It was more than one year ago that we warned mailers that the USPS was beginning to ramp up its enforcement efforts of the Move Update rule for First Class Mail(see www.mailcci.com/past_issues/022003.asp).
To be eligible for presorted or automated First Class rates, every mailer is required to have updated its database with change of address information at least every 180 days. In 2002 and 2003, trials in several areas of the nation revealed that many mailers were claiming presort and automation discounts but had not used Move Update properly or, in some cases, not at all. At that time, the USPS was not actively investigating and enforcing the Move Update rule.
Angelo Wider, USPS Manager of Finance Administration, says "now is the time to put the stake in the sand." After a very lengthy grace period and communicating the need for all mailers to begin using Move Update, the postal service is now reclaiming postage discounts that were given to mailers that were found to have not used Move Update properly. The reclaimed postage will be only for the portion of mail found to be non-compliant.
The USPS estimates that undeliverable-as-addressed mail costs nearly $2 billion every year. As Wider says, "If mailers get busted, they are going to have to ante up."
Politicians Exempt From Do Not Call Law
Politicians, and other charitable organizations, are exempt from the legislation known as the Do Not Call list. The law was created to enable citizens to control whether marketers can call their home. But since non-profits rely on donations, a portion of which is solicited through telephone calls, they are exempt. But, exempt or not, it is risky for a candidate to call someone who has made it known they do not like receiving marketing calls at home. So risky, in fact, that politicians are likely to rely on telephone solicitation very little or not at all for this election campaign.
In recent years, email and internet ads have been used widely by politicians during major campaigns. But SPAM and internet advertising has taken a big hit and just as telephone soliciting, can cost the candidate more votes than he wins. The trend against SPAM and pop-up advertising is so big that internet service providers now include SPAM and pop-up blockers as a part of their service.
Some campaigns are even finding television less effective since the number of channels the average consumer has access to has risen into the hundreds. This means buying time on one or two networks is no longer sufficient since voters are no longer limited to just a few television channels.
But one conduit to the voters has remained mostly unchanged since its inception - the mailbox. There is only one mailbox per home, and it is rare that you would ever find one that you could not mail to. The mailbox is an American tradition and if there were a patriotic way to solicit votes, the mailbox would be it. This campaign is likely to be the most direct mail intensive of all.
