The U.S. Postal Service made headlines and rattled Congress this week by threatening to cut Saturday mail delivery. But the threat didn’t faze direct marketers, many of whom saw the threat as a gambit for getting overdue Congressional attention.
“It isn’t about Saturday delivery, it’s about the viability of the post office,” said Michael Sherman, president of Minnetonka, MN-based Fingerhut Cos. and vice chairman of the Direct Marketing Association. “And right now, the structure is an anachronism.”
“The USPS has been looking for postal reform for some time and is not getting it,” added a spokesperson for Foster & Gallagher, Peoria, IL. “So this announcement was for the shock value.”
Indeed, few observers think a reduction could happen, given that the law forbids it and that the postal unions would fight it. Anyway, Rep. John McHugh (R-NY) is already spearheading development of a new postal reform bill (DIRECT Newsline, April 5).
But what if the USPS did manage to kill Saturday service? We asked several mailers and list brokers about the impact.
“It’s certainly not a huge problem,” said David Hochberg, a spokesperson for cataloger Lillian Vernon Corp., Rye, NY. “The issue would be that there would be less service without offering lower rates. That’s very different from what the free enterprise system is about.”
“Reducing delivery by one day not going to make or break our mailings,” agreed Brian Kurtz, an executive vice president with Boardroom, Inc., Greenwich, CT. “An increase would.”
Indeed, some said they would trade Saturday delivery for a break on rates.
“We could probably live with it in exchange for not getting beaten with these damned increases,” said Linda Huntoon, client management officer of ClientLogic Specialists Marketing Services, Katonah, NY.
Carol Portale, vice president-direct response fundraising for the March of Dimes, White Plains, NY, agreed. “If this is the quid pro quo, the only way we don’t have to get another hit, we would have to go along with it,” she said.
Would reduced delivery hurt actual mailings?
“Sure it would hurt,” said Carolyn Woodruff, a vice president with Uni-Mail List Corp., New York. “Think of how they track in-home dates, especially in catalog world. During the holiday season, the in-home date is crucial to predicting the response per campaign in that finite period of time. Also, from a marketing point of view, for many dual-income families Saturday is the day they look at the mail.”
Fingerhut
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