Postal News & Commentary ↓

Here’s an important announcement for bulk mail senders.

Effective on July 1st, 2009, the USPS is implementing their new incentive program (also called Summer Sale) for high-volume bulk mail senders. It’s more like a rebate because you get 30% back on the postage costs of a portion of future mailings within a certain time period.

How do you qualify for the incentive program?

1. You must be the mail owner of a permit imprint advance deposit account, or the owner of a deposit account that is used through a mail service provider.

2. You must have mailed at least one million pieces of direct mail between October 1st, 2007 and March 31st, 2008.

If you qualify, you should have received a letter from the USPS. If you qualify and you didn’t receive a letter, send an email to summersale (at) usps.gov. And here’s a link to the USPS website for more info on this Summer Sale.

Lastly, if there’s anything we can do to help, or if you have questions, please send an email to matt (at) ballantine.com or contact us here.

Welcome back. Have you subscribed to our blog's email updates yet? Remember - you also get the free whitepaper pictured left on cutting direct mail costs.

Update (10/15/2009): We just got word that there will be no postage increase for direct mail in 2010. In the words of the USPS:

“Simply stated, there will not be a price increase for market dominant products including First-Class Mail, Standard Mail, periodicals, single-piece Parcel Post. There will be no exigent price increase for these products.

This is the right decision at the right time for the right reason. Promoting the value of mail and encouraging its continued use is essential for jobs, the economy, and the future of both the Postal Service and the mailing industry.”

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Since the wounds are still fresh from the May 11th 2009 postage rate increase, we wanted to sprinkle some potentially good news on the situation.

Dan Blair, chair of the Postal Regulatory Commission, recently stated that based on the current trend of inflation, the postage rate increase for 2010 would likely be less than 1%.

That being said, the USPS is allowed to file for an exception based on revenue shortfalls, but Mr. Blair said this is unlikely because they’re afraid it would drive more mailers from the system.

On March 29th, 2009 the new USPS addressing requirements for flats went into affect. Flats are defined as direct mail measuring 11.5″ (w) x 6.125″ (h) up to a maximum size of 15″ (w) x 12″ (h).

To make things simple, we’re going to recap the new requirements and then point you to a couple of PDFs that contain additional information. This recap comes straight from the PDFs linked to below.

3 New Requirements for Standard & First-Class Mail:

1./ Mailers must address each piece using a minimum of 8-point type. Each character must be at least 0.080 inch high.

2./ If the mailpiece bears a POSTNET or Intelligent Mail barcode with a delivery point routing code, mailers may use 6-point type in all capital letters. Each character must be at least 0.065 inch high.

3./ On all automation pieces, the characters in the address must not overlap, the address lines must not touch or overlap, and each address element may be separated by no more than five blank character spaces. (A blank character space can equal the width of the widest letter used in the type.)

1 Additional Requirement For Standard Mail Only:

1./ Mailers must place the delivery address in the “top half” of the mailpiece (at the time of this writing, every piece of USPS literature we have says this is NOT a requirement for First-Class flat mail).

For more detailed addressing information, click below on the class of flat direct mail you send out.

First-Class | Standard

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