Any businessperson worth his or her salt knows it costs more to find a new customer than to keep an old one. The more customers you retain, the better it is for your bottom line.
You've got to wonder, then, why the U.S. Postal Service seems so bent on driving some of its best customers out of the mail rather than working hard to keep them around. 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 CSRs seek to roll back the clock to a day in yesteryear when marketing by mail was much less than a personal experience.
Today, mail marketers try to make their messages as relevant to audiences as possible. The first challenge mailers face is getting their piece noticed amid the other bills and correspondence that arrive in the mailbox. The second challenge, of course, is to hold the customer's interest long enough to ensure a sale.
Lately the postal service has grown enormously concerned that some communications that are part of modern direct mail marketing may have become so personal they've taken on characteristics of individualized messages — that is, the kind that should be charged first class mail rates.
Expecting customers who are accustomed to personalizing their direct mail to somehow abandon the practice or post messages first class is unrealistic. There might have been a time when the USPS could've pulled off something like this, but that time is past. Those who use mail for business development can just as easily use other ways to get their messages across.
In a world where e-mail and the Web have transformed the way companies reach out, it would be extremely shortsighted for the USPS to tell its most prized business customers they should pay first class rates instead of standard.
The postal service has to understand that it will reap what it sows. Here's hoping it'll end up sowing wheat rather than chaff.
GENE A. DEL POLITO is president of the Association for Postal Commerce (PostCom) in Arlington, VA.
