WASHINGTON — The U.S. Postal Service today announced plans to move ahead with a modified plan to consolidate its network of 461 mail processing locations in phases. The first phase of activities will result in up to 140 consolidations through February of 2013. Unless the circumstances of the Postal Service change in the interim, a second and final phase of 89 consolidations is currently scheduled to begin in February of 2014.

“We revised our network consolidation timeline to provide a longer planning schedule for our customers, employees and other stakeholders, and to enable a more methodical and measured implementation,” said Patrick R. Donahoe, Postmaster General and Chief Executive Officer of the Postal Service.

“We simply do not have the mail volumes to justify the size and capacity of our current mail processing network. To return to long-term profitability and financial stability while keeping mail affordable, we must match our network to the anticipated workload,” said Donahoe. “Our current plan meets our cost reduction goals, ensures seamless and excellent service performance throughout the implementation period, and provides adequate time for our customers to adapt to our network changes.”

The Postal Service will begin consolidating operations this summer – which mostly involve transferring mail-processing operations from smaller to larger facilities. Due to the volume of high-priority mail predicted for the election and holiday mailing seasons, no consolidating activities will be conducted from September through December of 2012. Approximately 5,000 employees will begin receiving notifications next week related to consolidating and other efficiency-enhancing activities to be conducted this summer.

“We will be conducting consolidation activities this summer at only 48 locations,” said Megan Brennan, chief operating officer of the Postal Service. “As a result, nearly all consolidating activities in 2012 will occur in August and then will resume again the early part of next year.”

These consolidating activities will reduce the size of the Postal Service workforce by approximately 13,000 employees and, when fully implemented, will generate cost reductions of approximately $1.2 billion annually.

“The Postal Service will be communicating with our customers and employees about these changes in great detail,” said Megan Brennan. “We will work closely with our customers to ensure there are no surprises as we move forward.”

The Postal Service also announced it is working with its unions for an employee retirement incentive, although no final decision has been made. “The Postal Service has reduced the size of its workforce by 244,000 career employees since 2000 without resorting to layoffs,” said Brennan. “We are a responsible employer and we will work with our employees to ensure a smooth transition to a much leaner organization.”

The Postal Service also announced that it would soon issue a new regulation to modify its existing Service Standard for overnight delivery. The Postal Service said a Final Rule would soon be published in the Federal Register that would initially shrink the geographic reach of overnight service to local areas and enable consolidation activity in 2013. The new rule would further tighten the overnight delivery standard in 2014 and enable further consolidation of the Postal Service mail processing network absent any change to the circumstances of the Postal Service.

“We are essentially preserving overnight delivery for First-Class Mail through the end of 2013, although we are collapsing the distance that we can provide overnight service to the distribution area served by a particular mail processing facility,” said Megan Brennan. Approximately 80 percent of First-Class Mail will still be delivered overnight.

The Postal Service stated its expectation to pursue additional consolidation activities for an additional 89 mail processing locations beginning in 2014 unless its circumstances change. These consolidations would be based on long-term service standards that would significantly revise mail-entry times for customers seeking overnight delivery.

“Given that the Postal Service is currently projecting a $14 billion net loss in FY2012, and continuing annual losses of this magnitude, we simply cannot justify maintaining our current mail processing footprint,” said Donahoe.

When fully implemented in late 2014, the Postal Service expects its network consolidations to generate approximately $2.1 billion in annual cost reductions, and lead to total workforce reduction up to 28,000 employees.

For a complete list of proposed consolidations, please click on link below.

USPS Potential to Consolidate List

The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.

The U.S. Postal Service is backing off a previous plan to close thousands of post offices, and will instead cut hours at 13,000 rural facilities in an effort to save $500 million a year.

In response to a backlash against massive closures, the Postal Service said Wednesday it will cut hours at the targeted post offices, which would remain open between two hours and six hours a day.

In addition, thousands of employees will be impacted when jobs shift from full-time to part-time positions.

The announcement is part of a broader plan that aims to save rural post offices from closing.

