A publication passed across my desk today. It’s called Deliver, a slick business magazine published by the U.S. Postal Service. Even though I didn’t order it, the magazine was addressed to me. Such are the wonders of direct mail.
Part of the magazine’s content decried social network marketing. One column begins, “The real danger with social media is in marketers expecting too much from it.” Another begins, “Social media takes up more time than it does money.” But the coup de grace is the back page. It features a full-page “Last Word > Found in the Trash” piece showing a crumpled piece of paper with a chart labeled “Percent of Adults Who Use Social Media, 2005-2009.” Above the chart, a nameless executive has written “Why are we paying so much attention to this if HALF the population isn’t?” The scribbled answer: ” ’Cause it’s the cool new thing.”
There’s nothing wrong with a media choice or outlet defending itself, or seeking to increase its validity at the expense of competition. However, there is something very odd about a quasi-governmental organization that may lose $5 billion this year spending public money to bash the wrong competitor. (Yes, that’s billion with a B.)
The Postal Service doesn’t need more direct mail. Nor do consumers. Direct mail of all sorts already makes up more than half of all the items delivered to our mailboxes every day. What the Postal Service needs — desperately — is more personal mail, the letters you and I used to send each other before long distance calls got so cheap and e-mail became so ubiquitous.
Sadly for your postman, a return to the personal mail levels of the 1980s or even the 1990s is highly unlikely. Without that kind of volume, the Postal Service will be unable to continue its Faustian bargain with the nation’s large direct mailers. The facts are simple. Even though direct mail makes up an increasing share of postal volume, its share of postal revenue sits at about 20 percent. That old Vaudeville line, “I lose a buck on every sale, but I make it up in volume!” applies here with a vengeance.
For decades the imbalance didn’t seem to matter, as long as the deep discounts given to direct mailers could be offset by stable amounts of personal mail. Now, everybody involved will have to pay more and get less. To make a bad situation even worse, the Postal Service has pension overhang as bad as any Detroit automaker ever endured. The agreement pushed through Congress in 1993 might have brought relief, if e-mail had never been discovered.
What is needed now is a bitter dose of reality — not a slick magazine. We will always need a postal service. But we need a service that serves the people of this nation, not businesses grown used to unsupportable discounts. “Deliver” should be mantra of this service, not the title of a marketing campaign.
Tags: direct mail, Marketing, social networks
USPS losing ‘public money’? USPS gets no tax support; all revenue is from postage sales.
If they get no tax support, why do they have a tax exempt number when they make purchases, why dont they pay property tax on the property they have buildings on, who pays that, and why dont they have to have state inspections, emission inspections, and why dont they have a title for their vehicle and pay for license plates, and why do they have vehicles from the GSA that is funded by tax payers, and why do they put dead drug addicts on postage stamps, the reason they have to pre fund the retirees health, is becuase unlike a real business would you trust the post office with a surplus or even a break even amount of revenue, just for some other postal manager to steal, or another postal worker to buy ammunition and go on a shooting spree in a McDonalds , or buy drugs or alchol to get behind the wheel and run over some inocent child hurrying up to go scan his porta john or run home to get on http://www.postalmag.com
90% of mail has always been business mail. This belief that 30 or 50 years ago people were writing dozens of letters a day is a myth.
Nope – not losing $5 billion – that’s with a B.
Bloggers and authors continue to mislead the financial condition of the USPS, despite the fact that this issue has been formally corrected on numerous occasions.
Actually made money 3 of the last 4 years.
The PAEA imposed pre-finding requirements have been formally offset by the $50-75 billion [that's with a B] overpayment for these exact issues [retiree health benefits and cost]
Horrible article – factually flawed and initiated from a flawed perspective.
Please actually check facts before writing this crap – it continues to perpetuate an agenda for those who put these bogus numbers out there in the beginning.
So Phil what are u saying? The USPS is in good shape with a bright future?
Phil has to say that its not a lie if you believe it
What Phil is saying is that the article could have been better researched. The United States Postal Service (USPS) is an “INDEPENDENT establishment of the executive branch” of the United States Government (see 39 U.S.C. § 201) responsible for providing postal service in the United States. Consider it a Non-Profit Organization. As a “quasi-governmental” agency, it has many special privileges, including sovereign immunity, eminent domain powers, powers to negotiate postal treaties with foreign nations, and an exclusive legal right to deliver first-class and third-class mail.
They do make money, lots of it. While email has hurt USPS, online sales of goods has helped them. They are moving more packages then every before. You know all of those eBay auctions need to ship their goods, so does the millions of online stores. Their main competition of course is FedEx and UPS, both of which will move packages that USPS doesn’t deal with. i.e. Liquids, Hazardous Materials, etc. So the USPS will be around for a VERY VERY long time.
The article wasn’t so much about USPS as it is about the dominance of Social Media.
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