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Hurricane Harvey Will Impact Mail in Texas and Lousiana

August 25, 2017

hurricane harvey mail deliveryAs 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.

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Should the USPS Be Free to Set Postage Rates?

February 13, 2017

 

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!

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How Long Does Bulk Mail Take?

January 30, 2017

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!

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How to Track Your Mail

December 16, 2016

how-to-track-your-mail

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?

commbook

MailSmart Logistics provides worry-free shipping at remarkably-low postal rates –
You’re going to love working with MailSmart Logistics!

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What is the Internet of Postal Things?

December 12, 2016

internet-of-things

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:

  • Monitoring pavement conditions in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania through digital cameras mounted inside the windshields of postal trucks. The video images would be automatically uploaded at the end of the day to the city’s transportation department, which would use existing software to identify emerging cracks and potholes on an interactive map.
  • Monitoring the structural integrity of bridges. Also planned for Pittsburgh, accelerometers installed in postal trucks would collect vibration data that could be analyzed to identify small structural problems while they are still cheap and easy to fix.  This technology is already being used in a pilot program that measures the conditions of train tracks in Pittsburgh’s light rail system, but the analysis needs to be fine-tuned to filter out noise in the data.
  • Identifying fire hydrants losing pressure and underground water pipes starting to leak in Montgomery County, Maryland. Sensors in fire hydrants and water pipes detect breakdowns, but the battery-powered signal beacons can transmit an alert no more than 20 to 30 yards.  As a postal vehicle drove past hydrants or over underground pipes, a device attached to its dashboard could pick up the signals and upload the data to the cloud, alerting the water utility to the problem.
  • Measuring air quality in Portland, Oregon. Portland already measures air quality at specific monitoring stations, but they are only getting readings for a small number of static locations.  If air quality sensors were attached to the outside of postal vehicles, geotagged data from throughout the city could be sent directly to the cloud, giving a much more detailed picture of the city’s air quality.
  • Identifying urban blight in Schenectady, New York. Postal carriers get to know properties in an area well.  If carriers were to use an app to report that a house is falling into disrepair or that no one is emptying a mailbox, governments could take more proactive steps to prevent unoccupied properties from decaying and affecting property values.

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!

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Choosing the Best Mail Shop for a Mailing

November 7, 2016

choosing-mail-shop

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:

  • Mail shop size:  You want to match the size of the mailing to the size of the mail shop.  If you’re mailing 2 million pieces, you’ll likely get the lowest price and reasonable turn-around times from a mail shop that has invested in high-speed equipment because they specialize in large mailings. If you’re only mailing 1,000 pieces, however, a larger shop will likely charge an exorbitant amount due to their need to cover high set-up costs.
  • Level of automation:  It is also important to find a mail shop offering the appropriate amount of automation for your mailing.  If your mailing requires inserting a personalized letter into a matching envelope, using a mail shop with camera match capabilities will save the cost of paying someone to continually check that letters are being inserted correctly.  Additionally, the presence of high speed insertion equipment will likely reduce your costs on a larger mailing.
  • Ability to comply with low-cost postal strategies:  As the postal logistics world continues to evolve, mail shops need to be adaptable.  At a minimum, they need to keep up with the latest postal regulations to ensure your mailing is prepared correctly.  However, the mail shop also should be open to using any new strategies that your postal logistics firm recommends without charging extra for them.

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!

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Will Informed Delivery Revolutionize Direct Mail?

October 24, 2016

informed-delivery

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!

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Qualifying for Postal Automation Savings

September 19, 2016

postal-automation

The U.S. Postal Service rewards mailers whose mail pieces move effortlessly through their machinery with an automation discount.  In the quest to reduce your postal costs to the bone, make sure your mail pieces comply with these requirements:

Dimensions:  Mail pieces must meet the basic eligibility standards for Standard Mail specified in the USPS’s Domestic Mail Manual.  In general, letter-size envelopes must be 5 to 11.5 inches long and 3.5 to 6.125 inches high with a length divided by height aspect ratio between 1.3 and 2.5.  Envelopes may not be greater than ¼ inch thick and may not contain rigid objects such as pens.

Address Block:  The address block must be within the Optical Character Reader (OCR) area, which is between 5/8ths of an inch and 2¾ inches from the bottom of the envelope and excludes the areas within ½ inch of the right and left sides of the envelope as shown below:

ocr-read-area

Intelligent Mail Barcode:  While this was not the case until recently, to qualify for automation savings today, all pieces must contain a 65-bar Intelligent Mail barcode (IMb) that is unique for at least 45 days from the mailing date.  The IMb can be placed directly under the address or in the barcode clear zone which is in the bottom right hand corner.   If you decide to use the barcode clear zone, please make sure to add the word “Auto” to the left of the barcode outside the clear zone area.

In addition, each tray or sack needs to include an Intelligent Mail tray barcode (IMtb) and each destination-entry pallet needs to be labeled with a unique Intelligent Mail container barcode (IMcb).

Volume:  Each mailing must contain at least 200 pieces or 50 pounds.