The Post Office plans to allow rural communities to choose whether their local post office will remain open with shorter hours, become a “village post office” that’s operated through a private company, or close altogether.

Most communities will choose shorter hours to keep their post office open, Postal Service officials say.

“Any rural community that wants to retain a rural post office, we’ll work with them to do that,” said Patrick Donahoe, the postmaster general.
Postal Service bill faces roadblocks

The plan to introduce shorter hours would happen over the next two years and be completed by September 2014, according to the postal service.

The new plan also includes buyout packages to be offered to 21,000 postmasters — the people in charge of post offices — eligible for retirement in offices throughout the nation, not just in rural areas. The cash buyouts will run up to $20,000 over a two-year period.

The Postal Service is in a financial bind, facing a $5.1 billion loss last year, due to the recession, declining mail volume and a congressional mandate to prefund retirement health care benefits.

The agency has said it wants to cut Saturday service, delay mail delivery and close hundreds of postal processing plants triggering thousands of job cuts nationwide.

Under the new plan, some 500 postal offices that have been closed over the last two years will remain closed.

Another 400 post offices that were ready to be closed when the May 15 moratorium on closures expires will now remain open while communities have an opportunity to decide what they’d like.

The news came as a relief to many lawmakers in the Senate who had spent the past few weeks lobbying the Postal Service to keep post offices open until legislation to save the post office got completed. Much of the Senate bill made it very difficult to close rural post offices.

“The Postal Service’s plan gives local communities a voice in ensuring that essential postal services are preserved,” said Thomas Carper, a Delaware Democrat who is one of the authors of the Senate postal bill.

House Republicans were not impressed with the meager savings on the plan to curtail rural post office hours, especially compared to the $12 billion debt that the Postal Service has racked up in loans from the Treasury Department.

“To achieve real savings creating long-term solvency, the Postal Service needs to focus on consolidation in more populated areas where the greatest opportunities for cost reduction exist,” said Rep. Darrell Issa of California, author of the House plan to save the service. To top of page

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Wednesday overcame opposition from several Republicans and passed legislation that would overhaul the financially ailing Postal Service, voting weeks before the agency plans to begin closing thousands of post offices and consolidating hundreds of processing centers to cut costs.

The measure was passed 62 to 37, despite a warning from Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, that it would add to the national debt.

Senators who sponsored the bill said it would provide needed relief for the Postal Service, which said it would run out of cash if Congress did not act.

“This is a bipartisan bill that will bring necessary change to the Postal Service in order to save it,” said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, who sponsored the bill with Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Scott P. Brown of Massachusetts, both Republicans, and Thomas R. Carper, Democrat of Delaware.

Postal worker unions gave the bill a mixed reaction. The National Association of Letter Carriers called it flawed because, among other things, it would cut services and jobs. The American Postal Workers Union agreed but said the bill would provide short-term relief to the Postal Service.

“There are some things that we don’t like in the bill, but it’s far better that something has passed rather than nothing,” said Cliff Guffey, president of the American Postal Workers Union.

The Postal Service, which objected to parts of the bill because it would limit the agency’s ability to close facilities and cut services, expressed disappointment in the vote. “If this bill were to become law, we would be back before the Congress within a few years requesting additional legislative reform,” the postmaster general, Patrick R. Donahoe, said in a written statement.

The bill would provide retirement incentives for nearly 100,000 of the post office’s 547,000 workers. It also would allow the agency to study the elimination of Saturday deliveries if it could not cut costs in the next two years, and it would free up the agency to offer a broader range of revenue sources like delivering beer and wine for retailers. The agency would also recoup more than $11 billion that it had overpaid into one of its pension funds.

Perhaps most significant, the bill would restructure the payments the agency makes into a health benefits fund for future retirees. Under a 2006 law, the agency has to pay $5.5 billion annually into the fund, which the Postal Service said had added $20 billion in debt to its balance sheet since 2007.

The bill would lower the amount of the prepayments and allow the agency to stretch them out over 40 years. The Postal Service is the only federal agency that prepays its future retiree health obligations.

