In a filing with the Postal Regulatory Commission yesterday, the U.S. Postal Service asked for volume discounts and free additional weight incentives for direct mailers that, if approved, would be introduced in January. The pair of incentives was originally part of the exigent rate case that was cut down. The Reply Rides Free incentive is meant to slow the diversion of transactional mail to the electronic channels, the USPS wrote in the proposal. These mailers have told the USPS that they are converting to online channels to lower costs. In order to minimize postage costs for those pieces that remain in the mail, mailers are designing bills and statements to weigh less than one ounce by removing promotional inserts and/or business reply envelopes. The proposed Reply Rides Free program would address these issues by allowing mailers to mail up to 1.2 ounces at the one-ounce price if the letter includes a reply card or envelope. First-class mail automation letters would qualify for the program until May 1, 2011 but, after that, only automation letters with the full-service Intelligent Mail barcode would qualify. Mailers must also meet a volume threshold. The USPS believes the program will encourage mailers to use transactional mailings for direct marketing purposes while also encouraging customers to respond via the mail. The proposed Saturation and High Density Incentive would give a rebate to Standard Mail saturation and high density mailers on incremental mail pieces above a predetermined volume baseline. The volume baseline would be a mailer’s aggregate total volume for the 2010 calendar year plus 5%. The proposed rebate is 22% of a participant’s average revenue per piece for commercial saturation mail and 13% for commercial high density mail. The rebate for nonprofit high density and saturation mail is 8%.