One of my major areas of focus today is helping our industry define the brand value of the mailstream. The many attacks on the mail from environmental and privacy zealots are largely misguided, but they have more life than they should because they zero in on parts of the mailstream that diminish the value of our brand. I am a passionate environmentalist and a protector of privacy rights, but the “zealots” to whom I refer are those who advocate their positions inflexibly, ignoring facts that undercut their position, often attacking the motives of those who oppose them, and and also ignoring the consequences of what they advocate, even if those consequences are inconsistent with a clean environment and a strong protection for privacy. Not everyone who advocates a significant reduction of unsolicited mail is a zealot, but I believe many of the most vocal advocates who get the greatest media exposure would fit into this category.

When I note the size of our industry and the number of people employed in it, I do so solely to point out that the industry is important enough to make sure we get the brand issues right, not to say that we should always be as big as we are today or that we should defend every mailpiece and every job. In fact, we may need to see a reduction in certain kinds of mail and certain kinds of jobs to enable longer-term growth in mail and jobs.

So what do we need to do to defend this brand? Part of the effort is to promote what’s good about the mailstream: its vital role in helping people connect emotionally with one another through greeting cards and gifts sent through the mail, its role in transactional activity, its role in helping people market to one another and to fulfill transactional commitments through e-commerce, its role in connecting citizens with government, and its continuing role as an entertainment and educational medium. As Denny Hatch recently points out in his blog BusinessCommonSense, “because of junk mail, the United States Post Office is in business, reaching every address in America every business day.” (more…)

In the past week, I read a New York Times article which favorably reported on the initiative of a for-profit company, which has a business based on getting people to pay for being taken off mailing lists and for having a tree planted on their behalf. I also attended the premier trade show for the production print and mail industry, Graph Expo, which showcased the best-in-class solutions for direct mailers and chaired a meeting of our Mailing Industry CEO Council to discuss strategies for improving the value of the mailstream.

I was struck by the contrast between the absolutely arrogant and uninformed view of direct marketing mail reflected in the article and the sophistication and thoughtfulness of the people who provide the print and mail services to direct mail marketers. I was also struck by the fact that, as I have learned more about the many for-profit organizations that are peddling services to get people off mailing lists, their motivation is to make money by playing upon the fears of identity theft or the apparent environmental benefit of reducing mail-related waste to make money. The most startling learning is that they have essentially rejected the fundamental principle of the Direct Marketing Association’s Mail Preference Service, informed consumer choice, to get people to do something detrimental to them if it costs them as little money as possible and if they can increase their profit margins.

Most of us receive unsolicited and unwanted marketing mail in annoying quantities every year, and the direct mailing industry can do a great deal more to reduce the volume and annoyance factor of that mail. But banning 80-90% of all unsolicited marketing mail, as the company referred to in the New York Times article wants to do, is wildly off the mark and would be horrible for the American economy and the environment. Most Americans don’t realize the mail supports $900 billion in economic activity and nine million jobs. (more…)

In the last few weeks I have found myself on the campuses of many colleges and universities. Some are Pitney Bowes customers, some have been venues for meetings I have attended, some are campuses I have shown my 16-year-old son, who is starting to look at colleges, and I have visited my 21-year-old son, who is a student at the University of Southern California, and my 14-year-old daughter, who took a summer class at Princeton University. I also had occasion to visit the University of Wisconsin and Harvard Law School, the schools from which I received my degrees.

I have several observations:

• All of these schools have more global reach than ever. Our primary and secondary education systems are inferior to many other countries, but we still are a magnet for undergraduate and graduate college students from around the world, especially from the Asia-Pacific area. I also am seeing an increasing number of students from Eastern European countries – who not only come to school here, but are most likely to be filling the summer jobs at resort areas and in big cities that used to be filled by American students.

• There is an incredible amount of construction going on everywhere on every campus I visit. Interestingly enough, some of the buildings being replaced are newer than some of the buildings being renovated. At the University of Wisconsin, some of the buildings built in the 1950’s and 1960’s are being demolished, whereas older buildings are being renovated. I was also surprised to learn that much of the Harvard Law School is under reconstruction and renovation and will be resituated within Cambridge over the next few years. I get piecemeal announcements informing me of these events, but its impact is much more dramatic when you actually see it happening. (more…)

In a previous posting, I talked about how “Do Not Mail” proposals were misguided from an environmental, privacy, and public policy standpoint. But it’s not enough to oppose initiatives that resonate with many well-educated people who generally understand and agree with the value of mail and who intellectually understand why broad-based “Do Not Mail” registries are bad ideas.

Consumers want choice and control over their lives, and they have much more of it than ever. They have multiple entertainment choices regarding what they watch on a TV, including movies they can acquire through the mail and, increasingly, over the Internet. They can screen out e-mails, phone calls, and face-to-face sales professionals.

Mail has been a bit of an outlier because elected officials have mandated six-day-a-week delivery of everything that is properly mailed, unless recipients go through a fair bit of effort to get removed from mailing lists. Mail is not intrusive like other communications, and it is highly valued, but that does not matter. Consumers want the same ability to screen out unwanted mail that they have with the remote control device and the Tivo system relative to TV.

Unfortunately, mail screening is far more complicated than providing a remote control device. A TV program is not “delivered” until someone turns on the TV at the proper channel. A mailpiece is delivered before the recipient has any ability to know that it has come.

Technology is available to change all of this. If you authorize someone to receive and screen your mail for you, someone could scan the envelope and give you an image that would enable you to decide whether you want it. This gives the recipient the ability to express a desire not to receive something with a single click of a computer button. We offered this service after the anthrax crisis in 2001, but, ultimately, most customers did not want to pay us to screen the mail for them.

Today, there are products that allow those moving to let catalog companies and magazine publishers know what movers want to continue or start receiving. That’s easy to do for people who are moving because they interact with the Postal Service at that time, and, as a provider of fulfillment services, we can ask them some questions online or on an insert in the Move Update kit.
However, trying to reach everyone with a comprehensive list of all of what they could receive is beyond anyone’s capabilities.

I believe that, over time, consumer profiles will need to be built that will help them decide what they want and don’t want, and we will be able to screen out most of what they don’t want, and, like Amazon.com, prompt them to tell us more of what they do want. I firmly believe that these changes should be and will be led by the private sector, and not legislated by Congress and/or State Legislatures. As technology and consumer preferences are changing constantly, the private sector is best equipped to launch these products and adjust them over time to changing needs.

One thing is clear: consumers want us to help them make choices that make their lives easier, not to saturate them with choices that complicate their lives.

On this last point, I would note that there was a period of time when we gave our employees with 401(k) plans over 50 investment options. They found that confusing and unsatisfactory. Today, we offer a much smaller number of choices, and we provide investment packages suitable for people at particular life stages.

What do I conclude from this? Consumers want choices, but they want a manageable number of them. They want a trusted partner that will help them make those choices.

The mailstream has to evolve to create an environment compatible with consumer choice and help for consumers to find what they want in the mailstream.