Tag Archives: Parcels

Culture, direct mail, Marketing, Media, USPS

More Change In The Mail

For you marketers, the latest USPS Revenues, Pieces and Weights was just released. It is a good indicator of the health of the economy, but also reveals just how we count on the post office in a different way than what Ben Franklin had in mind.

First off, the USPS jiggles their year-end to March 31, so the numbers I show you here have been adjusted to report a full normal calendar year, January – December, 2018 and 2017.

First Class mail continues its slow descent, losing 4% of its volume over the past 12 months. That is, we mailed 2.2 billion less pieces. The big drop is again in business and financial mailings, as more and more consumers opt for email statements and invoices. Anyway, First Class mail shrank by 119,000,000 pounds, or nearly 60,000 tons.

The USS Ronald Reagan: 103,000 tons.

Marketing Mail, otherwise known as Standard, grew by 258,000,000 pieces. The percentage growth is negligible, which is mind-boggling, but considering the minimal, steady slide over the last few years, this is a big deal. Direct marketers put more money into mail. Remarkably, piece-weights are down.   Down 133,000 tons in fact. Hard to grasp?  It is a lot. Let me remind you, the USS Ronald Reagan only weighs 103,000 tons.

Periodicals, fell 7% year over year, representing 363,000,000 fewer magazines and newspapers. Put into terms you may relate to, that’s equivalent to 30 million monthly subscriptions, cancelled.  While page counts are hard to calculate, the average weight of a single magazine shrank by 0.178 ounces, too.

The rising success in postal delivery however is packages and competitive parcel services. Overall, thanks to Internet, catalog and direct mail order, the USPS volume grew 8% in 2018, by 477,000,000 pieces, or just over 1 billion pounds. That’s 530,000 tons, or for you navy folks: five USS Ronald Reagans.

Conclusions:

We are always pointing to the USPS as a struggling giant.  But it is a terrific barometer and thermometer for consumer behavior.  Why? Because it is the only organ in the U.S. that still takes the pulse of over 150 million business and consumer addresses every day.  It does not sample and extrapolate.  It measures the whole body of the nation.

Understanding that, we see the real change in ourselves: we write fewer letters and cards to one another, and prefer to get our important mail electronically: email and website.  We also shun the retail experience in favor of direct order over the Internet, and through catalog and direct mail.  Lastly, we are steadily running away from browsing the printed page for news. Instead, we go to a screen or tablet.  Still Benjamin Franklin watches.

Thanks for reading!  If you would like to see the entire USPS report for October-December 2018, check it out here: Revenues, Pieces and Weights.

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Culture, direct mail, USPS

Tremors At The Post Office

Spoiler Alert: Numbers That May Surprise You!

The latest USPS report on mail volumes is out, and magically, incredibly, it points up.    The number-laiden Revenue Pieces and Weights report January 1- March 31, 2016 tells us volume for the past quarter was up 1.4%.

Big Business

For many of you, the news is lame. After all, what is an additional 520,183,000 pieces of mail? Actually, it turns out to be 37,414 tons, the equivalent weight of 454 Space Shuttles.  Which again points to the enormity of the US Postal Service.

Critics tend to discount the post office for its supposed obsolescence, but if you hang around a mail sorting facility for a moment, you know this is BIG, massive business.

So I for one am excited that mail volumes grew this past winter.

 

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Direct Mail and First Class Up

The better question may be why are they up?   It turns out that Direct Mail increased 1.9% over the same quarter a year ago, 355,488,000 pieces.   That could be related to political fundraising mail, and a cautious optimism in the economy.

First Class mail increased by 0.8%, 135,253,000 pieces.   An astounding turnaround!  Mind you, that includes all business mail.  When it comes to individually stamped mail, like birthday cards, bill paying and charitable donations, it was down 2%.  There is more intriguing news on this personal category in a moment though.

The big winner is Parcels and Packages which are exploding, correction, booming, sorry, mushrooming 13.2%.   This past quarter the USPS delivered 1,121,723,000 parcels, total weight: over 1 million tons.

The Magazine Subscriber Fails To Renew

What the report also reveals is the continued slide of Periodical volume: magazine counts dropped by 5.6%– 81,070,000 pieces over the three months compared to 2015.   Magazine subscriptions continue their slide.

The eye opener in this display of numbers is how mail looked just five years ago.   In 2011, total mail count for the quarter was over 41 billion pieces.   Since then volumes have dropped 6.7%, about 3 billion pieces.

While this is a generally understandable result of internet and social media, it is worthy of note that direct mail dropped only 3.4%, thus illustrating its successful economics.   By comparison, First Class Mail dropped nearly 13% in the same period.  Magazines, down 22%.

Parcels On The Move

You have to hand it to USPS management for the growth in Parcels.   While the internet may have crushed letter mail volumes, it opened the door for USPS package delivery.

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In 2011, Q2 Parcels totaled 667 million pieces.  This past quarter, USPS delivered 1.1 billion parcels, up a whopping 68% over five years.  And revenues? $3.7 Billion, up 82% from 2011.  The more we buy online, the more the post office delivers.

The significance of Parcels growth is that these numbers represent the USPS position in a competitive market with peers like UPS and Fedex.

Is Internet Migration Finished?

The encouraging story about Stamped Letters is worth a peek.   Personal letter volume cratered in 2008 and 2009 by -17.2%, and in 2010 by another -16.3%.    Since then, like a plane pulling out of a disastrous dive, Stamped Letters have nearly leveled out this past quarter at only a -2% decline.

 

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This leads one to believe that the attrition of postal mail to email and social media has just about finished.

Next month marks the end of another quarter for USPS record keeping. It will be interesting to see how the impact of the recent 1-2 penny decrease in price might improve mail volumes.

The direct marketers will take note, and who knows, maybe someone will pick up their pen and write one or two more letters as well.

Here’s the report for you review.  Enjoy!

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