Postmaster General Megan Brennan welcomed the National Newspaper Association Printer's Postal Workshop to the Ben Franklin Conference Center at Postal Service headquarters on March 16. Also pictured is Tonda Rush, director of public policy and general counsel for NNA.
Newspaper mail delivery is being improved: here’s how
Top Postal Service deputies and vice presidents delivered a practical and in-depth report on the newspaper mail Kaizen sessions it ran monthly in 2015. Half of the sessions were at Interlink client papers.
The outcome of the Kaizen sessions identified practices both on the newspaper side as well as the Postal Service side where changes could quickly and easily make a significant improvement in delivery consistency.
Changes included a new label format that will make it less likely that the mail room will overlook a bundle break, resulting in a bundle of papers going in the wrong direction with another bundle. It was also noted how hub transfers could be anticipated: knowing that papers on a certain truck were to be transferred to another truck, rather than depending on the staff on the dock to determine transfers, was an important improvement.
The session was the first live presentation that is expected to be taken on the road to serve many more than the few dozen plant managers representing more than 200 newspapers in attendance. Both USPS and NNA voiced commitment to additional collaboration to disseminate this valuable information.
Delivery is a proven value added to every newspaper
By William E. (Bill) Garber
Founder
William Garber
It is a rare newspaper whose single-copy sales exceed home delivery. Delivery is a tremendous value added to the newspaper. And with this in mind, better delivery just makes sense and dollars, when considering what poor delivery does to subscriber churn.
Delivery is a key reason why community newspapers compete, and compete well, in not only the world of radio and television, but in the crazy, wonderful, everywhere, always-on digital world.
People are increasingly reluctant to turn on a computer or cell phone, find an app, open an app, look at the landing “page” and try to figure out what everyone is or will be reading, and see what’s going on in the news.
Too much work.
Way too much.
News apps, even high-profile ones, are failing for this very reason.
Your newspaper delivers the result of more than 200 years of refining the newspaper’s method of giving the collection of news and stories a depth of meaning that is lost when a story exists outside the newspaper’s collections.
Fortunately, delivery is relatively inexpensive when using the US Postal Service; hardly a dime around town, though a good deal more the more isolated the delivery address is from other subscribers to your paper.
So it pays to improve delivery when you can, especially if it is easy, and especially if the improvement offers one-and-done simplicity.
And Interlink has made Full-Service Intelligent Mail (Full-Service) just such an improvement for all of our clients.
No added software.
No increase in license fee.
Just better delivery and lower postage.
It takes about an hour to set up Full-Service Intelligent Mail, and minimal, if any, change in your mail room process.
In fact, your mail room may never know, but PostalOne! will know, and that will make all the difference.
Every Full-Service container tag headlines it as a Full-Service container. And every postal employee knows how to read those headlines.
Here is why that is really important.
While PostalOne! tracks every Full-Service container; non-Full-Service containers are essentially lost as soon as you leave them at your post office. Lost mail depends on postal employees to manually over and over again do the right thing. And manual handling of the mail simply cannot be as consistently excellent as Full-Service mail.
Eighty percent of Periodical Mail is already mailed using Full-Service.
But only 10 percent of newspapers mailing with Interlink mail presorts are using Full-Service.
Perhaps it is just simple confusion, like lots of postal matters.
Here’s the problem. Full-Service barcodes have been required for automation discounts for a couple years now. But using Full-Service barcodes for automation rate mail is not enough.
To qualify for Full-Service mail you must add special information in the barcode for PostalOne! And you must submit your mailing using eDoc.
So let’s take the mystery out of the set-up process.
For an Interlink newspaper mailer, qualifying for Full-Service is easy.
- Register and set up your PostalOne! account with the Postal Service (about an hour)
- Set up Interlink software to digitally submit your mailing to PostalOne! (a few minutes)
- Check “Use Full-Service Intelligent Mail” to put that special Full-Service information in the barcodes (seconds)
That’s it.
From then on, your newspaper mail will be Full-Service.
And you’ll receive a small postage discount. About a nickel per year per subscriber for a weekly newspaper.
For assistance in setting up your newspaper for delivery using Full-Service, call 888-473-3103. Even the call is free!
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