Direct marketers gathered here for their big annual shindig yesterday, but there was little to celebrate.
As the sparse crowd of delegates fanned out through the exhibit hall, they tried to come to terms with ever-worsening postal news. For example:
* A worker at the Hamilton Township, NJ mail processing center was diagnosed Sunday with inhalation anthrax. This brings the number of confirmed cases to 13, with five more suspected.
* The U.S. Postal Service said that it will test 30 additional processing centers for contamination, with another 200 slated for testing.
* Late Friday, the USPS confirmed that another Washington, DC area facility, the Southwest Post Office which serves ZIP code 20024, had tested positive for traces of anthrax.
Just as bad to many was the way the national media was playing up the crisis. The Chicago Tribune’s Bob Greene pondered whether the USPS would go the way of the railroads. But there was limited anecdotal evidence mail delivery and response had declined. “September was a bad month for us,” said Katy Vorce, of Focus on the Family, a nonprofit group that mails 25 million to 30 million pieces a year. She acknowledged she had also noticed “a little bit of a delay” in mail delivery.
September also proved a bad month for publisher Highlights for Kids. “After Sept. 11, we were down 11% in our consumer mail, and 3% on our school mail,” said Gary Myer, president of the Columbus, OH-based firm. The company, which normally does $100 million in sales per year, does one major subscription mailing per year during that period. Mail is sent to three groups-“donors,” consumers and schools.
However, Bart’s Water Sports “doubled over last year” during September, said the firm’s Kerry Mosher.
But the catalog firm, which does less than $10 million in sales per year, has noticed a slowdown in mail delivery.
“I didn’t get my badges from the DMA,” Mosher joked.
Service providers have also taken major hits.
“There’s not a vendor category that hasn’t been hurt,” said delegate Gary Johnson, of Gary Johnson Associates.
Martin Stein, president of RMI Direct, said that his company’s sales dropped by 15% in September compared with the prior year, but that October’s were over last year’s levels.
Stein added that a nonprofit client in the Washington, DC area received no mail for a week. And when it came it, there were only five trays.
But there was some good news. Deborah Willhite, a vice president with the USPS, affirmed that the postal service would continue mail delivery, especially during the financial billing period at the start of the month.
And DMers remained confident that they would prevail.
“Mail will not go the way of the railroad,” said Mark Galliher, vice president of marketing for Cooper Direct Advertising. “It’s part of the fabric of our life.”
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