Do You Know Where YOUR Mail Is?

The USPS has been having major delivery issues the past few months. It hasn’t been in the news. If you haven’t heard about it, you must not have been sending out mailings.

Why The Slow Delivery?

We can only speculate as to why there has been a decline in delivery standards. The retirement of a large number of employees, dating back to October 30, 2009 is when it seemed to start. There have been a lot of staff changes to accommodate the lower work force. Many employees are being moved into new positions, and some positions have been eliminated.

What Can You Do?

Planning your next direct mail project has gotten trickier than ever. You can no longer depend on the USPS’s published service standards to predict when your mail will arrive. Although we do see some mail arrive within the published times (3 to 5 days for First-Class Presort and 7 to 10 days for Standard), we’ve also seen mail take as long as 20 to 30 days to reach its destination.
So how can you plan for your next wave? Or to staff your call center? Using the USPS CONFIRM service is exactly what you need to use when you want to know “where” your mail is.

TMD’s Track n Trace Service

Utilizing the USPS CONFIRM service, we will barcode every piece in your mailing to give you a snapshot of where your mail is and when you may expect it to be delivered.

Although not all postal facilities are equipped for 100% scanning of mailpieces, the results you will see will give you a good idea of where you mail is, and when it will be delivered.

www.TMDtracking.com – your website for mail tracking

When you’re ready to find  your mail, you simply log onto our website for reports, maps and more.
You can even track individual pieces of mail, see what machines they ran on at the post office and when!
Take your mailings to the next level…give us a call and we’ll show you how you can keep an eye on your mail, from the comfort of your office.

Direct Mail Opinions – What is most important, and What do you read?

Using LinkedIn, we recently re-ran some polls that we also held around this time last year. The results gave us some interesting insight into direct mail opinions.

The two polls were: When using direct mail, which of these are most important? and Which mail piece design are you more likely to read?

When using direct mail, which of these are most important?

The choices for this poll were: cost of mailing services; cost of postage; speed of USPS delivery or knowing ‘where’ your mail is.

The majority of poll takers chose the cost of mailing services as the most important part of a direct mail campaign. This is down 10% from last year’s results.

When we ran this same poll last year, the cost of mailing services was still the leader in considerations, but at that time, knowing “where” your mail is was rated pretty high (37%). What is really suprising is how low that number is this year.

Not suprising, the speed of USPS delivery rated pretty high this year, and it wasn’t even chosen in the poll last year. It’s amazing how much of a difference a year can make in USPS delivery times. We have to wonder what the results of this poll would’ve been had we done it last fall – right before we saw a major downturn in USPS delivery standards.

We are also sure there is a correlation between speed of delivery and the cost of postage. Last year postage costs did not seem to be of a big concern, but with the recent failure of USPS delivery standards, spending money on postage does start to weigh heavily on the minds of mailers.

Taking one last look at mail tracking. We are surprised that more people are not interested in “where” their mail is in the mail stream. We have been doing independent tracking, as well as tracking mail on the request of our customers. In doing so we can see that delivery standards are not being met AND that the predictability in mail delivery has become more difficult. We are working closely with postal officials to pinpoint where the weak areas are in the USPS mail stream. Hopefully this increased attention will enable the postal service to start moving toward meeting their standards or, at least lead delivery times to become more predictable.

Which mail piece design are you more likely to read?

The best mailpiece design format is always hotly contested (well, among designers that is!). Also is the question to use color or black & white. Postcards vs Envelopes. In this poll we asked which design would you be more likely to read and the choices were: full color postcard, b&w postcard, selfmailer, letter in an envelope, and for all of us in the industry: “I read all ALL my mail”.

For the 6% that picked the last choice, all of us in the industry thank you. However, as you can see from the graphic, the majority were split between a letter in an envelope and a full color postcard.

We were surprised that the letter in an envelope rated higher than a full color postcard. Last year’s poll results showed an overwhelming affection for full color postcards. In a recent article we shared via Twitter, a marketing expert stated that a letter in an envelope is becoming the mail piece design to use…and apparently, our poll reflects that change in opinion.

It also seems to be an issue of age as well. The graphic below shows that while the under 54 pollsters preferred receiving postcards, the over 55 set would rather receive a letter in an envelope (they’re also the ones dedicated to reading all their mail!).

Although these polls should not be considered scientific (the pollsters were only LinkedIn members), the results do tell us enough information which can be useful for future planning.

If you have a direct mail question that you would like us to poll, please let us know. Feel free to comment on your opinions to these polls and direct mail. We look forward to your opinions!