Attempting to reduce costs by reducing door-to-door delivery the USPS risks reducing income from advertising mail, the postal IG has said in a report that illustrates the difficult decisions the agency faces as it tries to shore up its finances.
The idea of switching more deliveries to central points such as neighborhood cluster boxes has been pursued in several postal reform ideas, although it has met resistance on grounds that customers have come to expect door-to-door service. The IG commissioned a poll with a consulting firm to examine what it says is a potentially more measurable impact, whether customers are as “engaged” with advertising mail if they pick it up centrally versus if it comes to their door.
The study in sum found that there is a difference, and a potentially important one since advertising mail delivered to homes accounts for about a quarter of USPS income. Customers who receive advertising mail at their door are less likely to throw it away without reading it and are also more likely to read and respond to their advertising mail, it concluded. For example, 59 percent said they read credit card solicitations delivered to their door but a similar percentage said they would simply toss such solicitations without even reading them if they picked them up from a central point.
It added that those who currently do get mail from cluster boxes tend not to retrieve it every day, another consideration for advertisers who often want their messages to reach their targets on a certain day.
Said the IG: “This leads to a further question (not directly considered in this paper): could moving door-delivery customers to cluster boxes or curbside ultimately cause a decrease in mailing volumes? This is important because, despite cost savings on the delivery side, it is possible that such a decrease on the demand side could potentially put advertising mail’s contribution to Postal Service institutional costs in jeopardy.”