Before the Senate began voting on the bill on Tuesday, Mr. Corker and three other Republicans — Senators Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Dan Coats of Indiana — raised a point of order. They argued that it would add $34 billion to the national debt, including the overpayment to the pension fund.

But one of the Republican co-sponsors, Ms. Collins, argued that the bill would not add to the debt because any spending would come from revenue generated by the Postal Service, not from federal coffers.

The bill also would create a chief innovation officer for the Postal Service to help it come up with new products and an advisory commission to help it revamp its business model.

Lawmakers added provisions that would give citizens a greater say in the closing of post offices and cap bonuses and pay for Postal Service executives.

Mr. Coburn also added a provision that would limit federal agency spending on conferences, in response to a spending scandal by officials at the General Services Administration.

The Postal Service’s financial woes have increased as mail volume, particularly first-class mail, has dropped sharply because of electronic messaging, to 168 billion pieces last year from a peak of 213 billion in 2006. The Postal Service said volume could fall to 118 billion by 2020.

As a result, the service is losing $36 million a day, after having generated an annual profit as recently as 2006.

A group representing large delivery companies like FedEx and UPS, which rely on the Postal Service for some of their deliveries, applauded the Senate vote.

“This bill is a vital first step in pulling the Postal Service back from the edge of a fiscal abyss,” said Art Sackler, co-coordinator of a group called the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service. “That is good news for the Postal Service and the eight million private sector workers whose jobs rely on it.”

Fredric V. Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, said the unions would turn their attention to the House, where postal legislation is pending.

“We are very disappointed that the Senate approved such a flawed bill, but we are determined to continue the fight for legislation that will provide a path to long-term viability for the Postal Service,” Mr. Rolando said in a statement.

The House bill differs substantially from the Senate version. It would create a commission much like the one that studied and recommended military base closings to oversee the shutting down of post offices and processing centers. It would also allow the Postal Service to end Saturday mail delivery without a two-year delay.

Ali M. Ahmad, a spokesman for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Postal Service, said the committee had not set a time to began working on the bill.

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“…direct mail–left a ‘deeper footprint’ in the brain.” In other words media that consumers can touch and feel resonated and touched more emotions than those of the digital variety.”

“Direct mail surprisingly transcends the age demographic, with younger consumers (the 18- to 34-year-old demographic) preferring to learn about marketing offers via postal mail rather than online sources, according to national survey research from ICOM,” said Lisa Formica, president of FMI, a direct mail marketing and advertising firm”

“The USPS has made many advances over the years that has made direct mail more measurable and an even better value for marketers,” added Erik Formica, also of FMI and an executive member of the Greater Philadelphia Postal Custom Council. “For example, the introduction of the Intelligent Mail Barcode (IMB) has opened a range of new services and cost savings for marketers.”

According to a recent survey conducted by Target Marketing magazine, the channel that delivered the strongest ROI for customer acquisition for B2C marketers was direct mail. Direct mail also scored the highest among B2C marketers for customer contact and retention.

In these tight economic times, direct mail continues to be a cost effective marketing tool. TC Delivers is prepared to help you with a targeted cost effective, direct mail project. With three Florida processing centers, TC Delivers can handle any size project.

Direct mail can prove to be an extremely effective tool within your marketing tool chest – especially when combined with other marketing tools like QR codes, social media marketing, personalized URLs or just your website. Take note that successful direct mail programs result from scientific direct mail processes. We won’t evaluate every single component, but let’s look at 3 common and COSTLY mistakes many businesses make when using direct mail. Then we’ll look at the 3 tested and proven fixes that lead to an effective and successful direct mail campaign for restaurants.

Direct Mail Mistakes & Solutions

Mistake #1:
“I’ll get as large a mailing list as I can, then just “blanket” my immediate location with our campaign.”

Executing a “blanket” strategy – by simply taking a large list of addresses and sending your campaign to those addresses – is the BIGGEST waste of your money and creative energy.

