Association for Postal Commerce
"Representing those who use or support the use of mail for Business Communication and Commerce"
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IN SEARCH OF...THE PERFECT MAILSTREAM: A POSTAL PERSPECTIVE

The following postal perspective is provided by PostCom consultant Kathy Siviter, president of Postal Consulting Services, Inc. She also serves on a number of MTAC workgroups.  The views expressed in the commentary, however, are solely the author’s, and PostCom welcomes alternative views from responsible parties.

Like many in the industry, I’ve spent much of the past month responding to phone calls that start with something like “Why is the Postal Service doing this?” or “Doesn’t the USPS realize the impact this will have on our company?”   The focus of these calls has been the recent changes to mailing standards proposed by the USPS, which would wreak havoc on an already struggling mailing industry.

While I commend the USPS for listening to its customers and pulling back some of the proposed requirements earlier this week, industry concern remains over the fact that the USPS published the proposals in the first place.  If the Postal Service truly understood its customers needs, and the likely impact on their businesses and on the mailstream, why do such proposals get published in the first place?

Perhaps the answer lies in a question.  What if you asked the Postal Service, its customers, and their service providers, “What is the perfect mailstream?”

If you ask customers what the “perfect mailstream” means to them, they respond that it is a diverse mailstream that offers them a wide variety of products and mailpiece designs to choose from at affordable prices.  The perfect mailstream for customers is one that includes a host of options for creating an array of physical mailpiece designs that will catch the recipient’s eye and result in high open, read, and response rates. 

And the more customers open, read, and respond to mail, the more the mail grows.  Not only do customers make more money – a portion of which they can choose to spend on mailing more pieces – but orders result in more products being shipped through the mail, more invoices/bills/statements being sent through the mail, more courtesy or Business Reply Mail pieces being sent through the mail, and so on.

Following this same line of thinking, it seems safe to assume that those tasked with marketing and sales at the Postal Service would have a similar response to what the “perfect mailstream” means, since their goal is to grow the business.

But if you ask those tasked with operations and processing efficiencies at the Postal Service what the “perfect mailstream” means to them, the answer would be dramatically different.  Those that spend their days trying to achieve the highest throughput and lowest jam rates on USPS processing equipment likely dream of a mailstream that is made up of plain white envelopes within a certain size, that never kick up static or friction, that never use non-paper surfaces to try and attract the recipient’s eye, that fly through every belt and bullwheel with 100 percent success.

And therein lies the problem.  The proposed rule changes recently emanating from the Postal Service support the notion that only “perfect to process” mail is good mail.  If those guiding the Postal Service continue to pursue this goal, we will all be dealing with a mailstream that continues to decline, at an even faster pace, because it does not meet customers’ needs.

Because customer needs from marketing mail are not ever going to jibe with what the USPS ideally would like to process on its equipment.  So why isn’t the Postal Service working aggressively to come up with new equipment, processes, or new products designed not only to keep this volume in the mailstream, but to grow it?  Customers are looking for these types of options, so why isn’t the USPS investing more time and energy in figuring out how to accommodate them, instead of focusing on making requirements that will drive this volume out of the mailstream?

Because I can already hear someone over at L’Enfant Plaza defending such proposals by saying these pieces can still be mailed...but at a higher price, I will quote PostCom’s infamous General Counsel in responding “That dog won’t hunt.”  Meeting customer demand does not mean offering an existing option at two or three times the price.  That’s not a viable solution for customers at any time, much less in a time when many companies are struggling.

It is a telling sign that the MTAC workgroup tasked with developing ideas for growing the volume of marketing mail has spent a great deal of its meeting time hearing customers complaining that the USPS keeps proposing new standards for mailpiece design and preparation that discourage use of the mail when at the same time the USPS is asking customers how to grow the mail.  Customers continue to tell the USPS how it can grow its volume...and it isn’t by trying to drive creative marketing ideas into a limited template so they run better on a machine.

The USPS does not act like other businesses when faced with these types of customer demands. Looking at our own industry as an example, when service providers in the mailing industry have clients that want to do things in a manner that their operations or existing services may not support, they work to make changes to accommodate their customer and keep their business.  That may mean investing in new equipment or equipment modifications, or changing processes, or coming up with new innovative ways to do things. And yes, it may mean some changes in prices they charge their customers, but not to the extent that it drives the business away.  Their ultimate goal is to keep the business.

Why doesn’t the USPS spend more time and energy figuring out how to keep and grow its business?  There are a host of alternatives available which the USPS could pursue to provide customers with creative options for marketing mail.  Yet instead the USPS chooses to change rules in a way that force these pieces out of their existing price categories, and leaving them with the untenable option of paying significantly higher prices to remain in the mailstream, or to leave the mail altogether in search of a more cost effective media.

It’s hard to believe that the leadership of the Postal Service has decided it would rather have a smaller volume mailstream of  “perfect to process” mail than a bigger, more robust mailstream that meets its customers needs.

When the USPS is faced with unprecedented volume declines, and its customers are struggling to stay in business, one would hope that the prevailing focus of the Postal Service would be on how to keep and grow its volume.  That means finding ways to meet customer demands at a price the market will bear.  Because to all of us – customers, service providers, postal equipment suppliers, and all parts of the Postal Service – the perfect mailstream should be one that keeps all of us in business.