A white mailbox against a fresh blue sky.

A white mailbox against a fresh blue sky.

The Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) has approved six postal promotions for 2017!

Why do we continue to see these postal promotions year-after-year? The thought is to build strategies for direct mailers to engage their consumers in a more meaningful way.

Both the Personalized Color Transpromo Promotion and Tactile, Sensory & Interactive Mailpiece Engagement Promotion should probably be ignored since they don’t apply to most catalogers.

The Earned Value Reply Mail Promotion has been extended to six months. It offers credits for use of Alternate Postage (also known as Share Mail) mailpieces, and increases the per-piece credit amount. For catalogers that have return mail order forms this is an easy promotion to qualify for. All you need to do is register for on the Postal One Gateway. Next year the promotion incentive will by $0.05 per mail piece returned, which is $0.03 more than this year.

New for 2017 is the Direct Mail Starter Promotion which provides an incentive to smaller businesses to get on board and begin using mail as a marketing channel. This is for catalogers who mail less than 10,000 mailpieces during the promotional period and provides a higher incentive (5% discount). Most Dingley customers won’t qualify for this since typical mailings are much greater than this.

The two promotions catalogers should consider for next year are listed below. Both are nearly an identical repeat of this year’s promotions.

 Emerging and Advance Technology (Augmented Reality)

  • Postage Discount = 2%
  • Promotion Period = 3/1/17 – 8/31/17
  • Does not need to have a Mobilized Web Site
  • Estimated Cost to qualify (through Dingley) = $500.00

Mobile Shopping (QR Code)

  • Postage Discount = 2%
  • Promotion Period = 8/1/17 – 12/31/17
  • Must have a Mobilized Web Site
  • Estimated Cost to qualify = $ 0.00

Catalogers have plenty of time to implement these technologies into their mailpieces for next year. Keep in mind that a 2% postage savings, for an average “piece weight” catalog, would be approximately $ 5.75 per 1000.

  • 1,000,000 Catalogs Mailed = $   5,750.00 in Savings
  • 2,500,000 Catalogs Mailed = $ 14,375.00 in Savings
  • 5,000,000 Catalogs Mailed = $ 28,750.00 in Savings.

If you have any additional questions please feel free to reach out to your Dingley representative for more information.