MailSmart Logistics, the entire PMG family of companies, our partnering printers and lettershops, and the USPS remain committed to delivering mail to the American public during the Covid-19 crisis.
The USPS recently shared their operational plans during the Covid-19 outbreak.
Amid all the social distancing and closures, we hope you and your loved ones are safe.
Here at MailSmart Logistics, our team is working remotely from home. Each employee has full access to all the tools and systems we use to coordinate your mailings. If you are mailing, we are at-the-ready to use postal logistics to get it to your recipients.
Employee direct phone numbers have been forwarded to mobile phones and we’re here to help whether it’s to answer a question or schedule a pick-up. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us!
Scott Siebenberg – 443-539-2641
Elise Buck – 443-539-2676
Debbie Sylvester – 443-539-2645
Robbie Heartfield – 240-682-2258
Jennie Spalding – 443-539-2611
Teri Taylor – 443-539-2614
With coronavirus so much in the news, we want to assure you that MailSmart Logistics and the PMG family is taking every possible step to ensure continued and uninterrupted support for your critical direct marketing and fundraising programs:
As Hurricane Harvey sets its course on the Texas coast, both Texas and Louisiana are expected to suffer from extreme rainfall accumulations, storm surge and strong winds. Power outages, road closures and business closings are anticipated. All of which will impact the ability for postal offices to both open and deliver mail.
We will continually monitor Hurricane Harvey’s impact to mail operations and will update you accordingly.
If you have any questions on how to handle upcoming mailings or those that may already be in the mailstream, please don’t hesitate to contact us. You can call us at 443-539-2640.
On February 20, 1792, President George Washington – who had relied extensively on the postal service to carry and deliver his messages during the Revolutionary War – signed the Postal Service Act into law. This fledgling legislation formally created the federal U.S. Post Office Department and gave Congress the ability to set official mailing routes and “distance zone” postage rates. The ruling held nearly 200 years until 1970, when Nixon’s Postal Reorganization Act created the corporation-like independent United States Postal Service we know today. Since then, the USPS has undergone multiple modifying acts while establishing itself as a topic of seething debate – all the while enjoying an official, government-mandated monopoly on U.S. mail delivery.
This month, Postmaster General Megan Brennan expressed her desire for the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) to retire the Consumer Price Index (CPI) price cap. She’s lobbying for postal management’s complete autonomy in setting USPS rates – freedom from the checks and balances that have been an integral part of the postal process since Washington’s 1792 administration.
Anyone with a basic knowledge of history or economics understands that unchecked monopolies are never good for citizens, and “self-policing” industries tend to benefit only themselves. The PRC’s primary purpose since its 1970 establishment has been to counter-balance the USPS’ exclusive industry control and ensure affordable and fair postage for U.S. constituents. In 2007, the CPI price cap limited postal increases to reflect inflation, effectively serving as surrogate competition. By eliminating the CPI cap and encouraging postal management’s rate control, the USPS’ monopoly would most likely allow postal rates to skyrocket.
The USPS has suffered a difficult decade – unprecedented declines in postal volume due to today’s digital transformation and fallout from the Great Recession. The industry is unlikely to return to its former glory, and many difficult problems need to be analyzed and addressed. But as a $70 billion independent agency, the postal service must learn to manage its resources and eliminate inefficiencies rather than just be handed a blank check.
Without free market competition, it’s far too risky to withdraw the PRC’s oversight of postal pricing.
MailSmart Logistics provides worry-free shipping at remarkably-low postal rates –
You’re going to love working with MailSmart Logistics!
Whenever you are preparing to do a good-size mailing, you should consider the pros and cons of sending it standard mail. Commonly referred to as bulk mail, standard mail can save for-profit companies about 40% off first class postage rates and nonprofits can save even more. To realize these significant savings, companies have to follow specific sorting, tagging and paperwork procedures and accept that their mail will take longer to arrive than if they send it first class.
How much longer? A widely-quoted rule of thumb is that standard mail will be delivered nationally within 10 to 14 days and locally within 4 to 6 days. If your mailing needs to arrive by a certain date, however, you may need a more precise estimate than this.
Fortunately, the USPS has set very specific standards for how long it should take to deliver mail from one three-digit zip code area to another, which you can review here. Simply specify “Standard Mail” and the first three digits of the zip code from which you are mailing the letters, click “Originating” and then click “Display Map” to see a map like the following:
What the map shows is that standard mail sent from zip codes starting with “200” (i.e., Washington, D.C.) should be delivered within 6 days to most places in the eastern third of the U.S. and within 9 days to everywhere in the continental U.S. While the map displays standards rather than actual performance, the Inspector General’s most recent operational review showed that the USPS has been meeting its bulk mail standards almost 90% of the time.
If both speed of delivery and postage savings are important, you should also consider commingling. Commingling companies like MailSmart Logistics pick up your mail from your shop, sort it with other mail, and deliver it directly to postal processing facilities close to its ultimate destination. Our research shows that our clients get the best of both worlds – they save an average of 12% versus regular standard mail postage and their mailing gets delivered 2.4 days earlier on average than it would otherwise.
If you’d like to learn whether commingling would be appropriate for your company, please call Debbie Sylvester at (302) 545-1629 or email her at debbie@mailsmartlogistics.com.
