The U.S. Postal Service announced that it dropped the price of postage stamps on April 10th. It was the first time it has lowered the postage rate in 100 years. The only other time in history that the cost of a stamp has gone down was in 1919, when Congress reset postage prices to their pre-World War I levels, according to a USPS spokesperson.
Presort Standard rates also see a decrease, with estimated letter size dropping from 29¢ to 28.5¢, and estimated flat size from 39.5¢ to 38.5¢. First Class Presort letters go from roughly 40¢ to 39¢.
Here are a few ideas that will help you take advantage of the postage rate reduction.
Clean Your Data
- Dirty data is a money waster than can easily be avoided. Mailing to records that are old, invalid or incomplete means you’re paying to mail a piece that will never reach its intended recipient. AVS Leads performs list hygiene on each mailing list you request.
Don’t Use the Shotgun Approach
- Instead of mailing to your entire database, take the time to review the segmentation of your contacts and cater your offers to those segments. Not only will you be lowering quantities, which will lower printing and postage costs, but your response rates should increase because you’re sending relevant, targeted offers that appeal to your market.
Keep It Personal
- Your database is marketing gold – make sure your direct mail campaigns are leveraging it to its fullest potential. Research shows that direct mail campaigns that contain personalized messages have a 1.5 times higher rate of return than those with generic messages. Increased response rates mean a lower percentage of advertising costs for your campaign. Use variable data printing to include offers for products based on a customer’s purchase history, information about their geographic area, or about their sales team – whatever information you have available in your database that makes sense to the strategy of your campaign.
AVS Leads offers a comprehensive range of mailing List services that help you optimize your postage spend. Please reach out to your AVS Leads Account Representative to understand your most effective mailing strategies, as well as how best to take advantage of the postage surcharge rollback.
For more detail about the postage rate reductions, including other categories of postage rates being reduced, see the USPS Excel spreadsheet.
Contact one of our mailing list specialists at AVS Leads today to discuss how to we can assist you in your overall Direct Mail strategy. You can reach our team members at contact@AVSleads.com.