Postal Pointers

With last month's postage rate hikes, mailers must deal with a brand-new system where shape matters more than weight. Direct recently sat down with Arnie Cohen, senior manager at Carlsbad, CA direct mail services firm Modern Postcard, to get some survival tips.

DIRECT: What should mailers do to deal with the rate hikes?

COHEN: The first thing is to look at the mail piece's design. If you walked into the lobby of a post office today with a 9-1/2-inch by 12-inch envelope with a few sheets of paper in it, it would cost you 80 cents to mail, up from about 50. So say you mail manila envelopes with those few sheets of paper. If you take the sheets, fold them in half and put them in a 6-inch by 9-inch envelope, you could save yourself 20 to 30 cents per piece. Or you could redesign the piece as a folded self-mailer or as a triple or double postcard, which will go at letter rates and only get the approximate 2-cent increase. The postal service wants people to design mail that can go on its most efficient equipment — its letter-processing machines.

DIRECT: How it difficult will it be to adapt?

COHEN: Catalogers will have the toughest time. They'll probably have to design smaller pieces, like a half-size catalog. They're most concerned about shape-based pricing. Mailers that ship a product like a pen or some other merchandise will see a bigger price increase since those mailings are now considered parcels. And there's not a lot they can do about it.