DST Output and Zumbo announced two Georgia-based utility companies, Cobb Electric Membership Corp. (EMC) and Gas South, are now delivering digital postal mail via the Zumbox digital postal system as an additional channel that their customers can opt into.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) continued his campaign to overhaul the struggling U.S. Postal Service on Monday, stressing that his plan would help the agency control its labor costs. Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and his Republican allies have long said that labor expenditures—which account for roughly 80 percent of the agency’s expenses—are the biggest roadblock to getting USPS on firmer fiscal footing.
The California Republican reiterated at a Monday event that he believes his USPS legislation would allow the agency to shed as many as 200,000 workers in the next few years who would already
Taradel has produced more than one million direct mail pieces for the USPS Every Door Direct Mail program since March of this year. “We just knew intuitively that this program would be successful,” said Taradel CEO Jim Fitzgerald. “The Postal Service has made it easy for small business owners to use direct mail advertising.”
USPS is willing to spend more ad dollars as new market research suggests customers still feel very secure about using and receiving paper mail...The two 30-second spots are designed to remind customers that paper mail, unlike e-mail, can’t be hacked, and that letter carriers are still providing reliable and safe deliveries to doorsteps.
“A refrigerator has never been hacked,” an announcer says in the first message as an actress pins a paper bill to her fridge.
In the other ad, an announcer reminds viewers that hand-delivered messages ensure that “important letters and information don’t get lost in thin air, or
The Postal Service is dropping a rule that requires an individual to have been deceased at least five years before being honored on a stamp. Under the new guidelines, living or recently deceased individuals are eligible for commemoration on stamps.
House Republicans pushing to overhaul the cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service believe adding a prominent backer in the Senate gives their efforts fresh momentum. On Friday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) announced that he was introducing the Senate version of legislation that Issa and others have offered in the House. The bill would, among other things, create a new oversight board to recommend cost-cutting ideas like post office closures, and supporters say it would help tame the agency’s significant labor costs.
Art Sackler, coordinator of the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, said the new Senate bill may work to push lawmakers
A year after an industry alliance helped defeat a proposed exigent rate increase by the U.S. Postal Service, the price hike may go through after all, as part of a larger plan to save the troubled institution, which is rapidly approaching insolvency...they have been dusted off by the Obama administration as a possible, partial solution to USPS financial woes.
Periodicals are one of the least profitable mail classes for the USPS, partly because of repeated rejections by the PRC of proposed rate hikes. Catalogs and other types of direct-marketing solicitation, classified as “standard,” are also less profitable than first-class mail,
“We have reduced our annual costs by more than $12 billion and our workforce has been reduced by 110,000 career employees over the past four years, but we must do significantly more to return to profitability,” said Postmaster General and CEO Patrick Donahoe.
Have you ever stood in a long, slow-moving line at a post office and wondered why only one employee was helping customers? The problem is the way the traditional U.S. Post Office is structured, with delivery and retail operations in the same building, according to an Inspector General’s report released today. It’s high time to separate those functions in many urban and suburban areas, says the report, entitled “Retail and Delivery: Decoupling Could Improve Service and Lower Costs.”
“A clerk’s first priority is often back room operational support activities—even if that means a retail customer waits longer in line.”
Alex Husted, database and circulation manager at Edmund Optics, is watching with concern as the U.S. Postal Service faces the possibility of insolvency. Husted, who directs the catalog business of the global imaging and photonics company, is worried, like many marketers, about the possibility of dramatically rising postal rates, as the Postal Service faces another record loss.
“We’re anticipating double-digit postal rate increases annually for the foreseeable future,” Husted said. “When coupled with increasing paper prices, that becomes difficult to manage.”
Husted said Edmund Optics is committed to remaining in the catalog business but is exploring its options.