Sorting:   Depending upon the number of mail pieces in each zip code, mail must be sorted in trays by 5-digit or 3-digit zip codes or by ADC.  Trays must be sleeved, strapped and tagged as required by the USPS.

Electronic Documentation:  The paperwork for your mailing must be submitted electronically via an approved USPS process.

To learn more about ways you can minimize your direct mail postal costs, please contact Debbie Sylvester at (302) 545-1629.

 

MailSmart Logistics provides worry-free shipping at remarkably-low postal rates –
You’re going to love working with MailSmart Logistics!

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Using Personalization to Improve Direct Mail Response

September 6, 2016

Personalization

It will come as no surprise to anyone in the marketing world that personalizing a direct mail piece can increase response rates.  How to do so effectively, however, is less well understood.

The first step, of course, is to address the recipient by name.  While this alone could increase response rates 20 years ago, this is basically expected today.  Something that’s not a lot more work on your part but could help your recipients feel appreciated and special is to mention a past purchase or recent donation.  “We’ve included several stir fry recipes you might enjoy using your new wok to try” could be very well received, for example.

Thinking more broadly, however, the purpose of personalization is to delight recipients with how well you understand their interests and needs.  Consider how you can personalize all three components of your mailing – the benefits of the product or service you’re promoting, the testimonials you’re including, and the offer itself – to appeal to specific groups.

Start by segmenting your list into groups with similar interests and thinking through what is likely to be of interest to each group.  If you’re marketing a resort, for example, there are several distinctly-different groups you could target, including the following:

  • Families with Young Children: Safe environments, separate play areas for children, and the ability for parents to drop their kids off in a supervised kid’s club so they can have a quiet meal alone could all be selling points.  Images showing children happily immersed in fun activities and a lifeguard on duty are likely to be quite appealing to this group.
  • Young Singles: This group will probably be most interested in sports activities and having a rollicking good time meeting other singles.  Images of late night dancing, parasailing and swim-up bars should predominate.
  • Older Couples: Having likely raised their own kids, this group is apt to be turned off by pieces designed for either of the first two groups.  If you survey your existing older customers, you may find that the quality of the food, the attentiveness of the service, and the availability of high-quality evening entertainment might be most appealing to older couples.

In addition to focusing on different benefits for each segment, you should also include testimonials from members of the targeted groups.  And don’t forget geographic factors – research has shown that consumers find testimonials from someone who lives in a nearby town to be more relevant and truthful than if they live across the country!

You should also think about how to customize your offer for each group.  You may choose to talk to young singles about Spring Break specials you’re running, for example, while focusing on quieter months with older couples.

One question that often arises when a company is exploring personalization is how to get useful information on which to segment your list.  If a record is on your house list, you might already know a lot about the person.  Past purchases in particular can be a powerful source of data.  If you don’t know enough about the names on your list to adequately segment them, however, data appending services can add demographic, lifestyle and business data to your list. Information about age, marital status, home ownership, activities, and interests may be particularly useful in helping you persuasively tailor your message.

And no matter how much you personalize your mailing, we can still help you mail it very cost-effectively!

 

MailSmart Logistics provides worry-free shipping at remarkably-low postal rates –
You’re going to love working with MailSmart Logistics!

 

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Labor Day Commingling
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Labor Day Commingling Schedule

August 30, 2016

Labor Day Commingling

Below are the dates for the Labor Day commingling schedule. Please don’t hesitate to reach out your MailSmart Logistics representative with any questions, concerns or assistance.

MailSmart Logistics will be closed Monday, September 5th for Labor Day. We’ll be back at our desks on Tuesday, September 6th.

Langhorne, Pennsylvania Commingle Schedule
Pickup Drop Date
September 2016
Friday, September 2, 2016 Tuesday, September 6, 2016
Closed Monday, Sept 5th for Labor Day–No Pickup 
Wednesday, September 7, 2016 Saturday, September 10, 2016
***This is subject to change based on customer’s needs.

 Milwaukee, Wisconsin & Omaha, Nebraska Commingle Schedule
Pickup Drop Date
September 2016
Wednesday, August. 31, 2016 by 5 p.m. Saturday, September 3, 2016
Closed Monday, September 5th for Labor Day–No Pickup
Thursday, Sept. 1, 2016 by 5 p.m. Tuesday, September 6, 2016
Friday, September 2, 2016 by 5 p.m. Thursday, September 8, 2016
***This is subject to change based on customer’s needs.

Arlington, Texas Commingle Schedule
Pickup Drop Date
September 2016 
Thursday, September 1, 2016 Wednesday, September 7, 2016
Closed Monday, Sept 5th for Labor Day–No Pickup 
Tuesday, September 6, 2016 Friday, September 9, 2016

***This is subject to change based on customer’s needs.

Corona, California Commingle Schedule
Pickup  Drop Date
September 2016 
Thursday, September 1, 2016 Wednesday, September 7, 2016
Friday, September 2, 2016 Wednesday, September 7, 2016
Closed Monday, Sept 5th for Labor Day–No Pickup 
Tuesday, September 6, 2016 Saturday, September 10, 2016
Wednesday, September 7, 2016 Saturday, September 10,2016

***This is subject to change based on customer’s needs.