MailSmart Logistics provides worry-free shipping at remarkably-low postal rates –
You’re going to love working with MailSmart Logistics!
Consumers often wish they could know for sure whether a letter has been delivered and, if so, when. Unfortunately, unless they pay quite a bit more for Priority Mail or Certified Mail, there’s no way for most individuals to track their mail.
Businesses, however, have more options. If your business has mailing software capable of applying Intelligent Mail barcodes to outgoing mail, you can track the journey through the mailstream of each piece of mail.
Mail may travel through as many as six different postal facilities before being delivered to a home or office across the country. From the local post office, it will travel to the closest of 194 Sectional Center Facilities (SCFs) and then to whichever of the 21 Network Distribution Centers (NDCs) or 8 Auxiliary Service Facilities (ASFs) that serves that region. It will then be trucked to the regional NDC/ASF serving its destination, from which it will be delivered to an SCF and finally to the local post office closest to its destination. At each step, it is resorted and its Intelligent Mail barcode logged.
Companies with a Mail Tracking & Reporting Business account can log in to the USPS’s Mail Tracking service and see when and where a piece of mail was most recently handled.
MailSmart Logistics makes it even easier for our clients. Not only do we shorten the time mail spends in the mailstream by delivering mail directly to the destination SCF, NDC or ASF, but our clients have the option to automatically track every piece of mail we commingle for them. Our interactive database shows the percentage of a mailing that has been scanned at the postal facility closest to its final destination, and allows users to drill down into the data by state or by Sectional Center Facility (SCF). In fact, users can even determine whether a specific envelope has been delivered. Best of all, we provide this service to our customers for free!
If you’d like to learn more about the many benefits of commingling, please read our free eBook Is Commingling Right for You?
MailSmart Logistics provides worry-free shipping at remarkably-low postal rates –
You’re going to love working with MailSmart Logistics!
I’m just beginning to wrap my mind around the fact that all sorts of personal devices communicate through wireless connections, including baby monitors, security systems, wearable fitness apps, and cameras inside my refrigerator. This so-called “Internet of Things” seems both cool and, since the data they generate could be accessible to others, a bit risky. While I can’t imagine anyone but my husband or I caring whether we’re out of milk, the idea that a stranger could watch my granddaughter playing in her crib is scary.
So I was brought up short when I came across a reference to the “Internet of Postal Things”. What does the U.S. Postal Service have in mind?
It turns out that they have some really interesting ideas. The USPS has a vast infrastructure of vehicles, carriers, post offices and mailboxes that could be equipped with sensors to collect useful data. The 215,000 vehicles they have traveling the same routes 6 days per week could monitor air quality, traffic flow, road maintenance and wireless signal strength, among other things.
The Office of Inspector General recently released a report titled The Postal Service and Cities: A “Smart” Partnership. After discussions with dozens of cities, they are proposing five pilot programs:
While all of these proposed pilot projects have challenges, it is exciting to see that innovative thinkers are working on ideas to use the USPS’s unique assets to identify problems and improve our cities.
MailSmart Logistics provides worry-free shipping at remarkably-low postal rates –
You’re going to love working with MailSmart Logistics!
While most direct mailers recognize the importance of getting multiple printing bids for a mailing, they may not put the same emphasis on getting bids from a variety of mail shops. Yet it is possible to save just as much money by selecting the perfect mail shop for a job as it is by finding the best printer.
Mail shops tend to specialize on a particular industry and type of mailing. To find the best mail shop for a specific job, pay attention to the following:
We recommend getting bids from a minimum of three different mail shops who specialize in the type of mailing you are doing. This should allow you to identify and take advantage of the mail shop who is anxious to fill a hole in their schedule by submitting a very competitive bid.
MailSmart Logistics provides worry-free shipping at remarkably-low postal rates –
You’re going to love working with MailSmart Logistics!
In certain geographic areas, the USPS has been sending an email to interested customers every morning containing pictures of the mail they’ll receive that day. In testing since 2014, Informed Delivery is now available in parts of Northern Virginia, Connecticut and New York City.
I must admit that my first reaction to this concept was negative. I’m already drowning in email; why do I want to think about the mail that is arriving that day more than once? However, when I thought back to the many times I have made fruitless trips to my post office to pick up hoped-for checks that hadn’t yet arrived in my box, I could see how such a service could come in handy. Additionally, people who are traveling or who don’t pick up the mail themselves may find that Informed Delivery helps them stay up-to-date.
What I personally find exciting about Informed Delivery is the ability it gives direct marketers to connect digitally with their customers. Marketers can provide clickable links to related web pages that Informed Delivery customers will see when the marketer’s mail piece is showing on their screen. Not only does this double the opportunities a marketer has to connect, but it provides interested consumers with immediate access to order or donation pages.
If Informed Delivery continues to expand (and especially if the USPS invests in cameras that show the envelopes in full color), marketers wanting to maximize its benefits will likely focus on creating visually-compelling envelopes and landing pages specifically designed for each direct mail campaign.
So what do you think? Is Informed Delivery going to revolutionize direct mail or wither away from lack of interest?
MailSmart Logistics provides worry-free shipping at remarkably-low postal rates –
You’re going to love working with MailSmart Logistics!
