Commentary & Analysis
USPS delivers for you...but not on weekends?
By Eric Vessels
Published: March 3, 2010
The Postal Service, facing what they called "unprecedented volume declines" and a projected $238 billion shortfall over the next decade announced an aggressive plan of cost cutting yesterday.
Among the items in the cost cutting plan was a bullet point to "adjust delivery days to better reflect volumes and customer habits". Many took this to mean the USPS was heading toward finally stopping Saturday delivery.
The only question is what in the world took them so long? I haven't anticipated Saturday mail in some time. I actually usually forget it until I get the Monday mail. Given the running joke of how much the postal service loses annually I never understood why this move wasn't made years ago. I might even argue that I only really need to get mail 2-3 times a week really. The other pressing items can be sent to me via Fedex, UPS, or USPS Express Mail. Saturday delivery for business still needs to happen, but this can be accomplished with less resources than full delivery to every household.
This will obviously affect marketers and printers trying to gain business from marketers who want to get their mail into the hands of the consumer over the weekend. I notice a great deal of my mail is the dreaded "junk mail" (ahum...direct mail pieces) that people complain about. Timing such pieces to arrive on Friday shouldn't be that much of a challenge if they do stop Saturday delivery.
What affect do you think it will have on direct mail marketing and printing to not have Saturday delivery by the USPS?
Update: Gail has a great post up on this as well
The postal service has been doing a great job of putting themselves out of business for the past decade.
The driver for eliminating Saturday delivery is a real reduction in the volume of mail pieces. I personally believe that the postage rate increases during this timeframe have forced people to look for an alternative. The catch-22 is that lower volumes translate into higher postage rates. Higher postage rates in-turn, result in lower volumes. Who wants to pay $120-$200 a year in postage to mail bills??
However, I still want home delivery five days a week and a "post office" within 10 miles of my house. By "post office". I'd be OK with it a store within a store approach whereby there is a postal counter within a local store. Personally, I just don't want that to be a Walmart or other "super store" chain because I believe those chains are genericizing my shopping experience. Plus all it takes is a massive stock purchase by a foreign company and BAM, major portions of the postal service are foreign owned/controlled.
Good read in Ad Age:
Direct Marketers, Catalog Companies: We Can Adjust to Five-Day Postal Week
http://adage.com/article?article_id=142399
Canada has had Monday-Friday postal delivery for as many years as I can remember. Also, aside from centralized large post offices, most communities are served by postal counters within drug stores and convenience stores, which is, well, a convenience! Our rates are higher than in the US, but the service does deliver value. Like postal services in all other countries, the Canadian service does need to continue to reinvent itself, which it is trying to do. And that is a large task for any organization of that size and complexity.
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