Solution #1
The same level of thought that you put into buying food inventory for your restaurant’s menu should be reflected in acquiring you mailing list. In buying inventory, you base your acquisition decisions around the preferences and characteristics of your customers. When acquiring a mailing list, the logic should be similar – you acquire a list primarily based on the characteristics of the customers you want to reach. For example, if you’re an upscale wine bar, you are better off sourcing a mailing list with individuals that have household income levels above the median income for your region, are college educated, and those who like wine. Your ROI can be 50% -60% greater on a targeted mailing list versus one that is not targeted. In addition, your list should be sourced from extremely reputable sources, because list quality varies widely and even a good initial list will age over time and become inaccurate. The good news is that MODsocket provides tools that allow you to leverage high quality lists from Dunn and Bradstreet, EquiFax and others, and to use very precise demographics in your own targeted direct mail campaign.

Mistake #2:
“Since my last direct mail campaign did not work for me, then that proves direct mail doesn’t work!”

Basing a decision on the ultimate effectiveness of direct mail on just ONE campaign is a bad idea – even if it worked great the first time. Would you say that franchising does not work, just because the first location you opened was not a success? You most likely wouldn’t.

Solution #2
Test! Test! Test! With direct mail, you must test your campaign carefully and often. When testing, use a sample from your overall mailing list and send to that sample. Once you’ve picked a random sample, divide that list into two equal parts and perform a ‘split test’.

Your first ‘run’ should be considered the baseline campaign or your control. From this initial distribution, you can establish a baseline response rate that serves as a measuring stick to evaluate changes in the response-rates of follow-up campaigns. Now that you’ve laid the foundation economically and smartly, you can make changes to your campaign for improved results. However, only change ONE thing at a time.

Now, testing is essential; but don’t go crazy with it! Possibly, start by changing your offer – this is almost as important as the quality of your list. Then review the success. Next time try change your graphics. Finally, try changing the dimensions of your direct mail piece. You many find that smaller is better and more convenient for the prospect, or that larger works better for a specific reason. MODSocket makes it extremely cost effective for restaurants to test, and re-test their direct mail campaigns at a relatively very low cost.

There are many components to testing your direct mail, but these few areas will really make a positive impact on your results and bottom-line.

Mistake #3:
“Let’s focus on telling our prospects how awesome we are!”

When you solicit, nobody cares about YOU. They care about what you can DO for THEM – i.e. YOUR OFFER!

Solution #3
Pay special attention to your content. Your headline, opening lines and offer must speak TO the reader not AT them. Your target audience wants to know “What’s in it for me?” or “Why should I spend my time and money with you?” Depending on your target audience, certain concepts around green/eco-friendly, healthy, fun, excitement may perk their ears. No matter what your demographic looks like or responds to, there are a few words we ALL react well to:
Free
Offer expires …
New
Only
You

After you’ve completed these tweaks to launch a successful campaign, don’t expect to get a 40%, 50% – or even 60% response rate. Success for direct mail range ranges between 0.5% & 3%. Restaurants with well-crafted campaigns and offers can experience between 2%-3% response rate within the first few months.

If you mailed to 10,000 people and 200 – 300 people (a combination of new and existing customers) to responded within 6 months, that’s a winner! Consider you now have the opportunity to create new repeat customers who bring their friends, and it’s easier now to see the potential of your campaign.

Here is information to help you take advantage of this revised special offering:

· Qualifying mailings are Presorted and automation mailings of First-Class Mail cards, letters, and flats and Standard Mail (including Nonprofit Standard Mail) letters and flats with a mobile barcode inside or on the mailpiece.

· The mobile barcode must lead the recipient of the mailpiece either to a web page that allows the recipient to purchase a product or service on a mobile device, or to a personalized URL, which leads to a web page that is unique to an individual recipient.

· Qualifying mailings may receive an upfront price reduction of 2 percent of the eligible postage.

· Participation requires electronic documentation.

· Commingled, combined and co-mail mailings are allowed, but a separate postage statement is required for pieces with mobile barcodes.

Using mobile barcodes is a great way to integrate direct mail with mobile technology. Get more information, including updated FAQs, on the RIBBS website or by emailing mobilebarcode@usps.gov .

