WHATEVER THE USPS SOWS, IT MOST CERTAINLY WILL REAP

The following is a perspective by postal commentator Gene Del Polito for Direct magazine.

Any business person worth his or her salt knows that it costs more to find a new customer than it does to keep an old one. The more customers you keep, the better your bottom line.

You've got to wonder, then, why the Postal Service seems so bent on driving some of its current customers out of the mail rather than working with them more closely to keep them on as active customers. I'm referring specifically to the recent spate of "customer support rulings" (CSRs) regarding the eligibility of certain marketing materials as either First-Class or Standard Mail. This has been one of the most controversial of the USPS' recent undertakings, especially since some of the recent CSRs are seeking to roll back to clock to some other day in yesteryear when marketing by mail was much less than a "personal" experience.

Today, mail marketers try to make their messages as important and relevant to their audiences as possible. The first challenge any direct mailer faces is getting his or her piece noticed amidst the other bills, correspondence, and messages that appear in the mailbox. The second challenge, of course, is to keep the customer's interest sufficiently piqued to ensure a subsequent sale.

In recent days, the Postal Service has become enormously concerned that some of the messages that are a part of modern day direct mail marketing may have become so "personal" that they've taken on the characteristics of "individualized" messages, i.e., the kind that should be paying First-Class Mail rates.

Expecting customers who have become accustomed to personalizing their direct mail pieces to some how abandon the practice or post their messages as First-Class Mail, however, may be far from realistic. There may have been a day when the Postal Service could have pulled off something like that, but that day is no more. Today, those who chose to use mail for business development can just as easily use other approaches to get their messages before their customers' eyes.

In a world where email and the web have transformed the way businesses reach out to their customers, it would be extremely short-sighted for the USPS to assume that telling its most prized business customers that they ought to pony up and pay First-Class rates instead of Standard. Let's hope the Postal Service understands fully that it must reap what it sows. Here's hoping the USPS ends up sowing wheat rather than chaff.