Search »

Catalog Mailers Like Mailing Discount, Probably Won’t Use It

Some direct mailers worry that they won’t be able to react quickly enough to take advantage of the USPS’s offer of a discount for increases in Standard Mail volumes.

Discounts, though still be nailed down, are expected to be between 20% and 30%. But some, like Mary Anne Kleinfelter, director of marketing for L-com, says it will be hard to turn around a catalog in such a short period of time. “I think it needed a little more planning,” she is quoted as saying in Direct Magazine.

Hamilton Davison, ex. director of the American Catalog Mailers Association, doesn’t think the discount will make a huge impact, given the short lead-time and the traditionally slow summer season - but he acknowledges that the USPS is at least showing direct mailers that it is serious about using the pricing flexibility it gained from the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act.

He also encouraged the mailing industry to support it, saying the initiative is completely new for a government agency that has had a protected monopoly, writes Multichannel Merchant.

The USPS saw mail volume in fiscal year 2008 drop by 4.5% to 202.7 billion pieces. The slowdown led to a net loss of $2.8 billion for the U.S. Postal Service.