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Despite its financial difficulties and relatively heavy work load, the U.S. Postal Service has been declared the finest in the world by a British study.

The USPS was declared number one for efficiency among the Group of Twenty major global economies, according to findings from England’s Oxford Strategic Consulting.

“We’re the world’s leading postal service,” said USPS spokesman Roy Betts. “This report validates that fact.”

The U.S. Postal Service scored the highest for efficiency, even as it delivers far more letters per employee — 268,894 in 2010 — than other services in the G20. Japan Post, which came in second, delivers 103,149 letters per employee, and Australia Post, which placed third, delivers 166,776.

But delivering letters is not the way of the future, according to Scott Jackson, author of the study and visiting professor of management psychology at Oxford University.

“The key thing about the U.S. Postal Service is [that] it’s extremely efficient compared to its colleagues around the world,” he said. “But unfortunately, it’s very efficient on the sort of the thing that’s going to be the least important in the future: delivering letters.”

Jackson said that postal services in other countries have branched out to provide other services, but those applications wouldn’t necessarily work in the U.S. For example, he said Siberian post offices sometimes sell groceries because there are no other grocery stores available. But such a model would probably flop in the U.S., where grocery stores abound.

For years, email has been siphoning away the prevalence of so-called snail mail, and this has hit the U.S. Postal Service in the pocket book.

The USPS, which does not receive taxpayer support, lost $5 billion last year. A main problem is the requirement to make multi-billion dollar payments to pre-fund healthcare retirement benefits, though Congress has shown some leniency by allowing that payment to be postponed.

Postal Service makeover

The USPS has flirted with the idea of scaling back to five-day delivery from the current six-day system. But this is unpopular with Congress, which has the final authority. The U.S. Postal Service has also been considering a plan to slow down next-day service.

In its effort to cut some $20 billion in costs, the USPS plans to close post offices around the country. But it has delayed the closures until May 15, allowing Congress some time to devise a plan to save it.

The U.S. Postal Service serves more citizens per post office — 8,409 — than the next seven countries below it. Brazil, which placed ninth, has 10,278 citizens per post office, but its postal service only delivers 72,364 letters per employee.

The one area where the U.S. Postal Service lagged behind other nations was in the number of parcels delivered. It delivers 2,633 parcels per employee, compared to 7,975 in Japan and 6,633 in Australia.

To see the complete article printed in The Ledger please click on the following link

http://www.theledger.com/article/20120223/NEWS/120229716

The first and most important concept to make sure to take care of when having a direct mail listing is to have a clear objective of what you want to accomplish with your mailing. Do you want more customers or do you want to offer an incentive to get the customers that you have already to come back to purchase more? Having an idea of what you want to accomplish with your mailings will help conserve money and make your direct mailing campaign effective.

Make your direct mailing campaign personal. People like to receive letters in the mail from friends and relatives and not junk mail. Making your direct mailing campaign more like a letter to a friend than a junk mail add will keep your advertisement from being thrown away.

Give incentives everyone loves to get something whether it be a discount or a free item. An incentive can be aimed at returning customers to keep them coming back for more or to new customers not yet familiar with your company. Incentives can work for either customer category.

Why should they use your company? Put in the direct mail campaign the benefits and reasons why they should come back to use your again or use you for the first time. Make sure they know why you are better than any of your competitors out there. However, keep this relatively humble. No one likes an inflated ego.

Never forget to leave a way for them to contact your business. Should they come into a store, call your over the phone or visit your website. It would be a travesty to have a customer that wants to use your product and is sold on your advertisement but has absolutely no way to reach you to take advantage of that new found knowledge.

Taking these steps will help make your direct mail campaign effective in bringing in customers to your business. Not only to save you money but to also increase your profits. With these things in mind you too can run an effectively keep your business in the minds of the average consumer, bringing your business to the next level.

TC Delivers is your go to source for direct mail fulfillment. With three full service operating centers, TC can help you acquire the most effective data base, and mail your project at the most economical rates. Contact TC Delivers for more information.