Want to Learn More About Periodicals?

The Southeastern Postal Customer Council is proud to present a free Webinar entitled “Everything you ever wanted to know About Periodical Mail.” The webinar is scheduled for Thursday, July 22nd at 10:00 AM EST. This 90 minute session will cover Periodical Eligibility and Requirements and New USPS changes for Periodical Mailers. The speaker is Pete Pagano from the USPS Pricing and Classification Service Center in New York. Pete is one of the specialists assigned to the National Customer Rulings Program and works with the participants of the program on pre-production mailpiece designs and Periodicals eligibility issues.

Click here to register.

Rate Increases Outrage Mailers

Marketers and catalogers that rely on the mail to reach consumers decried the US Postal Service's proposed “exigent price increases,” saying the rate hikes would have drastic negative financial repercussions for their 2011 operational and marketing plans.

Some organizations said they will cut back on the number of mailings or pieces they send, while others promised to switch some programs to other forms of advertising, including e-mail, telemarketing and print periodicals.

Some mailers said they will move more aggressively to the Internet.

International Masters Publishers, Publishers Clearinghouse and other continuity shippers face an especially brutal postage increase because they use the entire spectrum of mailing services. They use Standard Mail for acquisition of new customers or club members; invoicing of customers via First Class Mail; and product fulfillment, often sent as non-machinable flat mail (about a 38% increase) or Standard Parcels (23.3% average increase).

Source: DM News

PRC Chairman on C-Span

Click here to listen to Ruth Goldway, Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) Chairman, talk about the future of the U.S. Postal Service. This interview took place on July 13th a week after the Postal Service filed their exigent rate proposal. Ms. Goldway responds to telephone calls from viewers. She discusses the process of the filing and provides a broad condition of the Postal Service.

New Periodicals Content Standards Released

With the exception of some minor modifications, the mailing standards governing contents of a publication eligible for periodicals pricing have not changed since 1995. A lot, however, has happened in 15 years. We've seen dramatic changes in lifestyles, customer preferences, ways of doing business and technology. During the past year, USPS and the periodicals mailing industry (including Brown Printing and many of our customers) have been discussing changes needed in content standards. The team saw its hard work rewarded when the Federal Register final rule updating the standards was posted on Postal Explorer. Effective Sept. 7, 2010, the current advertising limitation on loose supplements — except for separately addressed loose supplements with a mailing of unwrapped copies of an issue of a bound periodicals publication — is removed. In addition, the updated standards revise the regulations on multi-layer pages, providing publishers more latitude in page design. The standards on protective covers and attachments also have been updated for consistency with past rulings. Finally, provisions concerning the mailing of products and product samples have been simplified.

Source: MTAC

5-Day Delivery Update

What a difference a month makes! More than 92% of the comments submitted to the PRC in June regarding the number of mail delivery days favored six-day delivery.

It wasn't just postal employees who came to the defense of 6-day delivery; most of the support came from people who identified themselves as customers, according to a PRC summary.

More than one-fifth of those who supported 6-day delivery said the overfunding of pensions and the so-called pre-funding of retiree health benefits should be corrected before service is reduced.

Source: Dead Tree Edition