formerly Advertising Mail Marketing Association)
What Would You Do Without Universal Mail Service?
The following is a perspective by postal commentator Gene Del Polito, which was prepared for Direct magazine. The views expressed are the author's, and do not necessarily reflect the policies or views of the Association for Postal Commerce.
What would your business do if tomorrow you were told that your electrical power no longer would work reliably? The power might be on, or maybe not; the voltage might be steady, or it might widely fluctuate.
What would your business do if you were told that the water service to your building would suffer intermittent disruptions? Or how about if your telephone service went down aperiodically throughout the day?
I have no doubt that none of these possibilities would leave you thrilled, and, if you knew they were in the offing, you probably would do everything within your power to prevent these sorts of catastrophes. Then why haven't direct marketers evidenced anywhere near the same level of concern over the imminent disruption of mail service that for sure will stem from the Postal Service's inability to provide universal, affordable, or reliable mail service amidst declining mail volume and revenue?
Don't believe that can happen? Well, it already is, and postal officials are worried sick about it.
Not only has electronic communication alternatives begun to sap away what has historically been the Postal Service's "golden egg," First-Class Mail, but it also has begun to eat at the advertising and marketing mail volume and revenue that has long been recognized as the "goose" who laid those golden eggs.
The interest direct marketers have shown in developing marketing opportunities on the World Wide Web as an alternative to hard-copy mail has astounded senior postal officials. Advertising mail, they long had thought, would be the most resistant mail to electronic diversion, and that simply hasn't been the case.
Finding a new electronic venue for doing business, however, is not a cause for any direct marketers' comfort. Despite the expansion of Internet-related bandwidth, despite the growth of home as well as business computer use, the simple fact is that it will take a long, long time before Internet-related communications services take on the ubiquity of mail.
Mail is now, and will remain for some time to come, the only universal messaging system. That fact alone should be enough to convince direct marketers that they still have a great stake in the preservation of a reliable, affordable, universal mail delivery system as part of our nation's economic infrastructure.
All the more appalling, then, is the lack of interest direct marketers have demonstrated on a matter as important as postal legislative reform. For whatever reason, many within our industry have been no more concerned about the postal crisis that's been brewing than they would be over the death of a flea. The only difference is that this flea, also known as the U.S. Postal Service, is essential to their economic ecosystem. Indeed, without it, the viability of direct marketing (at least as we know it today) would be sustained on borrowed time.