July 21, 2006

I was taking a look the other day at Frank Dravis’ blog (http://weblogs.firstlogic.com/dravis/) and his recent entry, “Just Plain Dumb”, caught my eye. In the entry, Frank talks about how continued solicitations from a financial company were not only irritating him, but were also perplexing. It turns out that Frank’s name and address, including the firm name of Postalsoft, are still turning up on a direct marketing list and standard mail pieces are still showing up in his mailbox bearing information that was outdated over 17 years ago.

There are likely a number of reasons why this mail continues to arrive at his door. Perhaps the information really is that outdated in the direct marketer’s database. Perhaps the information is on a rented list that just never received an update. Or perhaps it’s the result of some strange merge/purge. It’s hard to say, but that’s not what really caught my eye in his posting.

Frank believes the only reason these mail pieces are actually being delivered is because the postal carrier knows Frank and because there are only 890 people in the town in which he resides. I agree with Frank that the carrier is using his/her personal knowledge to deliver this mail. The USPS calls this PKR (personal knowledge required) and a recent USPS study on undeliverable as addressed mail shows that it has a significant impact on USPS delivery costs.

In 2004, the USPS reported 2.332 billion pieces of mail were delivered using personal carrier knowledge. This amounted to $160 million in additional costs or 6.9 cents per piece. These costs stem from sortation rejects and redirection within the delivery route and station. That number, though, doesn’t consider the additional time and effort for the carrier to look at the piece and say, “oh yeah, that’s really Frank’s mail.”

Now, here’s the interesting part. What if the carrier simply called this mail what it is: undeliverable as addressed (UAA)? And furthermore, what if the carrier treated the mail as UAA, including disposing it in the case of standard mail? As the PARS (Postal Automation Redirection System) continues to rollout, this disposing could happen well before the piece actually arrives in Frank’s neighborhood. Would the mailer, the financial company in this case, really still be willing to invest money in creating a mailpiece that will never actually reach Frank? Will they still be so willing to invest in what is truly the definition of “junk in the mail”?

That apparently is the $160 million question.