Direct Mail Up, While Rates Still Up In the Air

[responsive]USPS[/responsive]It’s a case of going about your business no matter what. Despite increasing postal rates and continued uncertainty at the USPS, direct marketers are steadily increasing the volume of mail they send.

“If you draw a line [of advertising mail volume] over the last four years, you see it moving up very steadily,” said USPS CFO Joe Corbett in their latest earnings call.

New Postmaster General Megan Brennan echoed the sentiment, according to Direct Marketing News, saying “It’s very encouraging to see the growth in advertising mail, and we will continue to use promotions to encourage marrying it with digital solutions.

“We have a tremendous amount of momentum running throughout the organization. It reflects the effective marketing campaigns run around our package and Priority Mail products,” Brennan continued.

Marketers are still left in the lurch when it comes to accurately predicting their mailing budgets (and hence their ROI) with new postal regulations set to go into effect this spring and the organization continuing to lobby to make the exigent rate hikes permanent.

Rate increase or not, marketers are seeing value from their direct mail efforts. At the end of the day, our industry needs the USPS as much as they need us. What we don’t need is a Congress that continues to sit on their hands and make political hay out of this critical service. Let them do their jobs, so we can continue to do ours.