, they asked consumers what they need.

The results weren’t necessarily surprising as some of the responses confirmed what many of us already knew (i.e.—almost 70 percent think that taxes at least partially fund the USPS). But the research should help both mailers and the USPS in setting future business plans and strategic direction as the consumer is a customer to all.

This week, Structural Graphics is featuring a video piece it produced for client The Hartford dubbed "The Box That Rocks." As part of a multi-wave, multi-tier campaign, this video box was the most successful new campaign launch in the history of The Hartford.

On a recent Saturday morning, 500 protesters poured out of a parade of school buses, signs and megaphones in hand, and tried their best to shame a single Staples store just outside Chicago. Among them was Mike Suchomel, a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Postal Service, who traveled all the way from New Jersey for a nearby labor conference.

What has infuriated Suchomel and many of his fellow postal union members is a new arrangement struck between USPS and the office supply retailer. Under the premise of a pilot program, a limited number of Staples locations are now offering most

Partly because of a shift to lower-paid employees, the U.S. Postal Service experienced a rare improvement in its business last year, according to a Postal Regulatory Commission analysis. But the PRC warned that USPS is still on shaky ground—losing money for the seventh year in a row, short on cash, and unable to borrow money or invest in new equipment.

“The Postal Service reduced expenses in FY 2013” despite a minuscule decline in mail volume, says the PRC’s analysis of the Postal Service’s annual 10K financial report, released a few days ago. “Workhours and the average hourly compensation and benefits rate

This week, Structural Graphics presents a new design that allows the reader to tell three different messages in one, build upon a message or illustrate steps to a process.

This week, Structural Graphics features a dimensional mailer with a QR code it created for client Ford Canada. Structural Graphics teamed up with its partner Information Packaging, to create a custom stage pop folder.

Postal officials, who frequently complain about losing money on Periodicals mail, bear much of the blame for that loss, according to the Postal Regulatory Commission.

“The Commission is increasingly concerned that the Postal Service’s Periodicals pricing strategy is leading to inefficient mailer preparation,” the commission wrote recently in its review of 2013 postal rates, echoing a complaint that magazines have been making for the past decade.

The Postal Service’s flawed accounting shows that it receives only 76 cents in Periodicals-class revenue for every dollar it spends delivering magazines and newspapers. That was an improvement of 4 cents over the previous year