The U.S. Postal Service is about to launch a joint marketing initiative with Amazon.com.
Postmaster General William J. Henderson and Amazon’s founder/CEO Jeff Bezos announced the venture–believed to be postal service’s first partnership with an Internet retailer–at a panel discussion on electronic commerce and the postal service’s role in it. Without providing details, they said the program involves a series of national television and print ads, which presumably will also be on each other’s Internet sites.
The PMG, who moderated the discussion, said that the USPS is considering a number of e-commerce options, such as having an e-mail address for every postal address in the country and developing a more secure type of mailbox that can accept a variety of items, including groceries ordered online and delivered by letter carriers.
It is also looking to develop a program through which postal customers could receive and pay bills online with the USPS being their link with banks and businesses. Another plan calls for Internet retailers to be included in the parcel return service currently provided for catalogers, continuity mailers and other direct marketers.
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